Introduction

In this chapter, we report further empirical applications to the 1988 French presidential election, which provide tests of the theoretical arguments presented in Chapters 3 and 4. These analysesmove beyond the empirical results on France presented earlier, in that here we explore candidate competition under more complex voting models that incorporate multiple policy dimensions and numerous nonpolicy motivations in addition to partisanship. We also discuss whether the French political context plausibly motivated voters to discount the presidential candidates' capacity to implement the policy positions they advocated. Such discounting would lead voters to prefer candidates who proposed policies that were more extreme than the voters' own beliefs – that is, policies that when discounted or moderated would be in line with the voters' preferences. We present empirical results suggesting that French voters did indeed behave as if they discounted candidates' positions in the 1988 presidential election.

For each multidimensional model that we investigate – a policy-only model, a unified model that includes nonpolicy as well as policy factors, and a unified discounting model that includes voter discounting of candidate positions in addition to policy and nonpolicy factors – we report equilibrium analyses, and we compare the candidates' equilibrium positions to their actual advocated policies as perceived by the voters. We also explore whether these alternative voting models gave the candidates electoral incentives to represent faithfully their partisans' policy beliefs, the linkage that underlies the responsible party model of policy representation.