The Reputational Premium: A Theory of Party Identification and Policy Reasoning - Hardcover

Sniderman, Paul M.; Stiglitz, Edward H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691154147 ISBN 13: 9780691154145

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

The Reputational Premium presents a new theory of party identification, the central concept in the study of voting. Challenging the traditional idea that voters identify with a political party out of blind emotional attachment, this pioneering book explains why party identification in contemporary American politics enables voters to make coherent policy choices. Standard approaches to the study of policy-based voting hold that voters choose based on the policy positions of the two candidates competing for their support. This study demonstrates that candidates can get a premium in support from the policy reputations of their parties. In particular, Paul Sniderman and Edward Stiglitz present a theory of how partisans take account of the parties' policy reputations as a function of the competing candidates' policy positions. A central implication of this theory of reputation-centered choices is that party identification gives candidates tremendous latitude in their policy positioning. Paradoxically, it is the party supporters who understand and are in synch with the ideological logic of the American party system who open the door to a polarized politics precisely by making the best-informed choices on offer.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Paul M. Sniderman is the Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr., Professor of Public Policy at Stanford University and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Edward H. Stiglitz holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University and is completing a JD at Stanford Law School.

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"The Reputational Premium dramatically advances the study of political parties and vote choice. Sniderman and Stiglitz provide a powerful new theory of party identification that helps make sense of a central puzzle in contemporary American politics: how polarized political parties can thrive alongside a far more moderate electorate."--Eric Schickler, University of California, Berkeley

"The Reputational Premium offers a new theory of partisanship in the United States. The premium of the title is that party identification carries meaning in a polarized era, giving it a substantive, ideological base, as well as an emotional identity. As a piece of serious science, the book provides not only a clear, original theory but striking and convincing tests of its implications. This will change the terms of the debate."--John Aldrich, Duke University

In this long-overdue rethinking of one of the discipline's oldest and most cherished concepts, Sniderman and Stiglitz set forth a new theory of party identification that explains how and why the reputations of political parties matter. They contend that parties are a source of policy information for voters rather than strictly an engine of habitual or attachment-driven political decision making. This book will become the landmark statement of a new theory of partisanship in political science."--Diana C. Mutz, University of Pennsylvania

"This is the most important book on parties and policy opinions in decades. It should be required reading for anyone interested in how democracies function and the role of citizens in that process."--Jamie Druckman, Northwestern University

"The Reputational Premium is a major substantive breakthrough. Sniderman and Stiglitz escape the chronic dispute about the comparative role of party identification and issue preference by taking it somewhere much more productive. My bet is that this book will quickly become a must-read for those who work at the center of the American politics syllabus."--Byron E. Shafer, coauthor ofThe American Public Mind: The Issues Structure of Mass Politics in the Postwar United States

"The Reputational Premium demonstrates that most partisans know and agree with their party's overall position on issues, and that they are loyal to their party when the party's candidate takes a position on the issues that the voter expects. This book will generate a strong tremor in studies of party identification and provoke new lines of research."--Dean Lacy, Dartmouth College

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The Reputational Premium

A THEORY OF PARTY IDENTIFICATION AND POLICY REASONINGBy Paul M. Sniderman Edward H. Stiglitz

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2012 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15414-5

Contents

Preface...........................................................................................................ixChapter 1 Introduction............................................................................................1Chapter 2 A Reputational Theory of Party Identification and Policy Reasoning......................................12Chapter 3 Lessons from a Sterile Downsian Environment.............................................................34Chapter 4 The Electoral Logic of Party Reputations................................................................64Chapter 5 The Democratic Experiment: A Supply-Side Theory of Political Ideas and Institutions.....................95Appendix A A Limit on the Influence of the Policy Reputations of Parties..........................................110Appendix B Study Descriptions: General Description of Methodology.................................................133References........................................................................................................137Index.............................................................................................................143

Chapter One

Introduction

Arguably the deepest puzzle of democratic politics is how any substantial number of ordinary citizens can reason coherently about politics. Arguably, we say, because many, possibly even most, experts would deny that citizens can reason coherently about politics. They would parade you through a chamber of horrors. The first exhibit would feature surveys of political ignorance displaying classic findings of how little citizens know about political institutions and public affairs. Next would be a display of "non-attitudes," illustrating how most citizens behave as if they are choosing sides on major issues by flipping a coin. This exhibit might be followed by charts documenting the flim-flam "structure" of citizens' beliefs about politics. Having conducted this tour of research demonstrating the ignorance of citizens about politics and the inconsistencies in their political thinking, these experts would repeat that there is no puzzle about how citizens can reason coherently about politics. The fact of the matter, regrettable but undeniable, is that all too many of them have trouble tying their shoelaces, politically speaking.

Ironically, the deeper problem lies in just the opposite direction. It is the regularity in the most important judgment they make about public affairs—casting their votes—that is most troubling. Fifty years of research backs up three claims. The majority of voters see themselves as Democrats or Republicans. The majority of them gave their loyalty to one party when they were young, that is to say, before they could have developed a considered basis for their choice. And, perhaps most worrisome, the majority of them, instead of learning from the experiences of their lives, strengthen the bond of loyalty to their party. In short, the most important factor in the most important decision a citizen can make—for whom to vote—most often appears to be rooted in an unthinking loyalty to political parties.

It is the argument of this book that party loyalty is a—and perhaps the—basis for reasoning coherently about the realities of contemporary American politics. If this argument appears perverse or paradoxical, we apologize. In most studies, the influence of party identification on political judgments is the centerpiece evidence sustaining the claim that citizens' decisions derive from emotion and habit rather than considerations of policy. But the appearance of perversity or paradox is just that—appearance.

The reality of American politics is not the same as it was a half century ago. It only modestly distorts the facts to say that the official Republican Party is the spokesman for an unqualified brand of conservatism, and the Democratic Party plays the same role for liberalism. American politics at the elite level has, in a word, polarized. Republican means conservative; Democrat means liberal.

During the same period of time, voters' party identifications have become aligned with the ideological outlook of their parties. The largest number of Democrat supporters identify themselves as liberal; a still larger number of Republican supporters identify themselves as conservative. A result of this process, we shall show, is that the very same commitment that used to signal unthinking loyalty, party identification, has become the basis for coherently thinking about politics for a large number of voters. And when we say "coherently," we do not have in mind a mealy-mouthed standard of coherence. On the contrary, the standard of coherence we will employ is choosing the best informed strategy to realize their policy preferences, taking account of institutional realities.

Our aim is to present a new theory of party identification. Party identification is, for the largest number of partisans, a conjunction of an ideological as well as an emotional attachment to party. Ideological reasoning, even in a rough-and-ready way, is the last thing that voters are supposed to be capable of. And yet we show that, for many voters, party identification helps them accomplish just this.

Yet our story is not one of democratic triumphalism. On the contrary, we offer a cautionary lesson on the risks of citizen competence. The democratic dilemma that thoughtful researchers and public intellectuals have focused on is: how can voters identify which candidate will better represent their views when they know so little about politics? This is a troubling dilemma, and it motivates, in part, our account. But this is not the most troubling aspect of democratic representation in contemporary American politics. As we show, the more profound problem confronting the American political reality is that, just because many voters follow the best strategy to realize their policy preferences all in all, public officials have great latitude in choosing the policy hand that they want to play.

Our Story

The specific purpose of this study is to propose a new theory of party identification—a reputational theory of party identification. We recognize that, if we were circulating an investment prospectus, we would face skeptical investors. The study of party identification has been the most exhaustively tilled row in the study of voting. What can be gained by plowing it yet one more time?

A healthy supply—or should one say, a surfeit—of theories of party identification is already on the shelf. There is the canonical theory of The American Voter. There also is the retrospective theory of party identification, the reference group theory of party identification, the performance/valence theory of party identification, as well as the group identity theory of party identification, to cite the most familiar names on the roster. Are we then about to tell you that all of this "conventional wisdom" is wrong?

Not at all. On the contrary, we are going to present a good deal of evidence in favor of the longest-established theory of party identification. For that matter, we do not doubt that the standard measure of partisanship has a retrospective component. And there are important points of similarity between the theory that we are proposing and its conceptual next of kin, notably, reference group theory and social identity theories of party identification. Why, then, propose yet another theory of party identification?

Borrowing a familiar adage, we might answer that every generation gets the theory of party identification that it deserves. The ideological clash of the Republican and Democratic parties is the engine driving contemporary American politics, and a theory of party identification that encompasses ideas as well as feelings would seem suited to the time. That is one reason to present another theory. But there is another.

A theoretical stalemate has taken place in the analysis of voting. On the one side, there is Anthony Downs' classic narrative in An Economic Theory of Democracy. In this story, competing candidates locate themselves on a policy dimension with an eye to winning voters' support—hence the characterization of this approach as spatial. Voters maximize their well-being by choosing the candidate whose policy views are closer to theirs—hence also the characterization of this approach as rational choice. On the other side, there is Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes' classic portrait of citizens in The American Voter. In this portrayal, voters are creatures of habit and emotion. Longstanding loyalties and beliefs—above all, their identification with a political party—are the principal determinants, of their electoral behavior—hence the characterization of this approach as behavioral.

The spatial and behavioral approaches seem opposed at every salient point. The first is economic in orientation; the second is social psychological. The first focuses on choices centered on the policy positions of competing candidates, abstracting from any sense of loyalty or personal history. The second centers on the motivations of voters, the most fundamental of which is loyalties to a party that they acquired early in life and have maintained throughout it. The first argues that citizens extract significant value from their limited political information. The second makes much of the meagerness of political knowledge that ordinary citizens possess, questioning people's suitability as competent agents in a democracy. The first is a template of rational choice; the second is taken as shorthand for vote choices made out of emotion and habit, with minimal if any consideration of policy. In the language of the trade, the first approach is spatial, since its aim is to give an account of how voters should and/or do vote as a function of candidates' locations in a policy space—and of where candidates strategically locate themselves in this space as a function of voters' policy preferences. The second approach has been awarded the sobriquet of behavioral, as it centers on arguably irreducible attributes of human behavior, such as emotion, that cannot be readily captured in a rational choice theory.

Initially, the behavioral approach took the lead as studies of the beliefs and biases of ordinary citizens surged in popularity thanks to the introduction of public opinion surveys. Subsequently, the spatial approach overtook the behavioral one (in our judgment) because of its capacity to provide a simple, parsimonious theory of candidate positioning.

All the same, competition has remained intense, and for a generation, the behavioral and spatial approaches worked at cross-purposes. The clash of perspectives remains, but as time has passed, they have settled down into (mostly) peaceful co- existence. Indeed, some proponents of one approach break bread with proponents of the other. It is our aim to join them.

A Reputational Theory of Party Identification

In Downs' canonical formulation of spatial analysis, voters choose the party whose position is closer to theirs—however close or far that may be. In most subsequent variations of Downs' theory, however, the spatial analysis is candidate-centered—the voters ask: which candidate is closer to my preferred policy? Our approach similarly presumes that voters make policy-based choices. But its distinctive claim is that (many) voters take account of two, not one, sources of policy positions. One source is the policy positions of candidates, as in most spatial reasoning studies. The other is the policy reputations of the political parties under whose banner candidates run. Simply put, our account of spatial reasoning is party-centered as well as candidate-centered.

Our starting point, then, is a simple intuition: that political parties are a source of relevant policy information to ground choices between candidates. This intuition surely has sufficient plausibility to justify exploration. A generosity of spirit has been required to credit the ordinary citizen with the information and interest to make the endless list of comparisons of candidates' policy positions in a political system in which so many candidates compete for so many public offices. As compared to the galaxy of candidates and the positions they take, the policy reputations of the parties are easier to grasp; more stable over time; certainly more distinct at this moment in time; and, most importantly, able to integrate the free-ranging miscellany of policies salient at the moment into coherent political outlooks—and are accordingly effective predictors of policy outcomes all in all.

Our aim is to work out what this simple intuition that political parties are a source of policy information entails: Which voters make party-centered choices? How, exactly, do they combine candidate- and party-centered policy information? What electoral incentives do party-centered choices offer to candidates? And what are the implications of these incentives for the logic of electoral competition and a theory of democratic representation?

Answering these and other questions is the task of the chapters that follow. Here we want to call attention to two centerpiece concepts of our account. The first concept is a reputational premium.

It is accepted that the more strongly voters identify with a party, the more likely they are to support a candidate of their party independent of his policy positions. It is similarly accepted that they do so out of loyalty and habit, so much so that a vote based on party identification has become synonymous with a vote based on an emotional attachment to the party rather than a judgment about its policies. It is our claim that a large number of party identifiers now also support their parties' candidates because the candidates' policy positions reflect their party's policy positions. So far as this is so, it follows that the more strongly they identify with their party, the more likely they are to support the candidate of their party.

This extra measure of support is in addition to the support that these partisans would give because of their emotional attachment to their party. This extra measure of support also is in addition to the support that they would give a candidate of their party because of the candidate's own policy positions. And which voters provide this extra support? Party identifiers who share the outlook of their party and understand the ideological logic of the party system. They need not have a philosophy of politics. Even well- informed voters are not all that well informed. But they have a good sense of their broad outlook on politics. And they have a good sense of their parties' outlooks, too. So we refer to them as programmatic partisans, supporting as they do the programs of their parties, and the extra measure of support that they provide as a reputational premium.

Candidates of a party earn a reputational premium, we contend, if they take a position consistent with the programmatic outlook of their party. The crux of the matter, obviously enough, is the precise meaning of the relationship, "consistent with." This phrase suggests a variety of possible meanings. Perhaps the most obvious is this: a Democratic candidate who takes a liberal position has taken a position consistent with the programmatic outlook of the Democratic Party, just as a Republican candidate who takes a conservative position has taken a position consistent with the programmatic outlook of the Republican Party. In contrast, we shall argue for a less obvious meaning of "consistent with," on the paradoxical ground that this other meaning is more obvious, in the sense of more readily and reliably noticeable, in the tumult of electoral competition. We shall state this other meaning now and make the case for it later.

In the American party system, the candidates have taken positions consistent with the policy outlook of their party if, but only if, they have lined up vis-à-vis one another on the fundamental left-right dimension in American politics in the same order that their respective parties line up vis-à-vis one another.

We call this rule of judgment the Order Rule. It is our claim that programmatic partisans treat the Order Rule as both a necessary and sufficient condition for awarding a reputational premium to candidates of their party. Accordingly, it is a primary objective of our study to test the validity of the Order Rule, both in its own right and as compared to alternative rules that voters could quite plausibly employ.

The theory we are proposing has strict limits. It is limited, for example, in the voters it applies to—it has nothing to say about independents, most obviously. It is limited as well in the political eras to which it is most applicable, gaining traction the more polarized and cohesive the parties-in-government, losing it the more moderate and diverse they are. And it is limited as a theory of candidate positioning, specifying the range of positions that party candidates may take and collect a reputational premium, but not the reasons why they take the particular position that they do within this range.

We do not underline that our theory has limits out of modesty or defensiveness. To be blunt about it, a theory should get high grades just so far as it specifies under what conditions the variables it asserts are related are in fact related and under what conditions they are not related. The principal thrust of our reasoning and testing accordingly is to specify both the conditions that voters must meet to pay a reputational premium and the conditions that the candidates must satisfy in order to collect it.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Reputational Premiumby Paul M. Sniderman Edward H. Stiglitz Copyright © 2012 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691154147
• ISBN 13: 9780691154145
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar