Responsive Campaigning: Evidence from European Parties

Pereira, Miguel M.

doi:10.1086/707827

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Secondly, we included a dummy variable, j is a junior coalition partner , to estimate whether junior partners tended to adopt different self-presentational strategies compared to opposition parties (the baseline category). Finally, given past research that parties adapt their strategies as Election Day nears (for example, Acree et al 2020; Pereira 2020), we included the variable Days until the election , defined as the number of days between the party's self-presentation and Election Day.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To evaluate our hypotheses, we draw on the Comparative Campaign Dynamics (CCD) dataset, based on content analyses of newspaper coverage of national election campaigns across ten European countries: the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK (for further details, see Baumann and Gross 2016; Debus, Somer-Topcu, and Tavits 2016). 3 Following previous research on media coverage of European parliamentary election campaigns (for example, de Vreese et al 2006), the CCD dataset provides newspaper codings by country teams who collected and coded election-related newspaper stories from two major daily national newspapers (one left-leaning and one right-leaning) during national election campaigns (for other studies using the data, see Baumann, Debus, and Gross forthcoming; Pereira 2020). Representatives from each country team attended a joint workshop at the University of Mannheim to arrive at shared interpretations of the codebook across countries.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Our Issue Positions are Strong, and Our Opponents’ Valence is Weak”: An Analysis of Parties' Campaign Strategies in Ten Western European Democracies

Bjarnøe

Adams²,

Boydstun³

2022

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Political parties face strategic decisions about whether to campaign on issue-based appeals, pertaining to debates over such issues as economic, immigration, and environmental policies, versus valence-based appeals, emphasizing leadership attributes, such as character (integrity, honesty, and so on), along with performance, that is, the ability to deliver positive outcomes. To better understand these choices, we analyze parties' national election campaign strategies across ten Western European democracies. We argue for, and empirically substantiate, an: our issues versus their valence effect, that is, that parties' self-presentations will be more issue-based than their presentations of opponents; an extremist party issue focus effect, that is, that parties with more extreme ideologies most strongly emphasize issues over valence in their self-presentations; and a prime ministerial valence focus effect, that is, that prime ministerial parties more strongly self-present on valence. These findings have implications for election outcomes and mass–elite linkages.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Our Issue Positions are Strong, and Our Opponents’ Valence is Weak”: An Analysis of Parties' Campaign Strategies in Ten Western European Democracies

Bjarnøe

Adams²,

Boydstun³

2022

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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“…How do politicians learn about public preferences? Office-seeking officials have incentives to be informed (Downs 1957;Geer 1996;Pereira 2020). However, a growing literature suggests that learning about what voters want is more demanding than originally suggested (Butler and Nickerson 2011;Druckman and Jacobs 2015;Sheffer et al 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate

Pereira¹

2020

Preprint

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To be responsive, politicians have to rely on beliefs about public will. Previous research suggests that perceptions of public opinion are often distorted. However, it remains unclear (1) why reelection-seeking officials misperceive constituent preferences, and (2) how to mitigate these distorted beliefs. I argue that misperceptions result in part from unequal exposure to different subconstituencies, and a tendency of legislators to project their own preferences on voters. A six-wave panel of Swedish MPs combined with mass surveys provides support for these arguments. Elite beliefs disproportionately reflect the preferences of more privileged subconstituencies and the personal positions of legislators. Additionally, an experiment with Swiss representatives leveraging real political events reveals how misperceptions can be reduced by encouraging a more balanced exposure to voters. The study concludes that economic and political inequalities are rooted in elite beliefs about public preferences and reveals ways to bolster the links between voters and their representatives.

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“…Theories of political representation posit that reelection-seeking o cials have incentives to be responsive to voters (e.g., Pitkin 1967, Dahl 1973. Consistent with this view, prior work shows that politicians update their positions based on public opinion polls (Butler and Nickerson 2011;Pereira 2020) and election results (Adams et al 2005;Somer-Topcu 2009). However, there is ample variation in patterns of responsiveness.…”

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confidence: 86%

The Expertise Paradox: How Policy Expertise Can Hinder Responsiveness

Pereira¹,

Öhberg²

2020

Preprint

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We argue that policy expertise may constrain the ability of politicians to be responsive. Legislators with more knowledge and experience in a given policy area have more confidence in their own issue-specific positions. Enhanced confidence, in turn, may lead legislators to discount opinions they disagree with. Two experiments with Swedish politicians support our argument. First, we find that officials with more expertise in a given domain are more likely to dismiss appeals from voters who hold contrasting opinions, regardless of their specific position on the policy, and less likely to accept that opposing views may represent the majority opinion. Consistent with the proposed mechanism, in a second experiment we show that inducing perceptions of expertise increases self-confidence. The results suggest that representatives with more expertise in a given area are paradoxically less capable of voicing public preferences in that domain. The study provides a novel explanation for distortions in policy responsiveness.

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Responsive Campaigning: Evidence from European Parties

Cited by 15 publications

References 58 publications

“Our Issue Positions are Strong, and Our Opponents’ Valence is Weak”: An Analysis of Parties' Campaign Strategies in Ten Western European Democracies

“Our Issue Positions are Strong, and Our Opponents’ Valence is Weak”: An Analysis of Parties' Campaign Strategies in Ten Western European Democracies

Understanding and Reducing Biases in Elite Beliefs About the Electorate

The Expertise Paradox: How Policy Expertise Can Hinder Responsiveness

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