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Why Parties Fail to Learn

Electoral Defeat, Selective Perception and British Party Politics

John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA pippa_norris{at}harvard.edu

Joni Lovenduski

School of Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London WC1e 7HX, UK j.lovenduski{at}bbk.ac.uk

Multiple factors can be offered to explain the Labour victory, and Conservative defeat, in the 2001 British general election. Here we pursue an explanation based on the idea that rational vote-seeking politicians may fail to learn from electoral defeat due to selective perception. In Part I we outline the theoretical premises and in Part II consider how this framework can be applied to the context of British elections. Evidence is drawn from the 2001 British Representation Study1 (BRS) involving 1000 parliamentary candidates and MPs. Comparisons are made with the British Election Study (BES). We focus on two measures of ideological change in British politics, namely tax cuts versus spending and European integration versus independence. The evidence is laid out in Part III. The analysis supports three main conclusions: (i) on the key issues of public spending and Europe, Labour politicians remained close to the centre ground of Westminster party politics, along with the Liberal Democrats, with the Nationalist parties further towards the left, while the Conservatives remained on the far right; (ii) as a result of this pattern the Conservatives were the party furthest away from the median British voter; and (iii) one important reason for this pattern was ‘selective perception’, so that more Conservative politicians ‘missed the target’. In concluding, we discuss the reasons for this phenomenon and the broader lessons explaining why parties fail to learn and adapt in the face of repeated massive electoral defeats.

Key Words: elections • public opinion • 2001 British election

Party Politics, Vol. 10, No. 1, 85-104 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1354068804039122


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