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2 - Moral Rhetoric in Party Communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2026

Jae-Hee Jung
Affiliation:
Rice University, Houston
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Summary

The chapter examines how moral rhetoric is used in party communication using dictionary-based text analysis of party manifestos. The main data include 158 manifestos from six English-speaking democracies (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States) across thirty-four elections. I first measure moral rhetoric in the aggregate. The measure captures the overall level of moral rhetoric used by a party in its campaign. I show that there is variation in moral rhetoric across countries and within countries. I also show the validity of the measurement approach and its robustness to alternatives. Overall, we learn that moral rhetoric is a distinct aspect of party messaging. I then explore patterns in more disaggregate measures of moral rhetoric. Analyses reveal that there are more commonalities in the ways that parties use moral rhetoric than one might expect. Building on the framework of the Moral Foundations Theory, I find that differences in the moral palettes of the left and the right that we can expect based on prior work are more nuanced and not as stark when we examine specific moral foundations separately and when we examine appeals at the level of issues.

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