Abstract
How do parties decide when to campaign on valence issues given high degrees of uncertainty? Although past studies have provided evidence of transnational emulation of parties' position-taking strategies, these findings do not directly apply to saliency strategies. Moreover, the exact diffusion mechanism remains largely elusive. Based on the issue saliency literature, this study develops novel theoretical propositions and argues that conscious learning enables parties to infer the relative utility of emphasizing consensual issues during an electoral campaign. The proposed theory gives rise to different expectations at the domestic and transnational levels because of the distinct logic of issue competition. By analyzing environmental issue emphasis in party manifestos, the authors find direct transnational dependencies and indirect spillover effects among the parties' saliency strategies. They identify conscious learning, rather than mere imitation or independent decision making, as the diffusion mechanism at work. Yet, in line with saliency-based theories, electoral competition mutes the diffusion of electoral strategies domestically.
Highlights
Uncertainty is a pervasive feature of democratic elections
The present study explores how parties decide on the optimal issue saliency strategy in an electoral campaign
How do parties decide when to campaign on valence issues given a high degree of uncertainty? So far, the scholarly literature has focused on characteristics of the party and the domestic party system to explain why parties decide to talk about valence issues in their manifestos
Summary
Parties attempt to attract voters by formulating policy proposals in their manifestos In doing so, they single out a number of issues that are most rewarding in terms of votes and allocate the scarce space within their manifestos to these issues, given the other parties’ strategies (Laver and Garry 2000). Position-taking strategies directly emerge from the Downsian model and are based on the premise that voters will choose the party closest to their most preferred policy position in a latent policy space that is assumed to be low dimensional and static By explicitly stressing their policy platform on conflictual issues, parties attempt to occupy the vote-maximizing position – conditional on their competitors’ locations – and communicate their policy preferences to the electorate. The information revealed by competing parties’ decisions does not help a party to infer its relative competence, or reveal which party is perceived to be the most competent on other issues relevant in an electoral contest
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