Do values influence the choices of voters when they make their decisions on who and what to vote for, and if so to what extent? Analysing data and political parties from 15 different European democracies, Thomas Loughran argues that voters in political systems with more polarised systems are more value driven than those in less polarised systems

Loughran, Thomas

LSE Research Online

democraticaudit.com http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=8701By Democratic Audit UKValues have a larger influence on the party choices of voters inEuropean countries that have polarised party systemsDo values influence the choices of voters when they make their decisions on who and what to vote for, and if so towhat extent? Analysing data and political parties from 15 different European democracies, ThomasLoughran argues that voters in political systems with more polarised systems are more value driven than those inless polarised systems. Polarising views? (Credit: David Shankbone, CC BY 2.0)The political debate and discussion that frames modern electoral competition is often expressed through thelanguage of values. When giving key speeches or interviews politicians frequently refer both to their own personalvalues and the values of the parties which they represent; even if they can appear deliberately vague in statingwhat these values actually are. Manifesto’s often try to position a party’s offer to the electorate in terms of valuesbased appeals. It often appears to be the case that, at least superficially, electoral actors are competing to bestmatch the values of their electorates. This is consistent with some of the more idealistic statements of earlypolitical theorists who argued that elections were primarily mechanisms to decide which values of the electoratewould be represented in government; or as Easton, writing in 1953, said ‘politics is about the authoritativeallocation of values’.It is therefore somewhat surprising that the role of values in shaping the party choice preferences of voters hasremained a relatively marginal area in electoral research. Values do not easily fit within existing explanations ofvote choice and are generally assumed to be a function of social identities such as class. However, with thedebate around the failure of established parties to enthuse the electorate and the rise of challenger parties ofvarying types across Europe, explanations of voting behaviour that re-emphasises the importance of voter’svalues should become increasingly significant.As electorates across Europe become more fragmented, more volatile and more likely to feel disconnected fromestablished parties then it becomes important to understand how voter’s values are reflected in their choices. Onekey aspect of this is how party systems influence the relationship between values and voting given how vulnerableEuropean party systems currently seem to be to change. The research summarised here argues that values havea larger influence on the party choices of voters in European countries that have more polarised party systems.Measuring the influence of valuesOne of the main reasons that values have not taken the central role in electoral research that they might havedone is because of measurement challenges. It is hard to measure values directly through existing methods andthere is much debate regarding how values can be captured as distinct from attitudes and ideologies. This isparticularly the case when focusing on political values. There are difficulties of equivalence when measuringvalues in different political contexts which has made it difficult to advance cross-national research in this area. Inorder to address these challenges this analysis applied a latent modelling approach (SEM) to measure theunderlying values structures of Western European Democracies using the European Values Survey (EVS).This identified 5 political values that could be compared across 15 Countries; Individualism, Egalitarianism,Traditionalism, Conformity and Authoritarianism. It is not claimed that this is a comprehensive list of politicalvalues in the European electorate; simply that given the limits of the data it was possible to develop stablecomparative measures for these 5 values. The analysis then measured the strength of the relationship betweenthese values and party choice using 2008 and 1990 EVS data in each of the 15 countries separately. Party choicewas defined as 6 different European party family types (Centre Left, Centre Right, Centre, Nationalist,Communist/Left, Green) with an additional 2 being gained by splitting the Centre Right into its separateConservative and Christian Democrat components. These measures were then plotted against party systempolarisation scores for each country.Core FindingsThe findings are equivocal but they demonstrate evidence for the theory that values become more important tovote choice decisions in more polarised political systems. In general the analysis shows that as polarisationincreased the size of the values effect also increased. However, this varied by values dimensions and party type.There are 5 core findings;1) Polarisation has a small, but relevant, effect on values and voting for mainstream parties.As can be seen in Figure 1 for Egalitarianism and Individualism, which might be considered core political values,the influence of polarisation on mainstream party vote is small. However, the direction of the effect is as expectedin all 4 graphs. Polarisation increases the positive strength of Individualism on the Centre Right vote andincreases its negative impact on the Centre Left vote. The reverse is in evidence for Egalitarianism as polarisationincreases its negative association with the Centre Right vote.Figure 1 – Effect of Polarisation on core values and mainstream party voting  2) Polarisation considerably strengthens the influence of values on Conservative party family voting.When the Centre Right vote is split into its Conservative and Christian Democrat party families it is clear that thestronger effect of Polarisation on the Centre Right vote is driven entirely by the relationship between values andthe Conservative vote. Figure 2 shows that polarisation has a stronger influence on these core values and votingfor Conservative parties. The effect of polarisation on these values and voting for Christian Democrat parties ifanything appears to run in the opposite direction with polarisation dampening (and even reversing the direction)the values effect.Figure 2 – Polarisation effect on values and voting for Christian Democrats and Conservative Party Families3) Polarisation has a larger effect on the values-voting relationship for non-mainstream parties such asthe Nationalist and Communist party families. (Shown in Figure 3.)Figure 3 – Polarisation effect on values and voting challenger parties.4) For the 3 values that are ‘non-core’ the influence of polarisation varies considerably .Figure 4 – The effect of polarisation on non ‘core political’ values and voting There is not sufficient space to discuss this here but Figure 4 hints at the extent to which the influence ofpolarisation varies according to party type and value dimension for these measures.5) The number of parties has no effect on the strength of the relationship between values and voting.ImplicationsThe analysis presented here suggests that it is the content of political competition that influences how importantvalues are to voter’s choices rather than the structure of those choices. In an era of voter disillusionment withmainstream parties and of increasing fragmentation of the party systems this is a potentially important part ofexplaining why challenger parties are likely to succeed in some areas and not in others. It potentially explainssome of the limits to catch-all parties; where these parties may have to adjust their strategies in a more polarisedand fragmented political era to ensure that they appeal to the values of their core supporters to avoid beingsusceptible to challengers. Beyond that values can provide these key insights into voter-party dynamics.—Note: this post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit or the LSE. Please read ourcomments policy before posting. —Thomas Loughran is a PhD Student at the Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester

Values have a larger influence on the party choices of voters in European countries that have polarised party systems

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