Don't Stand So Close to Me: Spatial Contagion Effects and Party Competition

Abstract

In this article, we bring together elements from the literatures on economic voting and spatial voting to gain theoretical leverage on the combined role of clarity of responsibility, party policy positions, and economic performance in elections. Building on evidence of voter knowledge, we develop a theory of spatial contagion effects to explain how factors drawn from both of these literatures combine to shape changes in support for political parties. We test this theory with a spatial autoregressive model of party competition in 23 nations from 1951 to 2005. As expected, we find evidence of strong spatial contagion effects in elections with low clarity of responsibility. Thevast literatures on economic voting and spatialvoting have each offered compelling theoreticalinsights into the determinants of election out-comes, and while scholars in these two research areas have been thinking about many of the same concepts, they have mostly ignored each other.1 In this article, we bring together elements from these two major areas to gain theoretical leverage on the combined role of clarity of responsibility, party policy positions, and economic performance in elections. Building on evidence of voter knowledge, we develop a theory of spatial contagion ef-

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