Description
Book SynopsisAn in-depth and over-time analysis of public opinion about party competence on issues in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany, revealing how issue ownership, government performance and generalised competence shape public opinion and how their causes and consequences should shape our understanding of parties, voting and elections.
Trade Review'The Politics of Competence provides a compelling analysis of party competence – its causes, electoral consequences and political significance. This landmark study draws together disparate theories, assembles a prodigious amount of data and uses advanced statistical techniques to provide a fascinating account of the shifting relationship between parties and their electorates. Sophisticated, yet also accessible to the general reader, this book instantly becomes the gold standard in studies of party competence.' John Bartle, University of Essex
'Central to theories of how voters evaluate parties are ideas that one party is better able than another to handle a given issue. But how do voters develop these evaluations? And what is the role of actual performance of a party in government? In this theoretically ambitious, empirically rich and truly comparative book, Green and Jennings break new ground. They show that parties regularly gain and lose 'ownership' on particular issues, that partisanship strongly affects perceptions of performance, that governments inexorably lose support and reputations for competence, and that they develop a new theoretical perspective towards how voters evaluate parties. Rich with data, comparative in approach and equally theoretical as empirical, this book sets a new standard in the fields of issue ownership on a par with previous works by Donald Stokes, John Petrocik and William Riker.' Frank R. Baumgartner, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and co-author of The Politics of Information (2015)
Table of Contents1. Introduction; 2. Conceptual problems, and solutions; 3. Three concepts of issue competence; 4. Explaining issue ownership change; 5. Performance of governments, and oppositions; 6. Generic competence and costs of governing; 7. Combined effects of ownership, performance and generic competence; 8. Conclusion; Appendices; Bibliography.
