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Issue Volatility and Partisan Linkages in Canada, Great Britain, the United States, and West Germany *
Author(s) -
CLARKE HAROLD,
HILDEBRANDT KAI,
DUC LAWRENCE,
PAMMETT JON
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1985.tb00122.x
Subject(s) - salience (neuroscience) , voting , politics , volatility (finance) , political science , accountability , political instability , political economy , economics , positive economics , public economics , econometrics , law , psychology , cognitive psychology
Although the role of issues in elections has been widely studied, different approaches to the definition, classification, and measurement of issues render cross‐national comparisons difficult. Further, little attention has been paid to the stability or instability of issues across time, and the possible implications of issue change for voting behaviour and election outcomes. In this analysis, a common classification scheme is employed for measuring the salience of issues in the elections of four countries, and the linkage of issues to political parties in the thinking of individual voters is explored. Panel data are employed to test the stability of attitudes towards political issues across a series of three elections in each country. Although there are wide differences in the specific array of issues in each country, issues can be broadly typed into five general categories of public concerns. Even given the common emphasis on economic issues throughout the 1970s, considerable instability exists across time in all categories of issues. This instability makes it more difficult to sustain a consistent issue/party link over more than one election, and thereby has implications for the accountability of parties in issue/policy terms.