Valence Politics

In the context of politics, the term valence refers to bonds between candidates and some desirable qualities in the public’s mind. This chapter provides a review of formal models of spatial political competition when candidates differ in their exogenous valence. Employing simple numerical examples, this chapter discusses the role of several assumptions (on voter preferences, candidate objectives, the timing of the game, etc.) employed in these models in restoring the existence of a divergent pure strategy Nash equilibrium and in determining the equilibrium policies and vote shares. The chapter mostly focuses on models of two-candidate competition, multicandidate competition is discussed only briefly.

EXPLAINING ELECTIONS IN SINGAPORE: DOMINANT PARTY RESILIENCE AND VALENCE POLITICS

The People's Action Party (PAP) of Singapore is one of the world's longest ruling dominant parties, having won every general election since the country's independence in 1965. Why do Singaporeans consistently vote for the PAP, contrary to the expectations of democratization theories? We argue that valence considerations—specifically, perceptions of party credibility—are the main factor in the voting behavior of Singapore's electorate, and are critical to explaining the PAP's resilience. Furthermore, we argue that the primacy of valence politics arose in part by design, as the PAP has used its control of Singapore's high-capacity state to reshape society and thereby reshape voter preferences towards its comparative advantages. We use a multi-methods approach to substantiate this argument, including a comprehensive quantitative analysis of recent elections. Ultimately, our findings suggest that a focus on valence politics can increase the resilience of dominant parties, but that such a strategy also faces natural limits.

Hunting the Snark: A Reply to “Re-Evaluating Valence Models of Political Choice”

This paper responds to Evans and Kat’s critique of the valence politics model of electoral choice. Their critique is deficient in several respects. First, the authors do not test the valence politics model, which is motivated by a theory of voting rather than a claim about the relationship between generalized measures of “party preference” and “party performance.” Second, Evans and Kat do not provide theoretical grounding for partisanship, which they claim is strongly exogenous to other variables of interest. Third, there are several specification and testing problems with their structural equation model. We study the properties of the valence model using a vector error correction model of aggregate monthly survey data gathered throughout the New Labour Era. Consistent with theoretical expectations, key valence politics variables constitute a powerful cointegrated system in which the dynamics of partisanship are endogenous to other variables in the system.