Policy Reputations and Support for Out-Party Policies

• In Event: Cues vs. Content: How People Reason about Politics

Abstract

One of the most robust findings in political psychology is that party cues influence citizens’ policy opinions. Extensive research shows that citizens support the same policy less if it is endorsed by an out-party. This phenomenon is often attributed to partisan animosity, which supposedly triggers automatic resistance to policies from political opponents. We propose an alternative account in which considerations about policy content -- not merely affect -- drive opposition toward out-party policies. We theorize that citizens interpret policy content based on the policy reputation of the endorsing party, and that citizens subsequently evaluate policies based on this perceived content. Thus, citizens should only reject out-party policies when the policy reputation of the out-party is at odds with their own policy principles. With a large national sample of citizens, we test this hypothesis using a novel triple-difference survey experiment in which the effect of out-party cues is compared across both issues and parties. Our findings support our theoretical model, implying that opposition to out-party policies is not merely rooted in affect, but driven by policy considerations to a much larger extent than recognized by current literature.

Authors

• Rasmus Skytte, Aarhus University

• Rune Slothuus, Aarhus University

• Love Christensen, Aarhus University