IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v94y2000i01p131-149_22.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Issues, Economics, and the Dynamics of Multiparty Elections: The British 1987 General Election

Author

Listed:
  • Alvarez, R. Michael
  • Nagler, Jonathan
  • Bowler, Shaun

Abstract

We offer a model of multiparty elections that combines voters' retrospective economic evaluations with consideration of parties' issue positions and the issue preferences of voters. We show that both policy issues and the state of the economy matter in British elections. In 1987 voters made a largely retrospective evaluation of the Conservatives based on economic performance; those who rejected the Conservative Party chose between Labour and Alliance based on issue positions. Through simulations we move the parties in the issue space and reestimate vote shares as well as hypothesize an alternative distribution of views on the economy, and we show that Labour had virtually no chance to win with a centrist party as a viable alternative. The predictions from our 1987 simulations are supported in an analysis of the 1992 British election. We argue for multinomial probit in studying three-party elections because it allows for a richer formulation of politics than do competing methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Alvarez, R. Michael & Nagler, Jonathan & Bowler, Shaun, 2000. "Issues, Economics, and the Dynamics of Multiparty Elections: The British 1987 General Election," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(1), pages 131-149, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:94:y:2000:i:01:p:131-149_22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400220145/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. McKelvey, Richard D. & Patty, John W., 2006. "A theory of voting in large elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 155-180, October.
    2. Zakharov, Alexei & Fantazzini, Dean, 2009. "Economic Factors in a Model of Voting: The Case of The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Israel," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 14(2), pages 57-73.
    3. Cristina Gualdani & Shruti Sinha, 2023. "Identification in Discrete Choice Models with Imperfect Information," Working Papers 949, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    4. Andrea Junqueira & Thiago N. Silva & Guy D. Whitten, 2023. "What about us? Political competition, economic performance, immigration, and nativist appeals," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 104(1), pages 11-24, January.
    5. Bhattacharyya, Bhaskar & Mandal, Biswajit & Sengupta, Sarbajit, 2022. "Correlates of Distress Financing In Case of Institutional Delivery In India: Evidence From The National Family Health Survey," MPRA Paper 116652, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. M. Lefebvre & C. Biguzzi & E. Ginon & S. Gomez-y-Paloma & S. R. H. Langrell & S. Marette & G. Mateu & A. Sutan, 2017. "Mandatory integrated pest management in the European Union: experimental insights on consumers’ reactions," Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, Springer, vol. 98(1), pages 25-54, July.
    7. Chris Hanretty & Benjamin E. Lauderdale & Nick Vivyan, 2020. "A Choice‐Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 519-535, July.
    8. Ignacio Lago‐Peñas & Santiago Lago‐Peñas, 2005. "Does The Economy Matter? An Empirical Analysis Of The Causal Chain Connecting The Economy And The Vote In Galicia," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(2), pages 215-243, July.
    9. Bhattacharya, Kaushik, 2011. "Strategic Entry and the Relationship between Number of Independent and Non-Independent Candidates: A Study of Parliamentary Elections in India," MPRA Paper 46069, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2012.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:94:y:2000:i:01:p:131-149_22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.