Leader over policy? The influence of political leaders on policy preferences

Abstract

To extend the existing literature on political polarization beyond the traditional setup (an ideologically well-defined two-party setup), we run survey experiments in the great Buenos Aires area of Argentina to explore the role of leader and party endorsement in shaping public opinion over policies, in a context of a weak and ideologically elusive party system dominated by strong personalistic leaders. We find evidence of a significant (leader as well as party) endorsement effect, regardless of the degree of ex ante polarization (so that sponsorship may introduce polarization on ex ante unpolarized issues). In addition, we document asymmetries relative to party and leader (some leaders have larger polarizing effects than others; negative identification with a leader seems to prevail over positive identification) and the ineffectiveness of co-sponsorship and “against-character” endorsement to broaden policy support.