Does Government Support Respond to Governments’ Social Welfare Rhetoric or their Spending? An Analysis of Government Support in Britain, Spain and the United States

Bernardi, Luca; Adams, James

doi:10.1017/s0007123417000199

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Secondly, recent research finds that governing parties-particularly PM parties-cannot meaningfully change their issue images via their campaign rhetoric, since citizens react to the government's actual policy outputs, not to its policy rhetoric. In this regard, Bernardi and Adams (2019) find that governments' public approval ratings in Spain, Britain, and the United States respond to actual levels of social welfare spending, not to the government's public rhetoric about their welfare policies, while Adams, Bernardi, and Wlezien (2020) report empirical analyses from eight Western European democracies that citizens' perceptions of governing parties' leftright positions-especially those of PM parties-are strongly linked to the levels of actual social welfare expenditures but do not respond to the left-right tones of governing parties' election manifestos (see also Fernandez-Vazquez and Somer-Topcu forthcoming). 2 This implies that PM parties cannot substantially benefit from campaigning on their own issue positions and priorities because, in these domains, the public reacts to their actions, not their words.…”

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confidence: 98%

“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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mentioning

confidence: 98%

“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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“…Our finding that voters reward parties for perceived right-shifts poses a strategic dilemma for left-wing parties' elites, whose core convictions may make them resist taking actions that moderate their party's leftist image. This dilemma may be most acute for leftist governing parties since recent research concludes that citizens estimate governing parties' ideologies from their actual policy outputs while discounting their rhetoric (Bernardi and Adams, 2019). This suggests that to burnish their image of economic competence, left-wing governments may feel pressure to implement economic austerity policies that have real-world consequences, and which leftist elites find repugnant.…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Parties Gain Votes When the Public Perceives Them Shifting to the Right

et al. 2023

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We combine two dominant approaches to studying how issues influence elections: one that emphasizes parties’ issue positions, and the other parties’ issue ownership. Research from the latter approach shows that voters ascribe greater economic competence to right-wing parties. Based on this finding, we argue that parties enhance their economic issue ownership when voters perceive them shifting to the right. In the following step, we show that perceived rightward shifts of parties also lead to subsequent increases in electoral support. We analyze economic ownership survey data and election outcomes in 15 democracies over the period 1986–2015 that supports the expectations that parties’ perceived rightward shifts result in increases in economic ownership and subsequent vote shares. We also show that the right-shift vote gains are strongest during recessions when voters prioritize parties’ economic competence.

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“…Ideological shifts, however, do not come without a cost. Voters update their party support accordingly and hold governing parties accountable for their policy outputs (Adams et al, 2020; Bernardi and Adams, 2019; Adams et al, 2006).…”

Section: Learning From Foreign Electoral Consequences: a Mechanism Of...mentioning

confidence: 99%

What Curbs Social Investment? The Effect of Foreign Electoral Outcomes on Childcare Expenditure Levels

Tonelli

2022

J. Soc. Pol.

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This study aims to deepen our understanding of social investment expansion proposing a political learning mechanism to link existing institutional and political explanations. When resources are limited, increased spending in social investment often comes at the expense of politically costly retrenchment of established social insurance policies. Previous studies suggest that this trade-off results in existing entitlements crowding out new policies, and that party ideology plays less of a role in determining social policy expansion. I argue that this is because parties face an electoral dilemma, as individual preferences for social investment and social insurance have been shown to differ between groups that partly overlap in their voting behaviour. Applying a policy diffusion framework to the analysis of childcare expenditure, this study proposes that policymakers learn from the political consequences of past decisions made by their foreign counterparts and update their policy choice accordingly. The econometric analysis of OECD data on childcare expenditure shows that governments tend to make spending decisions that follow those of ideologically similar cabinets abroad and that left-wing governments with a divided electorate tend to reduce childcare expenditure if a previous expansionary decision of a foreign incumbent is followed by an electoral defeat. The findings have implications for the study of the politics of social policy development.

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Does Government Support Respond to Governments’ Social Welfare Rhetoric or their Spending? An Analysis of Government Support in Britain, Spain and the United States

Cited by 8 publications

References 46 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

Why Parties Gain Votes When the Public Perceives Them Shifting to the Right

What Curbs Social Investment? The Effect of Foreign Electoral Outcomes on Childcare Expenditure Levels

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