Inlcudes bibliographical references (pages 182-215) and index.
Summary
"Citizens in democracies complain that political parties' positions on major issues are too ambiguous for them to confidently understand. Why is party position ambiguity so common? Are party positions ambiguous because political parties fail in forming a clear policy position or because they deliberately blur their position? Rationality of Irrationality argues that political parties are motivated to strategically blur their position on an issue when they struggle with a certain disadvantage in the issue. Specifically, political parties present an ambiguous position when their own supporters are divided in their stances on the issue. A political party also blurs a position stance when voters do not acknowledge that the party has ability and integrity to solve problems related to the issue. Political parties blur their position in these cases because ambiguous party positions divert voters' attention from the issue. Voters support a political party whose policy positions on major issues are close to their own stances. However, voters cannot confidently and exactly estimate party positions on an issue when they are only ambiguous"-- Provided by publisher.
Note
Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivatives https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
