Voting for Votes
- Scholars frequently expect parties to act strategically in parliament, hoping to affect their electoral fortunes. Voters assumingly assess parties by their activity and vote accordingly. However, the retrospective voting literature looks mostly at the government's outcomes, leaving the opposition understudied. We argue that, for opposition parties, legislative voting constitutes an effective vote-seeking activity as a signaling tool of their attitude toward the government. We suggest that conflictual voting behavior affects voters through two mechanisms: as a signal of opposition valence and as means of ideological differentiation from the government. We present both aggregate- and individual-level analyses, leveraging a dataset of 169 party observations from 10 democracies and linking it to the CSES survey data of 27,371 respondents. The findings provide support for the existence of both mechanisms. Parliamentary conflict on legislative votes has a general positive effect on opposition parties' electoral performance, conditional onScholars frequently expect parties to act strategically in parliament, hoping to affect their electoral fortunes. Voters assumingly assess parties by their activity and vote accordingly. However, the retrospective voting literature looks mostly at the government's outcomes, leaving the opposition understudied. We argue that, for opposition parties, legislative voting constitutes an effective vote-seeking activity as a signaling tool of their attitude toward the government. We suggest that conflictual voting behavior affects voters through two mechanisms: as a signal of opposition valence and as means of ideological differentiation from the government. We present both aggregate- and individual-level analyses, leveraging a dataset of 169 party observations from 10 democracies and linking it to the CSES survey data of 27,371 respondents. The findings provide support for the existence of both mechanisms. Parliamentary conflict on legislative votes has a general positive effect on opposition parties' electoral performance, conditional on systemic and party-specific factors.…
Author details: | Or TuttnauerORCiDGND, Simone WegmannORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000338 |
ISSN: | 0003-0554 |
ISSN: | 1537-5943 |
Title of parent work (English): | American political science review |
Subtitle (English): | opposition parties' legislative activity and electoral outcomes |
Publisher: | Cambridge Univ. Press |
Place of publishing: | New York |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2022/04/11 |
Publication year: | 2022 |
Release date: | 2024/01/25 |
Volume: | 116 |
Issue: | 4 |
Article number: | PII S0003055422000338 |
Number of pages: | 18 |
First page: | 1357 |
Last Page: | 1374 |
Funding institution: | Swiss National Science Foundation [P2GEP1_171916] |
Organizational units: | Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Sozialwissenschaften |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 32 Politikwissenschaft / 320 Politikwissenschaft |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Hybrid Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |