0000000866 00000 n Thus, voters will vote for candidates who are in the direction (1) and who are going in that direction in the most intense way (2), that is, who propose policies going in that direction in the strongest and most intense way. This is the median voter theory. On the basis of this, we can know. This model has given rise to the spatial theories of voting which are the dominant theories. $2.75. In order to explain this anomaly, another explanation beside the curvilinear explanation beside the directional theories of the vote, a third possibility to explain this would be to say that there are some parties that abandon the idea of maximizing the vote or electoral support in order to mobilize this electorate and for this we have to go to extremes. There is also a literature on whether certain parties have certain issues, which voters believe are the parties that are better able to deal with a certain issue. One of the merits, which can be found in Lazarsfeld's book entitled The People's Choice published in 1944 is that this model marks a turning point in the study of political behaviour. There are several responses to criticisms of the proximity model. In the Michigan model, the idea of stakes was already present but was somewhat underdeveloped, and this perspective on the role of stakes in the psychosocial model lent itself to both theoretical and empirical criticism from proponents of rationalist models. The aspect is based on the idea that there is an information problem that represents a difficulty and costs that voters must pay to gather information and to become informed about an election. From that point on, there has been the development of a whole body of literature on political psychology. It rejects the notion that voting behavior is largely determined by class affiliation or class socialization. Inking and the role of socialization cause individuals to form a certain partisan identification that produces certain types of political attitudes. how does partisan identification develop? trailer The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 261(1), 194194. It was this model that proposed that abstention can be the result of a purely rational calculation. The Logics of Electoral Politics. To study the expansion of federal authority over states. They may rely less on their partisan loyalties, so their vote may be explained less by their social base and more by their choice among an offer that is the economic model. The choice can be made according to different criteria, but they start from the assumption that there are these voters who arrive in an electoral process that refers to the idea of the hexogeneity of voters' preferences. The law of curvilinear disparity takes up this distinction. For Fiorina the voter does not do that, he will rather look at what has happened, he will also look at the state of affairs in a country, hence the importance of the economic vote in the narrower sense of the word. 0000006260 00000 n These models describe how humans react to environmental factors and choose between different courses of action. A symbol is evaluated on the basis of two parameters, namely direction (1), a symbol gives a certain direction in the policy and in addition a certain intensity (2) which is to what extent is one favourable or unfavourable to a certain policy. There is a small bridge that is made between these two theories with Fiorina on the one hand and the Michigan model of another party that puts the concept of partisan identification at the centre and that conceives of this concept in a very different way, especially with regard to its origin. Ideal point models assume that lawmakers and bills are represented as According to them, it is necessary to combine different types of explanations and in particular, in the electoral choice, the components related to proximity, leadership, and also the rather "intensity" leadership, all of which play a significant role in the positioning of candidates and parties. There is no real electoral choice in this type of explanation, but it is based on our insertion in a social context. This is the proximity model. xref It is a very detailed literature today. There are three possible answers: May's Law of Curvilinear Disparity is an answer that tries to stay within the logic of the proximity model and to account for this empirical anomaly, but with the idea that it is distance and proximity that count. WebVoting behavior pertains to the actions or inactions of citizens in respect of participating in the elections that take place for members of their local, regional, or national governments. The directional model also provides some answers to this criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948. The organization is in crisis and no longer reflects our own needs. Symbols evoke emotions. Please rate your chance of voting in November on a scale of 10 to 1. Comparative Political Studies, 27(2), 155189. There is a small degree of complexity because one can distinguish between attitudes towards the candidate or the party, attitudes towards the policies implemented by the different parties and attitudes about the benefits that one's own group may receive from voting for one party rather than another. The choice of candidates is made both according to direction but also according to the intensity of positions on a given issue. 0000001213 00000 n One important element of this model must be highlighted in relation to the others. Finally, there is an instrumental approach to information and voting. The first one Is what we call the sociological model that was presented in the 1940s by a group of scholars from Columbia. The sociological model obviously has a number of limitations like any voting model or any set of social science theories. The concept and this theory was developed in the United States by political scientists and sociologists and initially applied to the American political system with an attachment to the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. There is the important opposition between an economic vote based on a choice, which is the idea that the voter makes a real choice based on a cost-benefit calculation, a choice that is rational in the end according to Weber's typology, while the psycho-sociological vote is rather based on a concept of loyalty that often makes the opposition between choice and loyalty. Directional model with intensity: Rabinowitz, Four possible answers to the question of how voters decide to vote, Unified Voting Model: Merrill and Grofman, Responses to criticisms of the proximity model, Partisan Competition Theory: Przeworski and Sprague, Relationship between voting explanatory models and realignment cycle. Positioning on a left-right scale is related to this type of theory. WebIn this perspective, voting is essentially a question of attachment, identity and loyalty to a party, whereas in the rationalist approach it is mainly a question of interest, cognition and With regard to the limits, methodological individualism has often been evoked, saying that it is an exclusively micro-sociological perspective that neglects the effect of social structure. This is called prospective voting because voters will listen to what the parties have to say and evaluate on the basis of that, that is, looking ahead. Studies have shown that, for example, outside the United States, a much larger proportion of voters who change their vote also change their partisan identification. There have been several phases of misalignment. At the aggregate level, the distribution of partisan identification in the electorate makes it possible to calculate the normal vote. Thus our model explains not just why but also how rational people vote. The image that an individual has of himself in this perspective is also the result of this identification. It is also often referred to as a point of indifference because there are places where the voter cannot decide. These two proximity models are opposed to two other models that are called directional models with Matthews' simple directional model but especially Rabinowitz's directional model with intensity. Information is central to spatial theories, whereas in the psycho-sociological model, information is much less important. Finally, some studies show that high levels of education lead to weaker attachments to parties. The same can be said of the directional model with intensity. "i.e., if it is proximity, it is 'yes', otherwise it is 'no' and therefore directional; 'are the preferences of the actors exogenous? In this model, importance is given to primary socialization. Much of the work in electoral behaviour draws on this thinking. Here, preferences are endogenous and they can change. The Peoples Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. startxref Political conditions as well as the influence of the media play an important role, all the more so nowadays as more and more political campaigns and the role of the media overlap. Voters have knowledge of the ideological positions of parties or candidates on one or more ideological dimensions and they use this knowledge to assess the political positions of these parties or candidates on specific issues. This is the idea that gave rise to the development of directional models, which is that, according to Downs and those who have followed him, because there is transparency of information, voters can very well see what the political platforms of the parties or candidates are. However, he conceives the origin and function of partisan identification in a different way from what we have seen before. WebThere are various major models that explain our electoral decision, and I would like to focus now on the main models of electoral behavior. %PDF-1.3 % These criticisms and limitations are related to the original model. There are different types of individuals who take different kinds of shortcuts or not, who vote systematically or not, and so on. This model shows that there is more than political identities, partisan identification and social inking. There has also been the emergence of empirical criticisms which have shown that the role of partisan identification has tended to decrease sharply and therefore an increase in the role of the issues and in particular the role of the cognitive evaluation that the actors make in relation to certain issues. If we accept this premise, how will we position ourselves? The idea is that a party is ready to lose an election in order to give itself the means to win it later by giving itself time to form an electorate. Most voters have a sense of allegiance to a party that is inherited through the family. To study the expansion of due process rights. In other words, there is the idea of utility maximization which is a key concept in rational choice theory, so the voter wants to maximize his utility and his utility is calculated according to the ratio between the cost and the benefit that can be obtained from the action, in this case going to vote (1) and going to vote for that party rather than this one (2). Ideology can also be in relation to another dimension, for example between egalitarian and libertarian ideology. A distinction is often made between two types of voters and votes between the: There are these two types and a whole literature on the different types of euristics that can be set up. The economic model makes predictions and tries to explain both the participation but also, and above all, the direction of the vote, which is the electoral choice. If we look at it a little more broadly, partisan identification can be seen as a kind of shortcut. A distinction is made between the sociological model of voting from the Columbia School, which refers to the university where this model was developed. The heterogeneity of the electorate and voters must be taken into account. 43 17 There are different strategies that are studied in the literature. endstream endobj 44 0 obj <> endobj 45 0 obj <> endobj 46 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text]>> endobj 47 0 obj <> endobj 48 0 obj <> endobj 49 0 obj <> endobj 50 0 obj <> endobj 51 0 obj <>stream This model explains for Downs why we abstain. Merrill, Samuel, and Bernard Grofman. These authors find with panel data that among their confirmed hypotheses that extroverted people tend to have a strong and stable partisan identification. Since the idea is to calculate the costs and benefits of voting for one party rather than the other, therefore, each party brings us some utility income. Others have criticized this analogy between the economic market and the political market as being a bit simplistic, saying that, basically, the consequences of buying a consumer product have a certain number of consequences, but they are much more limited compared to what buying a vote can have in terms of choosing a party. With regard to the question of how partisan identification develops, the psycho-sociological model emphasizes the role of the family and thus of primary socialization, but several critics have shown that secondary socialization also plays a role. [10], The third model is called the economic model of the vote or the Rochester School of Economics, developed by Downs in the book An Economic Theory of Democracy published in 1957.[11]. The premise of prospective voting is too demanding for most voters. A distinction must be made between the affective vote of the psycho-sociological model and the cognitive vote of the theories of the economic model. preferences and positions. These authors have tried to say that the different explanatory theories of the vote can be more or less explanatory in the sense of having more or less importance of explanatory power depending on the phases in which one is in a process of alignment and misalignment. The anomaly is that there is a majority of the electorate around the centre, but there are parties at the extremes that can even capture a large part of the preferences of the electorate. Hirschman wanted to explain what happens in organizations when they enter a situation of crisis or decline. The psycho-sociological model, also known as the Michigan model, can be represented graphically or schematically. The degree of political sophistication, political knowledge, interest in politics varies from voter to voter. So there is this empirical anomaly where there is a theory that presupposes and tries to explain the electoral choices but also the positions of the parties in a logic of proximity to the centre of the political spectrum, but on the other hand there is the empirical observation that is the opposite and that sees parties and voters located elsewhere. An important factor is the role of political campaigns in influencing the vote. On the other hand, ideologically extreme voters try to influence party policies through party activism (voice). Q. There has been the whole emergence of the rational actor, which is the vote in relation to issues, which is not something that comes simply from our affective identification with a party, but there is a whole reflection that the voter makes in terms of cost-benefit calculations. The initial formulation of the model is based on the Downs theory in An Economic Theory of Democracy publi en 1957. Voters are more interested in political results than in political programmes, and the choice is also made from this perspective. McClung Lee, A. The behavior results either in support for political candidates or parties or abstention from the voting process. There may be a vote that is different from partisan identification, but in the medium to long term, partisan identification should strengthen. How was that measured? 0000004336 00000 n The function of partisan identification is to allow the voter to face political information and to know which party to vote for. First, they summarize the literature that has been interested in explaining why voters vary or differ in the stability or strength of their partisan identification. The idea that one identifies oneself, that one has an attitude, an attachment to a party was certainly true some forty years ago and has become less and less true and also the explanatory power of this variable is less important today even if there are significant effects. In general, they are politically more sophisticated and better educated; those who rely on the opinion of the media and opinion leaders; that of the law of curvilinear disparity proposed by May; the directional model of Rabinowitz and Matthews; Przeworski and Sprague's mobilization of the electorate. The Psychology of Voting Research suggests that instilling emotions like gratitude and civic pride may help increase voter turnout. According to Downs, based on the prospective assessment that voters make of the position that voters have and their position on various issues, voters arrive at and operate this shortcut by situating and bringing parties back to an ideological dimension that may be a left-right dimension but may also be another one. Reinforcement over time since adult voters increasingly rely on this partisan identification to vote and to face the problems of information, namely partisan identification seen as a way of solving a problem that all voters have, which is how to form an idea and deal with the abundance and complexity of the information that comes to us from, for example, the media, political campaigns or others in relation to the political offer. Often identified as School of This model of directional proximity with intensity illustrates what is called symbolic politics which is related to the problem of information. As far as the psycho-sociological model is concerned, it has the merit of challenging the classical theory of democracy which puts the role on the rational actor. [15] Then we'll look at the space theories of the vote. Webgain. Prospective voting is the one that has been postulated by Downs and by all other researchers who work in proximity models but also in two-way models. . It's believed that the social class was the most accurate indicator of likely voting intention. Three notions must be distinguished: a phase of political alignment (1), which is when there is a strengthening of partisan loyalties, i.e. Voters who rely on strong partisan identification do not need to go and do systematic voting or take one of the shortcuts. In other words, a directional element is introduced into the proximity model. According to Fiorina, retrospective voting is that citizens' preferences depend not only on how close they are to the political position of a party or candidate, but also on their retrospective assessment of the performance of the ruling party or candidate. Proximity means the closeness of the voter's interests to the political proposals that are made with the parties. In other words, if we know the partisan identification of voters, we can make a prediction about what the normal vote will be, which is a vote that is not or should not be influenced by other situational factors in a given electorate. Four questions can be asked in relation to this measure: For the first question, there are several studies on the fact that partisan identification is multi-dimensional and not just one-dimensional. In Personality traits and party identification over time published in 2014 by Bakker, Hopmann and Persson, the authors attempt to explain partisan identification. A distinction can be made between the simple proximity model, which is the Downs model, and the proximity model with Grofman discounting. This is especially important when applying this type of reasoning empirically. The idea is that voters are not really able to really evaluate in a forward-looking way the different positions of the parties. The voters choose the candidate whose positions will match their preferences. According to Merril and Grofman, one cannot determine whether one pure model is superior to another because there are methodological and data limitations. Originally proposed by political scientists, beginning with an It is an answer that remains faithful to the postulates of Downs' theory and the proximity model. One must assess the value of one's own participation and also assess the number of other citizens who will vote. European Journal of Political Research, 54(2), 197215. At the basis of the reflection of directional models, and in particular of directional models with intensity, there is what is called symbolic politics. Some people talk about membership voting for the first two theories and cognitive voting for the economic model of voting. For most theories, and in particular Matthews' Simple Directional Model theory, the neutral point determines direction. WebTo study the expansion of voting rights. What interests us is that the idea of issue voting is fundamental to spatial theories of voting. Below we evaluate models that use these types of measures as well. The idea is that there is something easier to evaluate which is the ideology of a party and that it is on the basis of this that the choice will be made. We must assess the costs of going to the polls, of gathering the information needed to make a decision, but also the value of one's own participation, since the model is also supposed to explain voter turnout. It is a third explanation given by Przeworski and Sprague in their theory of partisan competition, also known as the theory of mobilization of the electorate. Bakker, B. N., Hopmann, D. N., & Persson, M. (2014). The psycho-sociological model initiated the national election studies and created a research paradigm that remains one of the two dominant research paradigms today and ultimately contributed to the creation of electoral psychology. The third criterion is rationality, which is that based on the theory of rational choice, voters mobilize the limited means at their disposal to achieve their goals, so they will choose the alternative among the political offer that costs them the least and brings them the greatest possible benefit. This theory is not about the formation of political preferences, they start from the idea that there are voters with certain political preferences and then these voters will look at what the offer is and will choose according to that offer.
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