Do party positions affect the public's policy preferences? Experimental evidence on support for family policies

Elisabeth Grewenig, Philipp Lergetporer, Katharina Werner and Ludger Woessmann

Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: The standard assumption of exogenous policy preferences implies that parties set their positions according to their voters' preferences. Focusing on family policies, we investigate the reverse effect: Are the electorates' policy preferences responsive to party positions? In a representative German survey, we inform randomized treatment groups about the positions of political parties on two disputed family policies, child care subsidy and universal student aid. In both experiments, the information treatment aligns policy preferences of specific partisan groups with their preferred party's position, implying endogenous policy preferences. The treatment also affects non-partisan swing voters, suggesting that party positioning can affect the public's preferences beyond their partisans.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 179(2020): pp. 523-543

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Do party positions affect the public's policy preferences? Experimental evidence on support for family policies (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lmu:muenar:84746

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tamilla Benkelberg ().