In short, the changes noted by Epstein (1980) in the traditional British party model so venerated by post-war American party scholars have been accelerated and reinforced since he delivered his APSA presidential address in 1979. The UK has continued to move toward a multiparty system and the prevalence of the old mass parties – Labour and Conservative – has eroded in favor of newer party formations more reflective of a less class-based British society. Given this situation it seems less likely than ever that the British parties and party system could ever again serve as a model for the US. Conversely it appears that the influence has recently been more in the other direction, as the British parties – both old and new – have taken on more attributes of the contemporary American party in service in terms of organization, financing, and campaigning, and reduced emphasis on traditional class-based ideologies. To this extent there is now probably greater convergence in the nature of party politics between Britain and the US than at any time since the cadre party era of the early nineteenth century.
This convergence toward the American ‘party in service model’ is not unique to Britain, of course, as trends in party organization and competition in the other major democracies since the Second World War have been in the same direction: the decline of class based parties, more post-materialist politics and parties, and the development of sub-national party systems. The separation of powers in the US as opposed to the European parliamentary systems probably continues to be the most significant factor in structuring the essential differences between American parties and those of Britain and the other European democracies. In parliamentary systems a concentration of power at the center of the party is necessary to gain power and form a government. The separated US system encourages a deconcentration of power that will keep American parties relatively decentralized and undisciplined relevant to the UK. Comparison between the two party systems will remain relevant in so far as we can use this comparison to assess changes in the nature of political parties and party politics in contemporary democracies. Yet the time when the party systems of Britain and the US might serve as models for each other has truly passed.
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10
Economics, Partisanship and Elections: Economic Voting in the 2010 UK Parliamentary and US Congressional Elections
Michael J. Brogan1
Introduction
The outcome of the 2010 UK general election and the US midterm elections provided an unequivocal reminder of the impact of economic downturns on electoral politics. A vast literature on economic voting confirms that voters typically respond to economic fluctuations; they tend to reward incumbents for a good economy and punish them for a poor one (Lewis-Beck and Stegmeir, 2007). Though the reward–punish hypothesis is a common theme in the economic voting literature, there are limits to its application. It is unable to fully capture the dynamic in which voters select their party’s candidate regardless of economic performance (Campbell et al., 1960; Evans and Anderson, 2006; Gerber and Huber, 2009).
This raises intriguing questions about what really motivated voters’ decisions as to the polls in both the US and UK elections. Were the Obama administration and Brown government effective in recasting the elections not as a referendum on their parties’ performances, but rather on which party’s economic platform would best steer each country out of the current economic downturn? Or did voters simply reject these claims and punish the incumbent parties as a result of the economic downturn?
Though evidence points to the latter, the results of the 2010 election in both countries, nevertheless, provide a puzzle for researchers. Though the 2010 UK general election and the US midterm elections resulted in a change of power, the outcome of each contest does not fully conform to the reward-punish hypothesis. The UK general election resulted in a Coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Though the Conservative Party gained 97 seats, the increase was not enough to secure an outright majority. In the US, power was divided among the Democratic and Republican parties between the two chambers in Congress. The Republican Party secured majority status in the House of Representatives with an historic gain of 63 seats, but fell short of taking control of the Senate, even though the party gained seven seats. The outcome of both elections leads us to ask if voters truly engaged in economic voting or if their political partisanship biased their economic perceptions, thus limiting the impact of the economic vote (Evans and Anderson, 2006; Lewis-Beck and Nadeau, 2001; Lewis-Beck, 2006).
Electoral results in both countries provide fertile ground in which to test the economic vote comparatively. The two dominant sentiments that defined voters’ perceptions of the 2010 elections, economic pessimism and anti-incumbency, are essential characteristics for understanding economic voting in both countries. For instance, in the US, an average of 85 percent of voters felt the economy had gotten worse over the past year,2 and in the US, an average of 45 percent of Americans felt economic conditions had deteriorated. In terms of assessments of Prime Minister Brown and President Obama, both leaders had low approval ratings among the public. For Prime Minister Brown, an average of 26 percent of the electorate3 were satisfied with his performance and, for President Obama, he had an average of 46 percent approval for 2010, which was a decline of 6.5 percentage points from his first year in office.
Though both anti-incumbency and economic pessimism typically cause economic voting, the primary reason why this process did not trigger a complete rejection of the incumbent parties (Labour and the Democrats) in either or both nations, or the embrace of the major opposition parties (Conservatives and Republicans), is due to the interactive relationship between voters’ partisanship and their perceptions of the overall performance of the economy. The conditioning process between these two factors in voting behavior influences voters’ decisions at the polls. This relationship points to a limit within economic voting theory – namely that economic fluctuations do not necessarily provide an efficient form of democratic accountability as suggested by the reward–punish hypothesis (Anderson, 2007).
The interaction between voters’ partisanship and their economic perceptions helps explain the reason that not all voters engaged in economic voting during the 2010 elections and how some voters chose to vote against their economic interests. How did this occur? Among voters who did vote against their economic interest, these individuals nevertheless perceived the economy was a problem but did not hold the incumbent party accountable because of it. Partisanship plays a dominant role in voters’ decisions at the polls, and in the case of the 2010 elections, it helps explain why UK and US voters engaged in a form of limited economic voting, which can be characterized as a decision-making process of aggr
ieved acquiescence. Though voters were angry with the Labour and Democratic parties over their management of the economy, this did not mean they were ready to embrace the Conservatives and Republicans as viable alternatives.
Overall, this chapter provides a comparative analysis of economic voting in the 2010 UK general election and US Congressional House of Representatives election.4 The chapter is organized into four parts. After a brief review of the economic voting literature to date, the second section defines the economic-minded partisan model. The third section offers an analysis of individual level voting behavior before and after the campaigns in each country. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the model’s findings and what we can expect in the near term for the Obama administration and Cameron government.
Economic conditioning and partisan conditioning of economic voting
A substantial body of research has found that voters’ economic perceptions influence their voting choice (Kramer, 1971; Kinder and Kiewiet, 1978; Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, 2001; Lewis-Beck et al., 2008; Dolan et al., 2009). Within the literature, significant research also finds that voters’ partisanship influences their economic perceptions in voting decisions (Campbell et al., 1960; Key, 1966; Hibbs, 1977; Fiorina, 1978; Kiewiet, 1981; Evans and Anderson, 2006; Lander and Wlezien, , 2007; Gerber and Huber, 2009). Below is a brief summary of how Partisan Conditioning (PC) and Economic Conditioning (EC) proponents explain the economic voting process.
The Legacy of the Crash Page 25