Valence and ambivalence

By Tim Cohen

The more I hear about it, the more I’m intrigued by the notion of valence politics. The issue came up acutely in the UK election, but it is of course applicable everywhere, and is increasingly relevant in SA too.

Valence politics is sometimes called competence politics. It all rests on the assumption that voters are as interested in whether politicians can and will put their policies into effect as they are in what that policy is in the first place. This stands to reason, since policy positions mean nothing if they are not going to be implemented. But somehow all this tends to be overlooked or undervalued.

Valence politics is intriguing because it rests on a very broad, fundamental and international trend away from the deeply ingrained, ideological, Left-Right political battles. This split is notionally founded on class, but it is turning into a more fluid decision-making process based on perceptions of competence, segmental issues and levels of personal trust, among many others. The idea is not uncontroversial; there are lots of examples of elections that remain principally "ideological". But valence politics is becoming increasingly important because it is more and more difficult to see any light between the policy positions of political parties. Not only are we all in favour of jobs now; we are also all in favour of tax reduction too. The traditional issues of the Left and Right have become blurred.

The UK election, and specifically the extent to which the pollsters got it wrong, is very relevant because, presumably, the polling focused on the traditional terrain of issues of ideological preference rather than on valence issues, which are much more difficult to determine.

The central proposition of the Conservative Party was essentially a valence issue: economic prosperity. As it was the beneficiary of being in office during the economic recovery, it was an obvious platform for the Tories. But to most professional political pundits, this must have sounded a bit tinny. The party was asking voters to trust it, rather than Labour, to achieve the equivalent of motherhood and apple pie, seemingly not a particularly compelling issue. The notion of the Tories as the more economically competent party has a long history in the UK, but could it be an election winner? Turns out, it is.

Labour, on the other hand, focused its campaign on "the issues", which means necessarily divisive issues. So topics like "anti-austerity", "inequality" and predicted "attacks" on the National Health Service were the focus of its campaign. Presumably, on each issue the party had polling numbers on its side. Yet, as valence politics suggests, it’s one thing for a voter to be against austerity, for example, and another to believe the party will actually not do it when push comes to shove.

The biggest losers were the Liberal Democrats, shedding 80% of their seats. Valence politics was particularly tricky for the party because, as a junior member of the prior government, it was forced to both defend and attack its own record. If there is one thing valence politics despises, it is indecisiveness.

The failure of the Lib Dems was, in fact, the biggest reason for the failure of the polls. Prior to the election, the best polls had the Tories at between 32% and 37% of the vote, Labour 30%-35% and the Lib Dems at 10%-14%. The actual result was 37,6%, 31,2% and 8,1%. Labour and the Conservatives were just about within range, but the Lib Dems were not.

How does this all affect SA? Deeply, I think. The conventional wisdom is that the DA is winning support because it has been gradually exorcising its inherent character as an anti-transformation party. In fact, it is more likely that it is gaining in the realm of valence politics rather than in the battle of political ideas. To put it another way, rather than the DA winning support, the ANC’s problem is that it is losing support not because of its politics, but because of perceptions of its competence.

This article was first published in Financial Mail, 14 May 2015.