Week 23

Question 1

What are examples of positional factors?

Answer 1

• Issue voting
• Ideological positions

Question 2

What is issue voting?

Answer 2

• Voters focus on selected issues –> voters care about some specific issues
• They

Question 3

What are examples of issues that may be issue voting?

Answer 3

• Government cuts and taxation
• NHS
• Environment
• EU membership
• Relations with Russia

Question 4

What are conditions for issue voting?

Answer 4

• Voters must be aware of the issues
• Voters must have opinions about the issues
• Voters must know the difference between the parties on the issues
• Voters must vote for the party that is closest to them on the issue

Question 5

What are positional issues?

Answer 5

Parties support different goals and policies

Question 6

What are examples of positional issues?

Answer 6

Taxation and welfare spending

Question 7

Why are taxation and welfare spending positional issues?

Answer 7

Parties have very different views on the appropriate amount of taxation

All parties and voters don’t hold unanimous views on welfare policy

Question 8

What is issue salience?

Answer 8

• The perceived importance of an issue
• Voters weigh high-salience over low-salience issues

Question 9

Do voters really know issues or do their preferences reflect broader ideaologies?

Answer 9

Voters might support parties on ideological positions rather than specific issues
- But voting choice is still positional

Question 10

What ideologies might voters vote for parties based on?

Answer 10

• Conservatism
• Thatcherism
• Liberalism
• Socialism
• Nationalism

Question 11

What was Anthony Downs’ book called?

Answer 11

An Economic Theory of Democracy

Question 12

What is Anthony Downs famous for?

Answer 12

Creating the Downsian Model

Question 13

Who created the Downsian Model?

Answer 13

Anthony Downs

Question 14

What is the Downsian Model?

Answer 14

• A famous positional model
• Based on ideological positions
• Ideologies as information economising devices
• One-dimensional politics: left-right –> all issues are assumed to fall on this scale

Question 15

What are left-wing issues?

Answer 15

Big state, higher tax-and-spend

Question 16

What are right-wing issues?

Answer 16

Small state, lower tax-and-spend

Question 17

What did Downs assume about voters?

Answer 17

• Voters have fixed preferences over policy (determined externally)
• These preferences can be located on a single left-right spectrum
• No second dimension of policy
• Voters are rational but not always well-informed - voter for ideologically closest party

Question 18

What did Downs assume about parties?

Answer 18

• Parties are vote-maximisers
• Parties move along the left-right spectrum
• Parties use ideology to mobilise voters
• Parties are unified actors, no internal factions

Question 19

What does parties being vote maximisers mean to Downs?

Answer 19

• They want to win elections by appealing to public opinion
• Interested in policy if it helps to win elections, not for the parties own sake

Question 20

How did Downs view party movement along the political spectrum?

Answer 20

Policy change is neither costly nor difficult

Question 21

How do parties use ideology according to Downs?

Answer 21

• Voter preferences are fixed from the perspective of the party
• Parties don’t need to persuade voters, the party’s proximity in positions only matters
• Ideology as an information-economising device

Question 22

What are criticisms of the Downsian model?

Answer 22

• Assumptions about parties
• Assumptions about voters
• Assumptions about political space

Question 23

What is the criticism about Downs assumptions about parties?

Answer 23

• Parties are not unified actors
• Parties are not only vote-maximisers
• Parties cannot easily change policy
• Complex strategic situation (many parties and internal factions)

Question 24

What is the criticism about Downs assumptions about voters?

Answer 24

• Voters do not understand the left-right spectrum
• No stable preferences, voters are often inconsistent across issues

Question 25

What is the criticism about Downs assumptions about the political space?

Answer 25

• There is more than one ideological dimension
• Valence issues are also important - perhaps increasingly so