Sentience and salience – exploring the party politicization of animal welfare in multi-level electoral systems: Analysis of manifesto discourse in UK meso elections 1998–2017

ABSTRACT

This study explores the party politicization of animal welfare in the context of multi-level governance in the UK. It examines over 1300 pledges in party manifestos for Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish elections 1998–2017. It reveals the nature of party competition, including increasing salience over electoral cycles. This is complemented by examination of the party dynamics in two sub-fields: wildlife protection and farm animal welfare. The wider significance of this study lies in showing how the move to multi-level electoral politics provides new political spaces to advance animal welfare and how meso-ballots are increasingly attuned to the symbiosis of humans and animals. These factors are driving the territorialization of policy and leading to distinctive animal welfare regimes in the different countries of the UK. In addition, partisan theory reveals how the electoral politics of animal welfare varies between sub-fields and is shaped by parties’ relationships with different policy communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Animal welfare
• elections
• devolution
• party politicization
• issue-salience

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the constructive and helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper from the editor and two anonymous reviewers. We also acknowledge grant funding for this study from the Economic and Social Research Council under Award No: S012435/1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Defined in terms of share of the popular vote.

2 Where necessary, hardcopy only versions of early manifestos were transcribed. The software used was Nvivo ⁹.

3 A worked example: ‘we will legislate to introduce compulsory micro-chipping for dogs and cats’. This would be coded as two quasi-sentences – one under ‘regulation’, the other under ‘pets’.

4 4 instances

5 For example, in the present study, the word-length of Sinn Fein’s manifestos over successive cycles is: 4234 (1998), 23 152 (2003), 19 097 (2007), 5601 (2011), 6896 (2016), and 5437 (2017).

6 As opposed to ratio measures of the number of pledges in relation to manifesto word length.

7 https://www.snp.org/ [Accessed 10 January 2020].

8 For the purposes of cross polity comparison the 2017 Northern Ireland election is excluded. 35 animal welfare pledges were made in this election. This is lower than previous cycles and reflects the fact that generally party manifestos were shorter in length than previously owing to the somewhat hastily arranged nature of the ballot.

9 For example: Animal Health and Welfare Scotland (Act) 2006; The Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Regulations 2010; The Welfare of Farmed Animals (Wales) Regulations 2001; The Trade in Animals and Related Products (Wales) Regulations 2011; The Animals and Animal Products (Import and Export) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2009.

10 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_05_07_agreement.pdf

11 A key example is the Animal Welfare Bill (re-)promised in the December 2019 Queen’s Speech. In 2017 the UK Government said it believed the then draft Bill included provisions on animal cruelty within the National Assembly for Wales’s (NAfW) legislative competence and that it intended to seek NAfW consent or the Bill, as required in law. Accessed 15 January 2020. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/666576/draft-animal-welfare-bill-171212.pdf

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge grant funding for this study from the Economic and Social Research Council under Award No: ES/S012435/1.