Economic responsiveness and the political conditioning of the electoral cycle

Pardos-Prado, S. and Sagarzazu, I. (2019) Economic responsiveness and the political conditioning of the electoral cycle. Journal of Politics, 81(2), pp. 441-455. (doi: 10.1086/701495)

Abstract

Understanding the drivers of party issue emphasis and the specific role of public opinion is important to shed light on the mechanisms of contemporary party competition and to assess the quality of representation in liberal democracies. Previous research has produced conflicting results between issue ownership and issue dialogue perspectives and has ignored the role of time in party communication strategy. We present a theory focused on the economy in which proximity to election day increases the incumbent’s cost of not responding to opponent attacks and subsequently decreases the incumbent’s attention to public opinion. We validate the main empirical implications of the model via content analysis of party discourse in Spanish parliamentary speeches (1996–2011) and time series analyses. Our results have pessimistic implications for an ideal conception of bottom-up representation. As electoral accountability pressures increase over the electoral cycle, endogenous party competition overshadows public opinion as a driver of representatives’ agenda.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Pardos-Prado, Professor Sergi
• Authors: Pardos-Prado, S., and Sagarzazu, I.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Politics
• Journal Name: Journal of Politics
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• ISSN: 0022-3816
• ISSN (Online): 1468-2508
• Published Online: 18 January 2019
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 Southern Political Science Association
• First Published: First published in Journal of Politics 81(2): 441-455
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy