The conditional ideological inducement to campaign on character valence issues in multiparty systems : the case of corruption

Acknowledging the role played by character valence issues in affecting parties’ fortunes, several recent papers have investigated the possible intentional use of such issues in electoral contests. A corollary of this line of research has focused on identifying conditions under which parties are expected to invest more in valence campaigning. In this article, we focus on the role played by parties’ relative ideological positions in a multiparty setting. We identify the existence of an inverse relationship between the distance of a party from its ideologically adjacent competitors and its incentive to campaign on character valence issues. However, the extent of this relationship can be conditional on institutional and electoral factors. We test these hypotheses by focusing on the emphasis a party places in its electoral manifestos on the specific character valence issue of corruption. Statistical results largely confirm our hypotheses.