Iversena proposed a way of classifying the different explanatory theories of voting that allow to add a very important element that has been neglected until now. In summary, it can be said that in the economic model of voting, the political preferences of voters on different issues, are clearly perceived by the voters themselves which is the idea that the voter must assess his own interest, he must clearly perceive what are the political preferences of voters. These are voters who proceed by systematic voting. 65, no. The sociological model at the theoretical level emphasizes something important that rationalist and economic theories have largely overlooked, namely, the importance of the role of social context, i.e., voters are all in social contexts and therefore not only family context but also a whole host of other social contexts. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 261(1), 194194. The presupposition is that voter preferences are not exogenous but are endogenous - they change within the framework of an electoral process. The second explanation refers to the directional model, i.e. Voting requires voters to know the candidates' positions on issues, but when there are several candidates or several parties, it is not very easy for some voters in particular. The individual is subjectivity at the centre of the analysis. 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. Merrill and Grofman have proposed unified models that want to get out of this hyper-simplification with respect to spatial theories where one either makes a choice of possibilities or a choice of direction but evacuates any other element such as partisan identification, socialization, social inclusion, economic conditions as well as the role of opinion leaders as seen in the funnel model of Michigan theory. (Second edition.) The organization is in crisis and no longer reflects our own needs. 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. is partisan identification one-dimensional? 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. Voting behavior is a form of electoral behavior. It is an answer that remains faithful to the postulates of Downs' theory and the proximity model. Some have criticized this model saying that it puts forward the one-dimensional image of the human being and politics, that is, that it is purely rational, hypercognitive in a way without taking into account sociological but also psychological elements. in what is commonly known as the Columbia school of thought, posited that contextual factors influence the development . This model emphasizes the role of integration into social groups. 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 The scientific study of voting behavior is marked by three major research schools: the sociological model, often identified as School of Columbia, with the main reference in Applied Bureau of Social Research of Columbia University, whose work begins with the publication of the book The Peoples Choice (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944) and So there is an overestimation in this model with respect to capacity. In their view, ideology is a means of predicting political positions on a significant number of issues and also a basis for credible and consistent engagement by the party or candidate that follows it. When we talk about the Downs model, we also talk about the proximity model, which is the idea of a rational economic mode based on utility maximization. Print. While in the United States, several studies have shown that partisan identification is an important explanatory power on electoral choice, in other contexts this is less true. The starting point is that there is a congruence of attitudes between party leaders and voters due to the possibility of exit for voters when the party no longer represents them (exit). He wanted to see the role of the media in particular and also the role of opinion leaders and therefore, the influences that certain people can have in the electoral choice. 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. Distance must be taken into account and the idea of mobilizing the electorate must be taken into account. The explanatory factors and aspects highlighted by these different models are always taken into account. There are several theories emphasizing different factors which may shape citizens' voting behavior. 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. 0000000929 00000 n The basic idea is the representation of a point that is an ideal point for each voter in a hypothetical space. 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. There are two slightly different connotations. In other words, when we are interested in trying to explain the vote, we must already know what type of voter we are talking about. Discounting is saying that the voter does not fully believe what the parties say. The further a party moves in the other direction, the less likely the voter will choose it because the utility function gradually decreases. What explains historical variation in voter turnout? 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. This model explains for Downs why we abstain. What interests us is that the idea of issue voting is fundamental to spatial theories of voting. The 'funnel of causality' provided a convenient framework within which to pursue both a comprehensive program of electoral accounting and a more selective strategy of explanation. Print. On this basis, four types of voters can be identified in a simplified manner: It is possible to start from the assumption that the characteristics of these different voters are very different. A representative democracy. So, we are going to the extremes precisely because we are trying to mobilize an electorate. Voting for a candidate from one party in one race and for the other party's candidate in another race is known as. An important factor is the role of political campaigns in influencing the vote. On the other hand, women tend to have less stable partisan identification, they change more often too. Other researchers have tried to propose combined models that combine different explanations. Here, preferences are endogenous and they can change. In Person: 971 W Duval St. Ste. There is an idea of interdependence between political supply and demand, between parties and voters, which is completely removed from other types of explanations. They are voters who make the effort to inform themselves, to look at the proposals of the different parties and try to evaluate the different political offers. For most theories, and in particular Matthews' Simple Directional Model theory, the neutral point determines direction. There are other models that try to relate the multiplicity of issues to an underlying ideological space, i.e., instead of looking at specific issues, everything is brought back to a left-right dimension as a shortcut, for example, and there are other theories that consider the degree of ambiguity and clarity of the candidates' positions. . carried out by scholars at Columbia. Ideal point models assume that lawmakers and bills are represented as points in a latent space. While Downs said that there are parties that take positions on issues, the voter has difficulty with this inferring a position on a left-right axis. We need to find identification measures adapted to the European context, which the researchers have done. It also proposes a reconceptualization of the concept of partisanship in order to integrate all relevant contributions of the . There have been attempts to address this anomaly. The government is blamed for the poor state of the economy. It is the idea of when does one or the other of these different theories provide a better explanation according to periods of political alignment or misalignment. The basic idea is somewhat the same, namely that it is a way that voters have at their disposal, a euristic and cognitive shortcut that voters have at their disposal to deal with the problem of complex information. This refers to the Michigan model, the psycho-sociological model. The cause-and-effect relationship is reversed, according to some who argue that this is a problem at the empirical level when we want to study the effect of partisan identification on electoral choice because there is a problem of endogeneity; we no longer know what explains what. If we look at it a little more broadly, partisan identification can be seen as a kind of shortcut. Among these bridges, one of the first bridges between the psycho-sociological voting theory and the rationalist theories was made by Fiorina because he considers partisan identification to be an important element in explaining electoral choice. In directional models with intensity, there are models that try to show how the salience of different issues changes from one group to another, from one social group to another, or from one candidate and one party to another. Nowadays, the internet is the most used communication environment, and therefore it becomes very important to try to determine the behavior of users regarding internet use. In other words, party activists tend to be more extreme in their political attitudes than voters or party leaders. The utility function of the simple proximity model appears, i.e. One must take into account the heterogeneity of the electorate and how different voters may have different motivations for choosing which party or candidate to vote for. 0000003292 00000 n There are also intermediate variables that relate to loyalties to a certain group or sense of belonging. There is this curvilinear disparity because the three actors position themselves differently. In this representation, there are factors related to the cleavages, but also other factors that relate to the economic, political or social structure of a country being factors that are far removed from the electoral choice but that still exert an important effect in an indirect way the effect they have on other variables afterwards. Information is central to spatial theories, whereas in the psycho-sociological model, information is much less important. Merrill, Samuel, and Bernard Grofman. Voters try to maximize the usefulness of the vote, that is, they try to vote for the party that makes them more satisfied. This is the idea of collective action, since our own contribution to an election or vote changes with the number of other citizens who vote. The psycho-sociological model says that it is because this inking allows identification with a party which in turn influences political attitudes and therefore predispositions with regard to a given object, with regard to the candidate or the party, and this is what ultimately influences the vote. This model of directional proximity with intensity illustrates what is called symbolic politics which is related to the problem of information. The importance of symbolic politics is especially capitalized on by the intensity directional models. Candidate choices are made towards parties or candidates who are going in the same direction as the voter, this being understood as the voters' political preferences on a given issue. There is also the economic vote, which is the role of the economy. 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). Political Behaviour: Historical and methodological benchmarks, The structural foundations of political behaviour, The cultural basis of political behaviour, PEOPLE'S CHOICE: how the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign, https://doi.org/10.1177/000271624926100137, https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414094027002001, https://baripedia.org/index.php?title=Theoretical_models_of_voting_behaviour&oldid=49464, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Numerous studies have found that voting behavior and political acts can be "contagious . Today, in the literature, we talk about the economic vote in a narrower and slightly different sense, namely that the electoral choice is strongly determined by the economic situation and by the policies that the government puts in place in particular to deal with situations of economic difficulty. 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. On the basis of this analysis a behavioral model is constructed, which is then tested on data from a Dutch election survey. They try to elaborate a bit and find out empirically how this happens. Political scientists have defined several models of voter behavior in an attempt to explain the different motivations of voters: Rational choice theory describes someone voting in their best interest, supporting the candidate whose platform will give them the most favorable outcomes. 0000000866 00000 n Ideology is to be understood as a way of simplifying our world in relation to the problem of information. The utility function of this model is modified compared to the simple model, i.e. These criticisms and limitations are related to the original model. The reference work is The People's Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. All of these factors and their relationships have to be taken into account, but at the centre is always the partisan attachment. This model has given rise to the spatial theories of voting which are the dominant theories. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. They find that partisan identification becomes more stable with age, so the older you get, the more partisan identification you have, so it's much easier to change when you're young. Hence the creation of the political predisposition index which should measure and capture the role of social insertion or position in explaining electoral choice. It can be defined as lasting feelings of attachment that individuals develop towards a certain party. How to assess the position of different parties and candidates. 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. Numbers abound, since we have seen that, in the end, both models systematically have a significant effect. In the Downs-Hirschman model, the vote is spatial in the sense of proximity and preferences are exogenous; on the other hand, in the directional theories of Rabinovirz and Macdonal in particular, we remain in the idea of the exogeneity of preferences but the vote is not spatial in the sense of proximity. The Lazarsfeld model would link membership and voting. Parties do not try to maximize the vote, but create images of society, forge identities, mobilize commitments for the future. 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. One of the answers within spatial theories is based on this criticism that voters are not these cognitively strong beings as the original Downs theory presupposes. On the other hand, the political preferences are exogenous to the political process which is the fact that when the voter goes to vote which is the moment when he or she starts to think about this election, he or she already arrives with certain fixed or prefixed political preferences. p. 31). For example, a strongly conservative voter who votes Democratic may vote Republican because he or she feels more in tune with the party. That is why there are many empirical analyses that are based on this model. At the basis of the reflection of directional models, and in particular of directional models with intensity, there is what is called symbolic politics. The strategic choices made by parties can also be explained by this model since, since this model postulates an interdependence between supply and demand, we address the demand but we can also address the supply. The idea is that it is in circles of interpersonal relations even if more modern theories of opinion leaders look at actors outside the personal circle. It is multidimensional also in the bipartisan context of the United States because there are cleavages that cut across parties. 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. 0000000636 00000 n What are the criteria for determining the individual usefulness of voters? By finding something else, he shaped a dominant theory explaining the vote. Apart from the combined models, it can be thought that different models may explain differently according to historical moments and phases of a process of political alignment and misalignment just as models may better explain certain types of candidates or according to the profile and type of voters. Property qualifications. The political position of each candidate is represented in the same space, it is the interaction between supply and demand and the voter will choose the party or candidate that is closest to the voter. Four questions around partisan identification. How was that measured? The psycho-sociological model can be seen in the light of an explanatory contribution to the idea that social inking is a determining factor in explaining the vote, or at least on a theoretical level. There is little room for context even though there are more recent developments that try to put the voter's freedom of choice in context. Hirschman wanted to explain what happens in organizations when they enter a situation of crisis or decline. Bakker, B. N., Hopmann, D. N., & Persson, M. (2014). The idea of the directional model, and this applies to both the simple directional model and the intensity directional model, is that voters basically cannot clearly perceive the different positions of political parties or candidates on a specific issue. For Iversen, distance is also important. It is also often referred to as a point of indifference because there are places where the voter cannot decide. There are a whole bunch of individual characteristics related to the fact that one is more of a systematic voter of something else. The personality model highlights the importance of childhood experiences for political behavior and belief in adulthood; the sociological model highlights the importance of primary and interest . Even more plausibly, election campaigns are built around several issues. This is called retrospective voting, which means that we are not looking at what the parties said in their platforms, but rather at what the parties did before. Prospective voting is based on election promises and retrospective voting is based on past performance. For many, voting is a civic duty. 0000010337 00000 n Most voters have a sense of allegiance to a party that is inherited through the family. The voters choose the candidate whose positions will match their preferences. 0000001124 00000 n It is a small bridge between different explanations. Much of the work in electoral behaviour draws on this thinking. 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. The Michigan model was based on the idea of socialization and partisan identification as a long-term attachment to a party that is the result of primary socialization in particular, and therefore as insertion into a given social context. The answer to this second question will allow us to differentiate between proximity models and directional models because these two subsets of the spatial theories of voting give diametrically opposite answers to this question. 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. Basic Idea What you are vote choice ; Key foundational studies ; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, Gaudet (1944) The Peoples Choice Berelson, Lazarsfeld, McPhee (1954) Voting How does partisan identification develop? We speak of cognitive preference between one's political preferences and the positions of the parties. This idea of an issue was not invented by the proponents of the economic model of voting but was already present in the psycho-sociological model. startxref The scientific study of voting behavior is marked by three major research schools: the sociological model, often identified as School of Columbia, with the main reference in Applied Bureau of Social Research of Columbia University, whose work begins with the publication of the book The People's Choice (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944) A distinction is made between the sociological model of voting from the Columbia School, which refers to the university where this model was developed. It is interesting to know that Lazarsfeld, when he began his studies with survey data, especially in an electoral district in New York State, was looking for something other than the role of social factors. 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