Mario Rizzo sent me this summary of a new paper published in the EJ.
Extreme appeal: voters trust extreme positions more than moderate ones, study finds
Appealing to middle not best political strategy
Trying to appear moderate is not always the best strategy for capturing votes during an election, reveals a new study. Extreme positions can build trust among an electorate, who value ideological commitment in times of uncertainty.
"The current political advantage of the Republican Party stems from the ability of its candidates to develop 'signature ideas.' This strategy is rewarded even when the electorate has ideological reservations," says University of Southern California economist Juan Carrillo, adding that this poses a challenge for the Democrats.
In the current issue of The Economic Journal, Carrillo and Micael Castanheira of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), show that voters who are unsure about the quality of a policy can be swayed by indications of trustworthiness.
As Carrillo explains, many tend to believe that a candidate's platforms should be tailored to appeal to voters, particularly swing voters. Instead, this research shows that instead of swinging voters, candidates should try to swing ideas by offering higher-quality positions that may be less popular.
In the United States, holding strong positions has already been shown to work on a few issues that have an ideological component, such as abortion and the death penalty, Carrillo notes.
"A rational electorate is reluctant to support someone who does not exhibit commitment to some ideology," Carrillo says. "Voters rightly perceive that someone without ideological commitment cannot have developed a valuable political program. They reason that, 'If you tell me what I want to hear, it probably means that you don't have any ideas of your own to share.'"
Carrillo and Castanheira's paper is an important challenge to the widely accepted median voter theorem. In the median voter theorem, voters who are fully informed will use their understanding when casting a ballot, choosing the platform that is closest to their own beliefs. Thus, it stands to reason that to attract the majority of votes, parties should try to appeal to the majority of voters.
But, as the researchers point out, it is rare for a voter to be fully informed in real life. More likely, voters will have incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information about how left-leaning or right-leaning stances actually translate into high quality proposals for, say, withdrawing troops safely or reforms.
This information comes from the press and other sources, such as campaign advertisements.
"To attract a majority of votes, parties cannot simply try to appear 'median.' Quite the contrary," Carrillo says. "Winning an election is generally about crafting a convincing philosophy that the electorate will view as superior to that of the opponents."
The researchers point to several real-life examples, including the 1995 Belgian election. According to the authors, the VLD – a traditionally right-wing party – sought the opinion of voters on a number of key issues and pledged to follow popular will if elected. The experiment failed. Four years later, the VLD returned to a rightist platform, and their candidate was elected prime minister.
###Carrillo, Juan and Micael Castanheira, "Information and Strategic Political Polarization." The Economic Journal: July 2008.
Rizzo asks rhetorically what are the implications outside of politics? What should academics learn from this study for their academic work?
To me this sort of work reinforces the older argument put forth by W. H. Hutt on the economist and the public --- basically that the economist should never compromise his message for concern of what is politically possible. Hutt's argument was concerned mainly with the problems associated with politicians watering down the message of the economist to the point of non-recognition, and also the impossibility of predicting in human affairs what opportunities may arise in policy space from what year to the next (i.e., what is politically unimaginable may in fact be very politically feasible within a short period of time --- e.g., the fall of the Soviet Union). But the Carrillo and Castanheira piece represents a different argument --- it is not about the purity of the economists message, but the credibility of the messenger. Those who make constant compromises are viewed as unprincipled and unworthy of our support.
James Buchanan always taught us it wasn't just the courage of our convinctions that matter, but the courage to withstand the critique of your convinctions that mattered. Stand firm if you believe you have discovered truth, and state it clearly and forcefully. Truth is often unpopular with many, but science should "hurt" and the "truth is not optional". It turns out if this study is accurate, that the populace already knows this.
But not too extreme... or is the reason why 3rd party candidates don't have appeal more to do with the perceived impossibility of their getting elected?
Posted by: liberty | August 11, 2008 at 07:22 PM
It may be that many maverick candidates challenge the wrong assumptions and fail to offer a coherently stated alternate policy.
Example, third parties are ham-strung by ballot access restrictions and voters are sympathetic to those candidates' plight. How many candidates advocate the abolition of barriers to the ballot? I mean zero barriers. No constitutionally qualified citizen can be denied a place on the ballot. Typically candidates ask only that some exceptions be carved out or barriers be reduced to some minimal threshold. The candidates rarely attack the concept of discriminatory state licensing of political candidates - which is what ballot access barriers like petitions and filing fees are.
Third party and independent candidates ought to subject the entire election system to a rigorous critique in their campaigns and present explicit changes.
This approach could build their credibility when they move to other defining other more obviously ideological issues.
Posted by: D. Frank Robinson | August 11, 2008 at 08:10 PM
I really liked:
Murase, Hideaki. The Peacock's Tail: Why Is An Extremist So Sexy? The Japanese Economic Review Vol. 55, No. 3, September 2004 < http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5876.2004.00284.x/abs/>
Which seems like a related article.
Posted by: mthomas | August 13, 2008 at 08:26 AM