ABSTRACT
In this chapter authors support with data and develop the argument that culture plays a crucial mediating role in determining election outcomes. After a brief review of earlier findings based on macroeconomic and political data, they present measures of political issues in party platforms and then consider alternative models of election outcomes and election-to-election changes in the two-party vote. Thus, economic performance is the major explanatory variable in Tufte's model. They elaborate and operationalize the idea of interpretion in terms of the position of the parties on broad political controversies. Party platforms do not literally state the survival of the country is at stake; there are two alternative courses of action; they recommend this course for these reasons.
