National and Local Party Election Agendas

Bibliographic Data

ID7367531
AuthorsLisa Harrison (0000-0002-4534-016X), Dean Mcsweeney
Year2008
Volume44
Issue1
Pages1-13
Publication date2008-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueRepresentation (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-4893 • E-ISSN: 1749-4001
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00344890701869041
OpenAlexW2167969635
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited20

In the saliency theory of elections parties are seen as monolithic. Each party emphasises the issues they own to gain electoral advantage. There are no rival agendas generated by different factions within the party or its territorial subdivisions. We test this assumption in the 2005 UK general election, comparing national party communications with those of local parties in the South West of England. We found consistency in the issue emphases of Labour's national and local campaigns. But there were divergences in priotities between the national and local campaigns of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. We seek to account for these differences in emphasis. Notes 1. We identified 14 different issues: crime (policing, the criminal justice system, types and rates of crime, ID cards); economy (growth, unemployment, inflation, regulation); education (school class sizes and discipline, educational performance, further and higher education, tuition fees); health (hospitals, doctors, dentists, quality, access, cost, medical conditions); Europe (EU powers and policies, constitution, relations with UK); environment (climate change, planning and development, pollution); families and children (child poverty, childcare provision, state benefits); housing (availability, cost, promoting ownership); immigration and asylum (numbers, associated social problems, rights of entry); Iraq (case for involvement and withdrawal; human and financial cost); taxation (different forms of taxation, tax levels); transport and communication (road, rail and air travel, public transport, postal services); pensions (retirement age, benefit rates); other (all issues not covered by the foregoing). In both the manifestos and leaflets the unit of analysis was the sentence. Any sentence containing issue content was coded into one of the 14 categories listed above. The number of sentences devoted to each issue was expressed as a percentage of the total content of the manifesto and the leaflets of each constituency party. 2. Leaflets were obtained from constituency parties: 35 Conservative (68.6 per cent of the total), 34 Labour (66.7), 36 Liberal Democrat (70.6). The number of leaflets obtained was 88 Conservative (average 2.5 per constituency), 61 Labour (1.8), 99 Liberal Democrat (2.8

Business · Economic growth · Economic Justice · Economics · Immigration · Political science · Poverty · State (computer science · Unemployment · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Public Administration

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