The Conditional Ideological Inducement to Campaign on Character Valence Issues in Multiparty Systems

Abstract

Acknowledging the role played by character valence issues in affecting parties' fortunes, several recent papers have investigated the possible intentional use of such issues in electoral contests. A corollary of this line of research has focused on identifying conditions under which parties are expected to invest more in valence campaigning. In this article, we focus on the role played by parties' relative ideological positions in a multiparty setting. We identify the existence of an inverse relationship between the distance of a party from its ideologically adjacent competitors and its incentive to campaign on character valence issues. However, the extent of this relationship can be conditional on institutional and electoral factors. We test these hypotheses by focusing on the emphasis a party places in its electoral manifestos on the specific character valence issue of corruption. Statistical results largely confirm our hypotheses.

e-Campaigning in the 2014 European elections

“…In addition, recent studies show that the type of the neighboring party/parties (government or opposition) can influence the occurrence of valence campaigning (Curini, 2015;Walter et al, 2014): when a party is surrounded by parties of another kind (opposition parties if party i is a cabinet party or vice versa), it could have more incentives to invest in valence issues. As such, in models 6 and 10 we control for the number of neighbors different from party i through the variable opposite neighborhood.…”

“…The first one applies irrespective to the number of the dimensions of the policy space (on this point see also Curini, 2015;Curini and Martelli, 2015). Let us call neighbors those parties with contiguous cells in the Voronoi decompositions of the policy spaces.…”

“…In this respect, scholars have started to investigate the determinants of valence competition focusing on party incentives (Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita, 2009;Damore, 2002;Elmelund-Praestekaer, 2008;Serra, 2010;Skaperdas and Grofman, 1995). In this regard, a growing branch of the literature paid attention to how the ideological distance between parties affects their propensity to revert to valence strategies (Curini, 2015;Curini and Martelli, 2010;Green, 2007;Walter, 2014;Walter et al, 2014).…”

The conditional impact of winner/loser status and ideological proximity on citizen participation

“…; Campbell et al. ), personalisation of politics (Kaase ; Mughan ) and valence issues (Clark ; Curini ; Stokes ). In short, one can be an electoral winner for reasons not directly related to policy or ideological considerations.…”

Economia, Ideologia e Eleições na América Latina

“…Isto ocorre porque existe uma relação inversa entre extremismo ideológico e programas políticos baseados em questões consensuais, ou valence issues, como crescimento econômico, combate à corrupção, investimentos em saúde e educação etc. Enquanto candidatos centristas tendem a propor agendas de governo que enfatizam questões sobre as quais não há divergências entre a população, candidatos mais à esquerda e à direita tendem a enfatizar suas posições em questões menos consensuais, ou positional issues (Curini, 2015). Consequentemente, os parâmetros que os eleitores utilizam para avaliar se o governo atendeu às suas expectativas variam de acordo com o perfil ideológico do presidente.…”