Abstract
This chapter looks at the extent to which voter attitudes toward social inequality have changed over the past three decades and asks whether political parties have reacted programmatically to a potential attitude change. It wants to discover whether democratic parties have been responsive to their voters with respect to social inequality.
Based on survey data of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and data from the Manifesto Project (MARPOR) on the programmatic positions of political parties, the chapter shows no stable connection between changes in attitude and changes in party programs. There are examples of responsive behavior in all countries in the period under review, but the responsiveness rate—the percentage of responsive parties among all parties—varies greatly. Overall, it seems likely that corresponding programmatic changes are strongly guided by strategic considerations generated by national party competition. The propensity for responsiveness seems to be greater if a party’s own voters appear to be moving in the direction of the opposing political camp.
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Notes
- 1.
That this distinction is difficult to make has been shown by Angela Merkel’s phaseout of the nuclear phaseout, following soon afterward by the phaseout of the phaseout of the phaseout. Was this still a responsive behavior or already what democracy theory must regard as problematic populism?
- 2.
Nowadays this happens above all through surveys commissioned at brief and regular intervals by parties.
- 3.
To say nothing of the problem of ascribing given outcomes to individual outputs.
- 4.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 10 and 11 translated by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1967 and 1968. 744e.
- 5.
On a scale from 1 to 5 (1 strongly agree, 2 agree, 3 neither agree nor disagree, 4 disagree, 5 strongly disagree), respondents were asked to express their agreement or disagreement with the two statements: “Differences in income in [COUNTRY] are too large” and “It is the responsibility of the government to reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes.”
- 6.
This longer period of time is particularly problematic in assessing whether the attitudes of respondents in 2009 already reflect experience with the financial crisis.
- 7.
The percentages given in Table 8.1 conceal further differences. If we differentiate between the two agreement categories combined there (“agree,” “strongly agree”), we find that in some countries most agreement comes under the weaker category. This is particularly the case for the USA, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, but also for Norway and Sweden—thus for the countries that show comparatively low rates of agreement overall. The countries with the highest percentages in the strong agreement category are Portugal (60%), Slovakia (62%), France (68%), and Hungary (77%). These values are all from the 2009 survey, and the increase in a sense of inequality is reflected overall in an increasing number of respondents who choose the strong agreement category. In the eight countries for which there are data on both 1987 and 2009, the average rate of agreement in the weak category fell from 44% to 39%, whereas the share of respondents in the strong agreement category rose from 29% to 45%. For a more detailed international comparative analysis of attitudes to inequality, see, e.g., Osberg and Smeeding (2006).
- 8.
The question is thus whether the connection can also be established at the respondent level. Can the level of dissatisfaction with income inequality be explained by a preference for government redistribution measures?
- 9.
- 10.
The interquartile range is the difference between the upper and lower quartiles (75%–25%). It thus shows the range of this 50% of all values that are closest to the median.
- 11.
There are two reasons for the at first glance surprising finding that social democrats are mostly to the left (if only slightly) of communist parties. In the first place, only a relatively limited section of party programs is shown. More important, however, is that the communist parties in this sample are above all successors to the former Eastern European governing parties before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Here we adopt the coding of the Manifesto Project.
- 12.
The relevant findings are not presented here because we are addressing responsiveness and not congruence. In the field of labor market policy, however, Haeusermann and Geering (2011) come to the same conclusion with respect to the congruence between voter attitudes and party programs.
- 13.
However, attitudes do not differ significantly between all groups of party supporters. In Germany, for example, there are no significant differences between supporters of the CDU/CSU and the FDP, but there are between those of the CDU/CSU and the SPD, the Greens, and the Left Party. There are also statistically significant differences between the SPD and the Left Party.
- 14.
If, as for Germany, data is available for all points in time, there are three elections on which information about responsive and nonresponsive parties could be obtained. The basis is accordingly 300, since the total share of the vote of all parties in the three elections was 300%. In a country on which data is available for only two time points, such as New Zealand, statements on the responsiveness of parties could be made only for one election—the basis is thus 100%.
- 15.
They are joined by the Hungarian socialists and the Slovakian Christian democrats.
- 16.
For an overview of programmatic shift in 24 democracies in the 1980s and 1990s, see also Budge and Klingemann (2001).
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Petring, A. (2018). Parties, Do You See the Signs? Popular Opinions on Inequality and Responsiveness of Political Parties. In: Merkel, W., Kneip, S. (eds) Democracy and Crisis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72559-8_8
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