van Spanje, Joost;
Ciobanu, Costin;
Sanna, Greta Arancia;
(2024)
Privileged interests on the party agenda: Bitcoin-related issues in two countries since 2020.
Acta Politica
10.1057/s41269-024-00380-4.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
s41269-024-00380-4.pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
What explains whether and how much political parties give attention to a policy issue? Parties are expected to cater to the interests of privileged groups and to be dismissive unless an issue offers an electoral opportunity. How to test this? Most issues have been around for so long that it has become difficult to track party responses. Ideally, a multifaceted phenomenon would fall from the sky and become favored by privileged groups, after which we would observe party reactions. Bitcoin fulfills these criteria. It has become significant, suited for various ideologies yet disproportionally supported by wealthy, highly educated male voters. In this paper, we study how new issues emerge around Bitcoin, and how parties respond. Voter attitudes, preferences, expectations, and Bitcoin ownership are taken from our 2020-2023 four-wave British (N=5,121) and Dutch (N=5,002) voter surveys. Party positions on Bitcoin are derived from our surveys of MPs and party representatives, cross-validated by party communication. Using issue yield theory, we find that weak electoral incentives, particularly due to age-related internal divisions, prevent parties from catering to privileged groups on Bitcoin issues. This suggests that a party system will not embrace elite interests, even on low-salience issues, under unfavorable public opinion alignments.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Privileged interests on the party agenda: Bitcoin-related issues in two countries since 2020 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1057/s41269-024-00380-4 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-024-00380-4 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204485 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
