Conflict Mobilisation or Problem-Solving?: Issue Competition in Western Europe by Lorenzo de Sio & Romain Lachat

Author:Lorenzo de Sio & Romain Lachat [Sio, Lorenzo de & Lachat, Romain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367710828
Google: xMwdzgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 56376192
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-01-15T07:39:09+00:00

Valence or positional issues: which promise more benefits for which of parties?

In our second analysis, we ask whether parties show higher issue yield for positional or valence issues and whether there are any patterns confirming our expectations 2a to 2c. In general, parties’ individual profiles change somewhat when we take valence issues into account. Valence issues dominate across the entire electorate. This is reflected by the issue-yield pattern of the governing parties. With the exception of the EU membership issue, valence issues reveal the highest yield (Figure 3). This is in particular true for the CDU/CSU and the FDP. The SPD presents a similar picture but positional issues are important as well; expectation 2a is only partly confirmed. We also see substantive differences between the CDU/CSU and SPD in terms of which valence issues they could benefit from. The CDU/CSU shows higher yield in fighting crime and terrorism and supporting economic growth while the SPD potentially does well regarding welfare state issues. All three parties share EU membership as the issue with the highest yield, signalling that an overwhelming majority of the German electorate still supports EU membership.

Figure 3. Issue-yield scores by issue type and party.

Note: The figure presents the 15 issues with the highest issue yield for each party.

The Left and especially the AfD have more to gain from positional issues as they are not (yet) considered as potential coalition partners on the federal level by their competitors and have, therefore, never been in power. Likewise, with the exception of environmental policies, the electorate of the Greens also primarily concentrates on positional issues. In accordance with our expectations formulated above, important positional issues belong to the socio-cultural dimension for both the AfD and the Greens. Also in accordance with our expectation, valence issues are indeed important for the FDP. However, while we see that economic positional issues would be beneficial for the Left, we do not see a similar pattern for the FDP.

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