How the Party System Prevents Partisans from Being Led Astray by Their In-Party

• In Event: Elite Cues, Policy Information, and Discourse

Abstract

It is well established that citizens rely on political heuristics to make decisions. One of the most prominent examples of this is partisans' tendency to base their support for a policy proposal on party cues, information on whether their party supports or opposes a proposal. Although some scholars argue that relying on party cues enables citizens to make good decisions with little effort, a longstanding and important criticism against the use of cues charges that it risks leading citizens astray. Specifically, whenever parties do not act on their policy reputations, partisans who blindly follow their party risk being misled and may end up supporting policies that they would have opposed had they been adequately informed.

In this paper, we put forward a novel theoretical argument about how the party system may mitigate this risk. We argue that, in multiparty systems, cues from out-parties may alert partisans about when their party has deviated from its typical policies and, consequently, when the partisan is at risk of being led astray by the in-party cue. Specifically, when a party's policy is supported by parties with dissimilar policy reputations and opposed by parties with similar policy reputations to the in-party, this can dissuade partisans from following their party. Out-parties, thus, function as ’fire alarms’ for partisans, who are alerted to when their party has deviated from its typical policies.

We test our argument in 24 preregistered survey experiments on partisans (N = 5,000) of all parties in the Danish parliament across three issues: a tax policy, a climate policy, and a refugee policy. The treatments consist of whether a policy proposal from the in-party is supported by parties with similar policy reputations and opposed by parties with dissimilar policy reputations, or vice versa. We use the typical in-party only cue as a control condition.

The results from our experiments consistently show that when the in-party's policy proposal is supported by similar parties and opposed by dissimilar parties, partisans interpret the policy substance to be very similar to the in-party only condition, perceive the policy to be typical for the in-party, and show high support for the policy. However, when the policy is supported by dissimilar parties and opposed by similar parties, partisans strongly diverge in their interpretation of the policy substance compared to the in-party only condition, are much more likely to say that the policy is atypical for the party, and are much less likely to support the policy.

Our findings show that partisans, at least in multiparty systems, are not blinded by loyalty to their in-party, and that the information conveyed by out-parties can dissuade them from following the in-party. In several of the experiments, these effects are substantial enough to transform a majority of partisans supporting the policy to a minority. Importantly, this contributes to our understanding of how political institutions shape citizens' political psychology.

Authors

• Love Christensen, Aarhus University

• Rasmus Skytte, Aarhus University

• Rune Slothuus, Aarhus University