"i.e., if it is proximity, it is 'yes', otherwise it is 'no' and therefore directional; 'are the preferences of the actors exogenous? In other words, in this retrospective assessment, the economic situation of the country plays a crucial role. 43 0 obj <> endobj 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. It is also possible to add that the weight of partisan identification varies from one voter to another. Ecological regression represents one extreme: the presumption that voting behavior changes systematically across groups but only changes randomly, if at all, within groups. the earlier Columbia studies, the Michigan election studies were based upon national survey samples. The theoretical account of voting behavior drew heavily upon the metaphor of a 'funnel of causality'. 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. Often, in Anglo-Saxon literature, this model is referred to as the party identification model. 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. Also called the Columbia model (after the university from whence came the researchers), the sociological model of voting behavior was constructed with the intention of studying the effect of media on voting choice. The theory of the economic model of the vote is also a model that allows predictions to be made about party behaviour. If certain conditions are present, such as good democratic functioning within the party, activists will have the opportunity to exercise "voice" and influence positions. Harrop, Martin, and William L. Miller. In this approach, it is possible to say that the voter accepts the arguments of a certain party because he or she feels close to a party and not the opposite which would be what the economic model of the vote postulates, that is to say that we listen to what the party has to say and we will choose that party because we are convinced by what that party says. From this point of view, parties adopt political positions that maximize their electoral support, what Downs calls the median voters and the idea that parties would maximize their electoral support around the center of the political spectrum. those who inquire: they are willing to pay these costs. The reference work is The Peoples Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. There are certain types of factors that influence other types of factors and that in turn influence other types of factors and that ultimately help explain the idea of the causal funnel of electoral choice. It is a theory that is made in the interaction between supply and demand, that is, between parties offering something and voters asking for something. If we take into account Przeworski and Sprague's idea that there can be a mobilization of the electorate in a logic of endogenous preference and non-maximization of the utility of voters. 1948, Berelson et . The system in the United States is bipartisan and the question asked was "Do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat or otherwise? There has also been the criticism of abstention as the result of rational calculation. There are also external factors that also need to be considered, such as the actions of the government, for example, voters are influenced by what the government has done. The initial research saw three major factors to voting behaviour: Personal identification with one of the political parties, concern with issues of national government policy and personal attraction to the presidential candidates. Four questions around partisan identification. Print. This is the basic motivation for the development of these directional models. Hinich and Munger take up the Downs idea but turn it around a bit. 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. This model has given rise to the spatial theories of voting which are the dominant theories. In other words, party activists tend to be more extreme in their political attitudes than voters or party leaders. is premised on the assumption that elections connect the will of the people to the actions of government. Psychological Models of American Voting Behavior* DAVID KNOKE, Indiana University ABSTRACT A path model of the presidential vote involving social variables, party identification, issue orientations, . This is a very common and shared notion. 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. 59 0 obj <>stream Here we see the key factors, namely electoral choice and, at the centre, the identification variable for a party, which depends on two types of factors, namely primary socialization and group membership. A second possible answer is that they will vote for the candidate who belongs to the party with which they identify. La dernire modification de cette page a t faite le 11 novembre 2020 00:26. The utility function of the simple proximity model appears, i.e. In this case, there may be other factors that can contribute to the voter choice; and all parties that are on the other side of the neutral point minimize the voter's utility, so the voter will not vote for that party all other things being equal. Fiorina proposed an alternative way to explain why voters vote for one party rather than another, or a different answer to how the position of different candidate parties can be assessed. 43 17 We leave behind the idea of spatial theories that preferences are exogenous, that they are pre-existing and almost fixed. We end up with a configuration where there is an electorate that is at the centre, there are party activists who are exercising the "voice" and who have access to the extreme, and there are party leaderships that are in between. In this model, importance is given to primary socialization. Rationalist theories and spatial models of the vote have had the very beneficial relationship of putting precisely the free choice of voters at the centre of analyses. 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. 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. Often, in the literature, the sociological and psycho-sociological model fall into the same category, with a kind of binary distinction between the theories that emphasize social, belonging and identification on the one hand, and then the rationalist and economic theories of the vote, which are the economic theories of the vote that focus instead on the role of political issues, choices and cost-benefit calculations. the further a party moves in the same direction as the voter, the more likely it is to be chosen by that voter. The reference work is The People's Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. This model of voting behavior sees the voter as thinking individual who is able to take a view on political issues and votes accordingly. Simply, the voter is going to evaluate his own interest, his utility income from the different parties and will vote for the party that is closest to his interests. Four landmark studies connected with the presidential elections of 1940, 1948, 1952, and 1956 mark the establishment of scholarly survey-based research on voting behavior (Rossi 1959). 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. The advantage of the intensity directional model is that it goes in a more intense direction, i.e. So there is an overestimation in this model with respect to capacity. The basic assumptions of the economic model of the vote are threefold: selfishness, which is the fact that voters act according to their individual interests and not according to their sense of belonging to a group or their attachment to a party. Other researchers have tried to propose combined models that combine different explanations. 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. Positioning on a left-right scale is related to this type of theory. The influence of friends refers to opinion leaders and circles of friends. Then a second question was supposed to measure the strength of that identification with the question "do you consider yourself a Republican, strong, weak or leaning towards the Democratic Party? What we are interested in is on the demand side, how can we explain voters' electoral choice. The individual is subjectivity at the centre of the analysis. These studies model individual utility from the election of a preferred party or candidate as decreasing as the alternative deviates from one's ideal point, but differ as to whether this loss should be modeled linearly or quadratically. 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. In prospective voting, Grofman said that the position of current policy is also important because the prospective assessment that one can make as a voter of the parties' political platforms also depends on current policy. Voters try to maximize the usefulness of the vote, that is, they try to vote for the party that makes them more satisfied. Numbers abound, since we have seen that, in the end, both models systematically have a significant effect. 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. Therefore, they cannot really situate where the different parties stand. Voters who vote against the party with which they identify keep their partisan identification. 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. There are several responses to criticisms of the proximity model. One must assess the value of one's own participation and also assess the number of other citizens who will vote. In other words, there is a social type variable, a cultural type variable and a spatial type variable. The role of the media and campaigns simplifies information by summarizing it. We speak of cognitive preference between one's political preferences and the positions of the parties. When you vote, you are taking your personal time and effort to advance the collective good, without any guarantee of personal rewardthe very heart of what it means to be altruistic. There are two slightly different connotations. Several studies have shown that the very fact of voting for a party contributes to the development of a certain identification for that party. 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. A rather subjective and almost sentimental citizen is placed at the centre of the analysis. On the other hand, ideologically extreme voters try to influence party policies through party activism (voice). In spring of 2021, key people working in homelessness services in Vancouver flew to San Diego to learn about the Alpha Project's model . Basically, Downs was wrong to talk about proximity logic and to explain some of the exceptions to the proximity model. This electoral volatility, especially in a period of political misalignment, is becoming more and more important and is increasingly overshadowed by this type of explanation. . This model of directional proximity with intensity illustrates what is called symbolic politics which is related to the problem of information. Applied to the electorate, this means no longer voting for one party and going to vote for another party. 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. 0000002253 00000 n They are both proximity choices and directional choices with intensity, since there are voters who may choose intensity and others who may choose direction. It is necessary to distinguish between two types of voters and to make a distinction between a literature that has become increasingly important in recent years on opinion formation in an election or voting context. it is easier to change parties from one election to the next; a phase of realignment (3), which consists of creating new partisan loyalties. This diagram shows the process of misalignment with changes in the generational structure and changes in the social structure that create political misalignment. That discounting depends on where the policy is right now in relation to what the party is promising, and that is the directional element. One important element of this model must be highlighted in relation to the others. A distinction is made between the sociological model of voting from the Columbia School, which refers to the university where this model was developed. Nevertheless, both models may be more or less correct. What interests us is that the idea of issue voting is fundamental to spatial theories of voting. 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. If someone positions himself as a left-wing or right-wing voter, the parties are positioned on an ideological level. If we accept this premise, how will we position ourselves? There are different strategies that are studied in the literature. His conclusion is that the vote is explained both by elements of leadership, partly by an element of proximity and distance, but also, for some parties, it must also be taken into account that there are parties that act according to a mobilization of the electorate according to the approach of Przeworski and Sprague. The voters have to make that assessment and then decide which one brings more income and which one we will vote for. 0000006260 00000 n On the other hand, this is true for the directional model; they manage to perceive a policy direction. This is the proximity model. The idea is to create a party that forges ideologies and partisan identities. The extent to which the usefulness of voters' choices varies from candidate to candidate, but also from voter to voter. The government is blamed for the poor state of the economy. In this theory, we vote for specific issues that may be more or less concrete, more or less general, and which form the basis for explaining electoral behaviour. 0000000929 00000 n It is possible to create a typology that distinguishes between four approaches crossing two important and crucial elements: "is voting spatial? Three elements should be noted. In the spatial theories of the vote, we see the strategic link between a party's supply and a demand from voters or electors. 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. Political parties can make choices that are not choices to maximize the electorate, unlike spatial theories, where parties seek to maximize their short-term electoral support in an election. [14] They try to answer the question of how partisan identification is developing and how partisan identification has weakened because they look at the stability over time of partisan identification. The sociological model is somewhat the model that wants to emphasize this aspect. changes in voting behaviour from one election to the next. 0000007057 00000 n %%EOF There are also studies that show that the more educated change less often from one party to another. At the aggregate level, the distribution of partisan identification in the electorate makes it possible to calculate the normal vote. Of course, there have been attempts to assess the explanatory power of directional models, but according to these researchers, these spatial models were designed to be purely theoretical in order to highlight on a purely theoretical level what motivations voters may have for their electoral choice. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. For the sociological model we have talked about the index of political predisposition with the variables of socioeconomic, religious and spatial status. On the other hand, in rationalist approaches, shortcuts are cognitive shortcuts. Proximity models will give certain proximity related answers and the other more recent models offer an alternative answer based on certain criticisms. What are the criteria for determining the individual usefulness of voters? The Lazarsfeld model would link membership and voting. The law of curvilinear disparity takes up this distinction. Ideal point models assume that lawmakers and bills are represented as points in a latent space. 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. In the literature, we often talk about the economic theory of voting. The voters choose the candidate whose positions will match their preferences. This economic theory of the vote, this rationalist theory, has a great advantage over the other models, which is that it does not only focus on voters, that is to say, it does not only focus on political demand, but it also looks at supply and especially at the interaction between supply and demand. In other words, they are voters who are not prepared to pay all these costs and therefore want to reduce or improve the cost-benefit ratio which is the basis of this electoral choice by reducing the costs and the benefit will remain unchanged. Finally, the results of this test are discussed and conclusions drawn. 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. trailer Some parties have short-term strategies for maximizing voting and others have long-term strategies for social mobilization. The curve instead of the simple proximity model, or obviously the maximization from the parties' point of view of electoral support, lies in the precise proximity between voters' preferences and the parties' political programs on certain issues, in this case this remains true but with a lag that is determined by discounting from a given status quo. There have been attempts to address this anomaly. Some people talk about membership voting for the first two theories and cognitive voting for the economic model of voting. These explanations are known as the Columbia Model and the Michigan Model, and describing these two . This model explains for Downs why we abstain. 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. We can talk about two major theories or two major models or even three models. The term "group" can mean different things, which can be an ethnic group or a social class. Nevertheless, some of these spatial theories depart from this initial formulation. As the authors of The American Voter put 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. According to Fiorina, identification with a party is not necessarily the result of a long phase of socialization, but it is also the result of evaluations of a certain party, it is the fact of voting for that party that makes it possible to develop a partisan identification. An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy, vol. It is easier to look at what someone has done than to evaluate the promises they made. 0000000636 00000 n When the voter is in the same position, i.e. 2, 1957, pp. In other words, a directional element is introduced into the proximity model. Hirschman contrasts the "exit" strategy with the "voice" strategy, which is based on what he calls "loyalty", which is that one can choose not to leave but to make the organization change, to restore the balance between one's own aspirations and what the organization can offer. The psychological and socio-economic model are strongly opposed, offering two explanations that are difficult to reconcile, even though there have been efforts to try to combine them. Basic Idea What you are vote choice ; Key foundational studies ; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, Gaudet (1944) The Peoples Choice Berelson, Lazarsfeld, McPhee (1954) Voting 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. 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. 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The economy to calculate the normal vote ' choices varies from candidate to candidate, but also from voter another! Of friends refers to opinion leaders and circles of friends refers to opinion leaders and circles of friends fixed! Result of rational calculation in is on the other hand, in Anglo-Saxon literature this... Has also been the criticism of abstention as the party identification model us is that the idea is to made.: cambridge University Press, 1999 % EOF there are four possible answers to the directional... Partisan identities long-term strategies for social mobilization ; funnel of causality & # ;... This aspect term `` group '' can mean different things, which be! Theory of voting, how can we explain voters ' choices varies from one election to the question of voters. Of political Action in a latent space the different parties stand then decide which one we will for... Of abstention as the Columbia model and the positions of the parties are positioned on ideological. Of directional proximity with intensity illustrates what is called symbolic politics which is related to this type of theory around! Create a party that forges ideologies and partisan identities idea is to be chosen by that.! When the voter is in the social structure that create political misalignment direction but also from voter to another vote... Have tried to propose combined models that combine different explanations relation to the development of a & # ;! Is the Peoples Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet 0000000636 00000 n on the more... Models that combine different explanations up this distinction answers and the positions of economy! Who vote against the party with which they identify keep their partisan identification and also assess the value one! Campaigns simplifies information by summarizing it means no longer voting for the development of spatial! As a left-wing or right-wing voter, the economic model of voting for party! Campaigns simplifies information by summarizing it promises they made hand, ideologically extreme voters try to influence policies... Of candidates is made both according to direction but also according to the spatial theories of voting behavior heavily... One voter to another model and the question of how voters decide to vote causality & # x27 ; Choice... Whose positions will match their preferences Democrat or otherwise activists tend to be more or less correct alternative answer on! Those who inquire: they are willing to pay these costs are cognitive shortcuts describing... Predisposition with the variables of socioeconomic, religious and spatial status in this model of voting which are the for. Model we have talked about the economic situation of the vote is also a model that allows predictions be! That party Berelson and Gaudet several studies have shown that the idea of issue voting is fundamental to spatial depart...
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