Unit 6: Parties and Votes

1. Unit 6: Parties and Votes Ware CH 11 and Mueller and Strom 112-140

2. Guiding Questions • When are parties likely to adopt a vote-maximizing strategy? • What factors shape how parties position themselves to win votes? • How can we model party competition? • What are the strengths/weaknesses of these models?

3. When Should Parties Seek Votes? • Voting certainly “matters” in democracies. • We can conceive of the voting process as delegating authority from the citizenry to the political elite. • But votes, in and of themselves, are rarely useful. • We typically see votes as instrumental to achieving other goals. • When would vote seeking strategies be likely? • 1) When parties want to increase their bargaining weight. • 2) When elections are competitive (i.e. outcome is unclear). • 3) To reach certain “thresholds” • Example: majority/minority government, minimum threshold for representation, etc.

4. Downs’s Assumptions about Voters • Downs 1957 • Models party competition spatially. • 1) Voters hold preferences over the types of policy they want government to enact. • These preferences are linked to their interests, and are exogenous to parties. • 2) These preferences can be represented along a single left-right dimension. • 3) Voters are rational, but not well informed about connections between their preferences and the policies political parties advocate. • Takes preferences as exogenous (or ‘given’) • Thus, voters vote for the party positioned closest to them.

5. Downs’s Assumption about Parties • Downs 1957 • 1) Parties seek to maximize their vote share. • 2) Parties position themselves along the left/right spectrum adapting their policy positions based on their perceptions of voter interests. • Parties are loosely bound by past history. • Prevents parties from “leap-frogging” other parties. • 3) Parties use ideology as a tool to mobilize mass electorates. • That is, policy is viewed instrumentally (i.e. it wins votes).

6. Downs and Number of Parties • 4) Number of political parties is dependent upon the shape of distribution of voters. • Single peaked: two party system is likely. • Multi-peaked: multiparty system is likely. • Two party systems create incentives for parties to converge at the position of the median voter. • Multiparty systems do not.

7. Evaluating Spatial Models of Voting STRENGTHS WEAKNESSES • Downs 1957 • Important contributions regarding: • 1) Spatial modeling of party competition • 2) Identification of issue dimensions which frame politics. • 3) Linkages between campaign promises and governmental performance explained as a function of re-election prospects. • Dunleavy 1991 • Questions assumption that voter preferences are exogenous to parties. • Government parties can shape preferences via: • 1) social engineering • 2) social relativities • 3) context management. • Opposition parties can shape preferences via: • 1) exploiting social tensions • 2) strategic agenda setting

8. Conclusions: Parties as Unitary Actors • Modeling parties as unitary actors can be useful theoretically, but problematic when describing reality. • Tsebelis (1990) • Party competition is a ‘nested game’ party leaders “play” on two levels: electorate and activists. • Party activists can constrain the ability of parties to shift positions in response to changes in the electorate. • The ideal political position or platform may not be acceptable to activists. • But maintaining policy positions preferable to activists may come at a cost: possibility of entering office or winning votes may be affected.

9. Case Study: the Netherlands • Examine: • Dutch Labor Party (PvdA) • Why were policy goals so dominant for so long within the party? • What did an emphasis on policy goals do for the PvdA’s vote winning abilities? • What did it take for office seeking goals to be privileged over policy goals? • How did the push for votes shape the party’s behavior?

10. Schedule • Game: Elections • Unit Theme: Parties and Ideology • Readings: • Ware CH 1 • Mueller and Strom pgs. 89-111 • Unit Theme: Coalition Formation • Readings: • Reserves: Laver and Schofield, Lijphart • Dalton and Wattenberg CH 9 • Game: Coalections.