Rating the Chancellors and Their Budgets
| Author | Richard G. Niemi,Richard Nadeau |
| Published date | 01 December 1999 |
| Date | 01 December 1999 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9248.00234 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Rating the Chancellors and
their Budgets
RICHARD NADEAU
Universite
Âde Montre
Âal
AND RICHARD G. NIEMI*
University of Rochester
The annual budget presentation is one of the most important forms of public,
partisan behaviour in a parliamentary democracy. As such, it should share many
features with the addresses of US presidents, including their presumed ecacy.
Yet public reactions to budget presentations have been studied only indirectly, and
a link between these reactions and government standing has not been established.
We use Gallup data overfour decades to investigate how voters assess Chancellors of
the Exchequer and their budgets. We ®nd that voters' assessments are a product
of the performance of the economy, the content of the budget, the media's reaction to
the budget and political factors, and are not simply derivative of general feelings
about the government in power or intended vote. While developed independently,
evaluations of the Chancellor and the budget aect short-term voting intentions of
the public. Thus, in unitary, parliamentary governments, as in federal and
presidential systems, voters use more than one focal point (in a single party) to
evaluate the government and its actions.
The most important and widely publicized routine event in the life of a parlia-
mentary government is the announcement of the annual budget. Intrinsically,
the budget is important in that it helps determine who will win and who will lose
economically (at least in a relative sense) over the succeeding year. But the
presentation of the budget, often coupled with a Budget Speech or a
parliamentary debate, is also an act of political communication, about the
economy in general and taxation in particular. Its formal nature and high
visibility oer governments prime-time opportunities to connect with or to
distance themselves from broad economic outcomes and to take credit for or
escape the blame for speci®c taxation decisions.
These features mark the budget presentation as one of the most impor-
tant forms of public, partisan behaviour in parliamentary systems, akin to
presidential speech making in the United States and other presidential systems.
Budget speeches, delivered by a key ®gurein the party and the government ± the
#Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 CowleyRoad, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Political Studies (1999), XLVII, 857±876
* We would like to thank Philip Cowley,an anonymous referee, and the attendees at EPOP, 1998
for their comments on an earlier version of this article.
chancellor or ®nance minister often being a serious contender for the post of
prime minister ± share many features with the obligatory addresses of American
presidents (inaugural addresses and State of the Union speeches) in terms of
predictability, visibility and presumed ecacy.1
Despite their likely importance, mass public reactions to annual budget
presentations have been studied only very indirectly (such as by inclusion
of economic variables aected by the budget in models of government
popularity), and a link between these reactions and government standing has
not been directly established. Here we investigate these matters in the British
context through use of data collected by the Gallup organization over the past
four decades. Annually, in the month in which the budget is presented, Gallup
has included two questions in a nationwide poll, one asking whether the
Chancellor of the Exchequer is doing `a good job or a bad job' and another
asking whether the budget is `a fair one or not'. This forty-year record oers us
a unique opportunity to study systematically how voters assess a key
governmental ®gure and the major continuing policy proposal of each year,
as well as the potential impact of these evaluations on the government's
popularity. In doing so, we expand the typical vision of government approval
beyond that of a single ®gure at the top to include another important leader. We
also examine the electorate's evaluations of a policy that, fortuitously from an
analytical point of view, is comparable across long stretches of time. With
respect to British government in particular, our analysis is thus pertinent to the
`British presidency' thesis oered by Foley and others.2Though it adds only a
small element to this much larger debate, it serves as a reminder that the
electorate forms perspectives on players beyond the prime minister, perspectives
that can subsequently in¯uence their decisions about whom to support in later
elections.
Modelling evaluations of the budget process as both a concrete announce-
ment and political rhetoric, we will ®nd that factors related to the budget
announcement itself and to the current economy in¯uence individuals'
evaluations of the Chancellor and the budget. How the budget is reported and
evaluated in the media are also of considerable importance. Three political
factors ± a strong, persistent pro-Labour bias, a sharp drop in support for the
Chancellors and their budgets during the last two Tory mandates, and a time-
related erosion of popularity ± round out the set of in¯uential factors. Import-
antly, evaluations of the Chancellor and of the budget are not signi®cantly
aected by the then-current approval rate of the prime minister. Rather, the
electorate reactsto the government ®nance leader and the budget in ways that are
context-speci®c and not simply derivative of general feelings about the
government in power. While developed independently, these evaluations then
aect the voting intentions of the public. Thus, in unitary, parliamentary
governments, as in federal and presidential systems, thereis more than one focal
1In the United States, presidential addresses have been shown to be as eective as 30 to 40
ordinary news stories in altering public opinion and able to boost the president's popularity by
three to four percentage points. See Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder, News that Matters
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 30± 2; Lyn Ragsdale, `The politics of presidential
speechmaking, 1949±1980', American Political Science Review, 78 (1984), 980±1.
2Michael Foley, The Rise of the British Presidency (Manchester, Manchester University Press,
1993). Sue Pryce, Presidentializing the Premiership (Houndmills, Macmillan, 1997).
858 Rating Chancellors and Budgets
#Political Studies Association, 1999
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