This is decidedly not what we see in the US (or in any country) - the two parties’ views differ substantially.
The views of the parties differ substantially on some issues but not on others. It’s quite natural that most of the focus of the public debate is on differences and not on what’s the same.
Certain studies emphasize partisan differences, but most find that the ideology of governing parties has indiscernible to small influence on policy, one meta-analysis establishing that the ‘average correlation between the party composition of government and policy outputs is not significantly different from zero’.
George Bush campaigned on “No national building” and went to start the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which were massive nation-building projects.
That’s interesting. I agree I glossed over many (most) parts where the parties agree (on general democratic principles, on capitalism in some form, on the order of magnitude of budget for many things) and focused on issues where they disagree.
But I think for my thesis, any remaining differences are a puzzle to be explained, and the perceptions that the parties differ is what drives the results. Since public debate focuses on issues where parties differ substantially, these should be the issues driving voting behavior—you can narrow down the model to those issues and still try to explain the puzzle, right? If voters don’t perceive a difference between the parties, what is driving the changes in voting between different election cycles?
The views of the parties differ substantially on some issues but not on others. It’s quite natural that most of the focus of the public debate is on differences and not on what’s the same.
A recent post on LessWrong wrote:
George Bush campaigned on “No national building” and went to start the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which were massive nation-building projects.
That’s interesting. I agree I glossed over many (most) parts where the parties agree (on general democratic principles, on capitalism in some form, on the order of magnitude of budget for many things) and focused on issues where they disagree.
But I think for my thesis, any remaining differences are a puzzle to be explained, and the perceptions that the parties differ is what drives the results. Since public debate focuses on issues where parties differ substantially, these should be the issues driving voting behavior—you can narrow down the model to those issues and still try to explain the puzzle, right? If voters don’t perceive a difference between the parties, what is driving the changes in voting between different election cycles?