Acceso usuarios
Zürich, Suiza
Various studies show that voters appreciate individual legislators who dissentagainst their party as it increases their valence appeal. Simultaneously,political psychology research shows that right voters consider loyaltysubstantially more important than left voters. However, whether ideologymoderates voter reactions to legislator dissent is so far unexplored, similarlyto the question of whether voters also appreciate factional dissent of a groupof legislators. This article investigates these two questions employing asurvey experiment with Spanish citizens. Wefind that voters indeedappreciate factional dissent and that ideology moderates how voters react todissent. While left voters welcome all forms of factional dissent more thanparty loyalty, right voters value party loyalty more than some forms offactional dissent. The results suggest that legislators face different benefits ofdissent depending on the ideological composition of their electorate, withimportant implications for legislator behaviour and party cohesion
