Globalization and Parties’ Use of Strategic Ambiguity in Election Campaigns

• In Event: Voters, Parties and Responsiveness

Abstract

We argue and demonstrate that parties make more ambiguous statements during election campaigns when they are more exposed to economic globalization. In doing so, we make theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding how states’ exposure to globalization affects the quality of representation at the national level. The contents of parties’ electoral appeals are a significant part of the democratic chain of command and control. Prospectively, voters use parties’ campaign statements to select parties that align with their preferences. Retrospectively, voters use governing parties’ previous campaign statements to assess whether those parties delivered what they promised, often reminded of their performance by governing parties’ opponents. Competing parties’ electoral appeals differ both in terms of the direction and magnitude of policy change they propose, and in terms of the level of ambiguity they contain. To date, research on parties’ use of ambiguity has focused on its effect on voters’ prospective calculations, concluding that parties can gain electoral support by being more ambiguous about where they stand, at least in certain contexts.

We argue that parties’ use of ambiguity is also informed by their expectations about voters’ retrospective evaluations of their performance. Two robust empirical findings in the field of promissory representation form the basis of this argument. First, although parties often successfully translate their electoral appeals into government policies if they gain sufficient governing power after elections, globalization severely constrains their ability to do so. In other words, globalization often prevents parties from keeping their campaign promises if they hold executive power after elections. Second, voters punish parties for failing to keep their promises and reward those that do. Parties aim to avoid the negative electoral consequences of promise breaking by making more ambiguous statements when they are more exposed to globalization and are less able to keep their campaign promises. Ambiguous campaign statements are reconcilable with a broad range of subsequent government policies and are therefore unlikely to be perceived by voters as broken promises.

The empirical analysis demonstrates the robust positive effect of globalization on the ambiguity of parties’ electoral appeals. Using an established dictionary-based method, we measure the level of ambiguity in 293 English-language party platforms across six countries from 1970 to 2019 (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States). We also use an established measure of economic globalization. These observations provide substantial variation in types of parties, institutional contexts and levels of exposure to globalization. The findings indicate that a diverse range of parties make more ambiguous campaign statements in more globalized contexts. The effect is particularly marked for parties that hold executive office at the time of the elections, as would be expected given these parties are especially exposed to the constraints of globalization from their experience in government. These findings have significant implications for the form of democratic representation in countries that are deeply integrated into the international economic system.

Authors

• Theodoros Ntounias, UCSD Department of Political Science

• Christina J. Schneider, University of California, San Diego

• Robert Thomson, University of Hong Kong