Performance Politics at Holyrood

Abstract

‘What policies politicians follow is their business; what they accomplish is the voter’s business’ (Fiorina 1981: 13). This sums up the ‘performance politics’ model of voting that, in a series of publications, Harold Clarke and his British Election Study colleagues argue is the key to understanding recent British general elections (Clarke et al. 2004, 2009, 2011). In this approach, also known as the valence model, there is broad agreement among parties, if not voters, about the desired outcomes of policy. Electoral competition is thus about which contender for office is most likely to deliver. The notion of ‘performance politics’ is rooted in models of retrospective voting developed for US elections by Downs (1957), Key (1966) and Fiorina (1981) in which presidents and executives are rewarded or punished according to their record in office. Voters assess whether the incumbent has performed satisfactorily and, if not, whether it seems likely that the challenger would have done any better.