Political representation and its mechanisms: A dynamic left-right approach for the United Kingdom, 1976-2006

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 835-856

  Hakhverdian, Armen ^a  

^a EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE   (Italy)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 78650048881     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S000712341000013X     Document Type: Article

References (153)

1. Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972);
2. Hanna F. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).
3. E.g., James A. Stimson, Michael B. MacKuen and Robert S. Erikson, 'Dynamic Representation', American Political Science Review, 89 (1995), 543-65.
4. John D. May, 'Defining Democracy: A Bid for Coherence and Consensus', Political Studies, 26 (1978), 1-14, p. 1.
5. For comprehensive overviews, see Paul Burstein, 'The Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy: A Review and an Agenda', Political Research Quarterly, 56 (2003), 29-40;
6. David Weakliem, 'Public Opinion Research and Political Sociology', Research in Political Sociology, 12 (2003), 49-80;
7. Stuart N. Soroka and Christopher Wlezien, 'The Relationship between Public Opinion and Policy', in Russell Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, eds, Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 799-818.
8. The bulk of the literature is concerned with the United States and is reviewed in Jeff Manza and Fay L. Cook, 'A Democratic Polity? Three Views of Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion in the United States', American Politics Research, 30 (2002), 630-67.
9. The classic statement is Warren Miller and Donald Stokes, 'Constituency Influence in Congress', American Political Science Review, 57 (1963), 45-56.
10. Christopher Wlezien, 'The Public as Thermostat: Dynamics of Preferences for Spending', American Journal of Political Science, 39 (1995), 981-100;
11. Mark N. Franklin and Christopher Wlezien, 'The Responsive Public: Issue Salience, Policy Change, and Preferences for European Unification', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 9 (1997), 347-63;
12. Stuart N. Soroka and Christopher Wlezien, 'Opinion-Policy Dynamics: Public Preferences and Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom', British Journal of Political Science, 35 (2005), 655-89.
13. Stimson, MacKuen and Erikson, 'Dynamic Representation', p. 544.
14. Soroka and Wlezien, 'Opinion-Policy Dynamics';
15. Stuart N. Soroka and Christopher Wlezien, 'Degrees of Democracy: Government Institutions and the Opinion-Policy Link' (paper prepared for the General Conference of the European Consortium of Political Research, 2007).
16. Sara B. Hobolt and Robert Klemmensen, 'Responsive Government? Public Opinion and Policy Preferences in Britain and Denmark', Political Studies, 53 (2005), 379-402;
17. Sara B. Hobolt and Robert Klemmensen, 'Government Responsiveness and Political Competition in Comparative Perspective', Comparative Political Studies, 41 (2008), 309-37;
18. Will Jennings and Peter John, 'The Dynamics of Political Attention: Public Opinion and the Queen's Speech in the United Kingdom', American Journal of Political Science, 53 (2009), 838-54.
19. To be fair, Stimson and his colleagues include a model that summarizes dynamic representation across all four institutions, but they themselves call this design 'a fiction' and 'a rough answer to a rough question' (Stimson, MacKuen and Erikson, 'Dynamic Representation', p. 556).
20. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 10-11.
21. Ronald F. Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 293.
22. Armèn Hakhverdian, 'Capturing Government Policy on the Left-Right Scale: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1956-2006', Political Studies, 57 (2009), 720-45.
23. G. Bingham Powell, 'The Chain of Responsiveness', Journal of Democracy, 15 (2004), 91-105.
24. E.g., Anthony F. Heath, Roger M. Jowell and John K. Curtice, How Britain Votes (Oxford: Pergamon, 1985);
25. Richard Rose and Ian McAllister, Voters Begin to Choose (London: Sage, 1986);
26. Anthony F. Heath, Roger M. Jowell, John K. Curtice, Geoffrey Evans, Julia Field and Sharon Witherspoon, Understanding Political Change (Oxford: Pergamon, 1991);
27. Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart and Paul Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). To be sure, issue proximity might not be the most important determinant of voting behaviour, but that is not required for present purposes.
28. John Bartle, 'Ideological Considerations and Voting Behaviour', in Judith Bara and Albert Weale, eds., Democratic Politics and Party Competition (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 203-21.
29. Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference? 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 145.
30. Richard I. Hofferbert and Ian Budge, 'The Party Mandate and the Westminster Model: Election Programmes and Government Spending in Britain, 1948-85', British Journal of Political Science, 22 (1992), 151-82, p. 181.
31. Terry J. Royed, 'Testing the Mandate Model in Britain and the United States: Evidence from the Reagan and Thatcher Eras', British Journal of Political Science, 26 (1996), 45-80.
32. Stefano Bartolini, 'Collusion, Competition, and Democracy: Part II', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 12 (2000), 33-65, p. 37.
33. See Francis G. Castles and Peter Mair, 'Left-Right Political Scales: Some Expert Judgements', European Journal of Political Research, 12 (1984), 73-88;
34. Michael Laver and W. Ben Hunt, Policy and Party Competition (New York: Routledge, 1992);
35. John D. Huber and Ronald F. Inglehart, 'Expert Interpretations of Party Space and Party Locations in 42 Societies', Party Politics, 1 (1995), 73-111;
36. Kenneth Benoit and Michael Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies (London: Routledge, 2006);
37. Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara, Ian Budge and Michael D. McDonald, Mapping Policy Preferences II: Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments in Easter Europe, European Union and OECD 1990-2003 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
38. Manfred G. Schmidt, 'When Parties Matter: A Review of the Possibilities and Limits of Partisan Influence on Public Policy', European Journal of Political Research, 30 (1996), 155-83.
39. Soroka and Wlezien, 'Degrees of Democracy';
40. Hobolt and Klemmensen, 'Government Responsiveness and Political Competition in Comparative Perspective'.
41. Stimson, MacKuen and Erikson, 'Dynamic Representation', p. 545.
42. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 28.
43. Carl J. Friedrich, Man and his Government (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), p. 203.
44. Anthony F. Heath, Roger M. Jowell and John K. Curtice, The Rise of New Labour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 6.
45. Shaun Bowler and David M. Farrell, eds, Electoral Strategies and Political Marketing (Basingstoke, Hants.: Macmillan, 1992);
46. John G. Geer, From Tea Leaves to Opinion Polls: A Theory of Democratic Leadership (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
47. Lawrence R. Jacobs, 'The Recoil Effect: Public Opinion and Policymaking in the U. S. and Britain', Comparative Politics, 24 (1992), 199-217.
48. Jacobs, 'The Recoil Effect', pp. 208 and 213.
49. John Ferejohn, 'Incumbent Performance and Electoral Control', Public Choice, 50 (1986), 5-25. Some have argued that policy responsiveness might still occur when uncertainty is low. Parties that realize that their seats are quite safe could for example opt to respond to the public out of a sense of duty.
50. See Larry Bartels, 'Constituency Opinion and Congressional Policy Making: The Reagan Defense Buildup', American Political Science Review, 85 (1991), 457-74.
51. Stimson, MacKuen and Erikson, 'Dynamic Representation', p. 544.
52. John D. Griffin, 'Electoral Competition and Democratic Responsiveness: A Defense of the Marginality Hypothesis', Journal of Politics, 68 (2006), 911-21, p. 919.
53. James E. Alt, 'Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures', British Journal of Political Science, 1 (1971), 49-62;
54. George A. Boyne, 'Median Voters, Political Systems, and Public Policies: an Empirical Test', Public Choice, 53 (1987), 201-19;
55. George A. Boyne, 'Party Competition and Local Spending Decisions', British Journal of Political Science, 28 (1998), 185-222.
56. Boyne, 'Party Competition and Local Spending Decisions', p. 221, emphasis in original.
57. Hobolt and Klemmensen, 'Government Responsiveness and Political Competition in Comparative Perspective', p. 326.
58. Ian Budge, 'New Patterns of Party Competition?' in Geoffrey Evans and Pippa Norris, eds, Critical Elections: British Parties and Voters in Long-term Perspective (London: Sage, 1999), pp. 1-21, at p. 4.
59. Paul D. Webb, The Modern British Party System (London: Sage, 2000), p. 111.
60. Webb, The Modern British Party System, p. 111.
61. Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies.
62. John Bartle, Sebastian Dellepiane-Avellaneda and James, A. Stimson, 'The Moving Centre: Policy Preferences in Britain, 1945-2005' (paper prepared for the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research, 2007;
63. Soroka and Wlezien, 'Opinion-Policy Dynamics'.
64. Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza, Why Welfare States Persist: The Importance of Public Opinion in Democracies (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007).
65. The latest CMP publication is Klingemann, Volkens, Bara, Budge and McDonald, Mapping Policy Preferences II. The CMP uses human coders to classify sentences in election manifestos into more than fifty policy categories. The left-right score of each manifesto, and hence government, is calculated by subtracting the percentage of right-wing categories from the percentage of left-wing categories. The CMP scale thus has a range of -100 (for a party devoting its entire manifesto to left-wing issues) to +100 (for a party devoting its complete programme to right-wing issues). Substantively, the scale 'opposes emphases on peaceful internationalism, welfare and government intervention of the left, to emphases on strong defence, free enterprise and traditional morality on the right'
66. see Ian Budge and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, 'Finally! Comparative Over-Time Mapping of Party Policy Movement', in Ian Budge, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Andrea Volkens, Judith Bara and Eric Tanenbaum, Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments 1945-1998 (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2001), pp. 19-50, at p. 21.
67. Hobolt and Klemmensen, 'Responsive Government?'
68. Hobolt and Klemmensen, 'Government Responsiveness and Political Competition in Comparative Perspective';
69. Jennings and John, 'The Dynamics of Political Attention'.
70. On average, the Budget speech is almost ten times as long as the 'Queen's Speech', which is likely to contribute to the reliability of position estimates, see Michael Laver, Kenneth Benoit and John Garry, 'Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts: Using Words as Data', American Political Science Review, 97 (2003), 311-31;
71. Robert Klemmensen, Sara B. Hobolt and Martin E. Hansen, 'Estimating Policy Positions Using Political Texts: An Evaluation of the Wordscores Approach, Electoral Studies, 26 (2007), 746-55.
72. Webb, The Modern British Party System;
73. Hobolt and Klemmensen, 'Responsive Government?';
74. Jennings and John, 'The Dynamics of Political Attention'.
75. André Blais, Donald Blake and Stephane Dion, 'Do Parties Make a Difference? Parties and the Size of Government in Liberal Democracies', American Journal of Political Science, 37 (1993), 40-62, p. 43.
76. Benoit and Laver, Party Policy in Modern Democracies.
77. Laver, Benoit and Garry, 'Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts', p. 312.
78. See, respectively, Sven-Oliver Proksch and Jonathan B. Slapin, 'Institutions and Coalition Formation: The German Election of 2005', West European Politics, 29 (2006), 540-59;
79. Michael Laver, Kenneth Benoit and Nicolas Sauger, 'Policy Competition in the 2002 French Legislative and Presidential Elections', European Journal of Political Research, 45 (2006), 667-97;
80. Anthony M. Bertelli and Christian R. Grose, 'The Spatial Model and the Senate Trial of President Clinton', American Politics Research, 34 (2006), 535-59;
81. Klemmensen, Hobolt and Hansen, 'Estimating Policy Positions Using Political Texts'.
82. Laver, Benoit and Garry, 'Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts', p. 330.
83. For a detailed exposition on Wordscores, see Laver, Benoit and Garry, 'Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts'.
84. In the example above, the left-right score of 'business' would be 0.17 (2) + 0.83 (7) = 6.15, which as expected lies closer to the score of the Conservative text score than the Labour text.
85. Laver, Benoit, and Garry, 'Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts', p. 316.
86. Laver, Benoit, and Garry have written a Wordscores algorithm for STATA, which was used to analyse the speeches; available from www.tcd.ie/Political- Science/wordscores/.
87. Laver, Benoit and Garry, 'Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts'.
88. On the CMP scale, which runs from -100 on the left to +100 on the right, the respective scores for the Budget Speeches from 1987, 2005 and 1974 are 30.5, -2.9 and -48.5. These scores are identical to the left-right score of the election manifesto of the relevant governing party at that time (Conservative party in 1987 and Labour in 1974 and 2005).
89. Klemmensen, Hobolt and Hansen, 'Estimating Policy Positions Using Political Texts'.
90. Klingemann et al., Mapping Policy Preferences II, p. 104, fn. 6.
91. These eight combinations are 1987-2005-1974, 1987-2005-1975, 1987-1971-1974, 1987-1971-1975, 1983-2005-1974, 1983-2005-1975, 1983-1971-1974, and 1983-1971-1975.
92. In fact, factor analysis of these eight time series results in a one-factor solution with an eigenvalue of 6.93 that explains 87 per cent of the variance. All of the eight reference sets have factor loadings between 0.87 and 0.96. Comparable results are found for Danish government speeches by Klemmensen, Hobolt and Hansen, 'Estimating Policy Positions Using Political Texts'.
93. The mean score is identical to the one-factor solution (Pearson's r =0.994).
94. These four sources of cross-validation are described in detail in Hakhverdian, 'Capturing Government Policy on the Left-Right Scale'.
95. The question is formulated as follows: 'In political matters, people talk about "the Left" and "the Right". How would you place your views on this scale, generally speaking?' The scale runs from 1 on the left to 10 on the right.
96. John D. Huber, 'Values and Partisanship in Left-Right Orientations: Measuring Ideology', European Journal of Political Research, 17 (1989), 599-621, p. 618.
97. For the United Kingdom, the classic statement is David Butler and Donald E. Stokes, Political Change in Britain, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1974).
98. Oddbjorn Knutsen, 'European Move towards the Centre: A Comparative Longitudinal Study of Left-Right Self-Placement in Western Europe', International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 10 (1998), 292-316.
99. Following Randolph T. Stevenson, 'The Economy and Public Mood: A Fundamental Dynamic of Democratic Politics?' American Journal of Political Science, 45 (2001), 620-33.
100. Also see Giacomo Sani and Giovanni Sartori, 'Polarization, Fragmentation, and Competition in Western Democracies', in Hans Daalder and Peter Mair, eds, Western European Party Systems (London: Sage, 1983), pp. 307-40. This measure is only consistently available since 1976 (Eurobarometer, 5).
101. Stuart Hall, 'The Great Moving Right Show', Marxism Today, January 1979, pp. 14-20.
102. Philip Stephens, 'Middle Britain wants value for money', Financial Times, 15 October 2007.
103. James Stimson, Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
104. HeeMin Kim and Richard Fording, 'Voter Ideology in Western Democracies, 1946-1989', European Journal of Political Research, 33 (1998), 73-97;
105. Paul Kellstedt, The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). A question on left-right self-placement was included in the 1973 European Community Study, which was the precursor of the Eurobarometer series. The mean value for that year is 5.37, indicating that the opinion time series is distinctively sine-shaped from the early 1970s to the present.
106. Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960);
107. Philip E. Converse, 'The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics', in David E. Apter, ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 206-61;
108. Butler and Stokes, Political Change in Britain.
109. Robert H. Durr, 'What Moves Policy Sentiment?' American Political Science Review, 87 (1993), 158-70;
110. Stevenson, 'The Economy and Public Mood'.
111. Pearson's r equals 0.40, 0.74 and 0.85, respectively for these economic indicators. The 'Misery Index' represents the sum of unemployment and inflation and it is used by some as a proxy for the state of the economy. See Franklin and Wlezien, 'The Responsive Public';
112. Soroka and Wlezien, 'Opinion-Policy Dynamics'.
113. Wlezien, 'The Public as Thermostat';
114. Franklin and Wlezien, 'The Responsive Public';
115. Stevenson, 'The Economy and Public Mood';
116. Robert S. Erikson, Michael B. MacKuen and James A. Stimson, The Macro Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
117. Soroka and Wlezien, 'Opinion-Policy Dynamics'.
118. Soroka and Wlezien, 'Opinion-Policy Dynamics', p. 666.
119. E.g., Geoffrey Evans, Anthony F. Heath and Mansur Lalljee, 'Measuring Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian Values in the British Electorate', British Journal of Sociology, 47 (1996), 93-112.
120. Evans, Heath and Lalljee, 'Measuring Left-Right and Libertarian- Authoritarian Values in the British Electorate', p. 98.
121. See Stimson, MacKuen and Erikson, 'Dynamic Representation', p. 546. In the bivariate case, x 'Granger causes' y if past values of x contain information that helps predict y above and beyond the information contained in past values of y alone. For present purposes, lagged opinion adds to predicting policy, while the reverse does not hold. These results are available upon request.
122. Stimson, MacKuen and Erikson, 'Dynamic Representation';
123. Smith, 'Public Opinion, Elections and Representation within a Market Economy: Does the Structural Power of Business Undermine Popular Sovereignty?', American Journal of Political Science, 46 (1999), 842-63;
124. Christopher Wlezien, 'Patterns of Representation: Dynamics of Public Preferences and Policy', Journal of Politics, 66 (2004), 1-24;
125. Soroka and Wlezien, 'Opinion-Policy Dynamics';
126. Hobolt and Klemmensen, 'Government Responsiveness and Political Competition in Comparative Perspective'.
127. Assuming, of course, that the first stage of electoral turnover is met (the coincidence of right-wing mood and Conservative election victories).
128. Hobolt and Klemmensen, 'Government Responsiveness and Political Competition in Comparative Perspective' (data are taken from the Gallup Poll (pre-1980) and Ipsos-MORI). These polls have monthly data on party support, so an annual mean is a more reliable measure than one item from the Eurobarometer.
129. A similar logic concerning American presidential responsiveness is used by Alexander Hicks, 'Elections, Keynes, Bureaucracy and Class: Explaining U. S. Budget Deficits, 1961-1978', American Sociological Review, 49 (1984), 165-82;
130. Douglas A. Hibbs Jr, The American Political Economy: Macroeconomics and Electoral Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).
131. See David F. Hendry, Dynamic Econometrics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
132. Suzanna DeBoef and Luke Keele, 'Taking Time Seriously', American Journal of Political Science, 52 (2008), 184-200.
133. DeBoef and Keele, 'Taking Time Seriously', p. 185.
134. Similar post-war policy trends for Anglo-Saxon democracies are found by Ian Budge and Michael D. McDonald, 'Election and Party System Effects on Political Representation: Bringing Time into a Comparative Perspective', Electoral Studies, 26 (2007), 168-79.
135. Budge and McDonald, 'Election and Party System Effects on Political Representation', p. 171, fn. 1.
136. Budge and McDonald, 'Election and Party System Effects on Political Representation', p. 171, fn. 1.
137. These results are not reported here, because differencing has serious disadvantages. Most notably, it becomes impossible to identify long-term dynamic effects.
138. Lord Hailsham, Elective Dictatorship (London: BBC, 1976).
139. 2= 0.92. As the public moves to the right with one standard deviation, the Conservative party's share of seats increases by 0.30 × 33.6 = 10.1. The size of the House of Commons fluctuates around 640 seats, and therefore 10 per cent is roughly equal to 60 seats.
140. Thomas Brambor, William R. Clark and Matt Golder, 'Understanding Interaction Models: Improving Empirical Analyses', Political Analysis, 14 (2006), 63-82.
141. Some have argued that the relationship between policy responsiveness and popularity is Λ-shaped, or non-monotonic, see Brandice Canes-Wrone and Kenneth W. Shotts, 'The Conditional Nature of Presidential Responsiveness to Public Opinion', American Journal of Political Science, 48 (2004), 690-706. In other words, both highly popular and unpopular governments are said to reduce the likelihood of responsiveness. However, using the present data, no evidence of non-linearity of the conditional effect of opinion on policy is found.
142. E.g., Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy;
143. G. Bingham Powell, Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000).
144. Christopher Andersen, 'The Dynamics of Public Support for Coalition Governments', Comparative Political Studies, 28 (1995), 350-83.
145. See http://www.democraticaudit.com/british-democracy/vp. php [accessed 1 March 2008].
146. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 237.
147. Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 1.
148. Larry Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2008);
149. Martin Gilens, 'Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness', Public Opinion Quarterly, 69 (2005), 778-96.
150. Manza and Cook, 'A Democratic Polity?' p. 658.
151. Powell, Elections as Instruments of Democracy;
152. Soroka and Wlezien, 'Degrees of Democracy';
153. Hobolt and Klemmensen, 'Government Responsiveness and Political Competition in Comparative Perspective'.