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. In other words, the voters' political preferences on different issues, in other words, in this type of theorizing, they know very well what they want, and what is more, these positions are very fixed and present when the voter is going to have to vote. It is because we are rational, and if we are rational, rationality means maximizing our usefulness on the basis of the closeness we can have with a party. The basic assumption is that voters decide primarily on the basis of ideologies and not on the basis of specific positions on issues. These theories are called spatial theories of the vote because they are projected. From that point on, there has been the development of a whole body of literature on political psychology. 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 presupposition is that voter preferences are not exogenous but are endogenous - they change within the framework of an electoral process. So there are four main ways. In other words, they propose something quite ecumenical that combines directional and proximity models. 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. As the authors of The American Voter put 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. Pages pour les contributeurs dconnects en savoir plus. If you experience any difficulty accessing any part of this website, please call (386) 758-1026 or email kbanner@votecolumbiafl.gov for further assistance. 0000004336 00000 n Downs, Anthony. More specifically, the costs that the voter has to take into account according to the different parties and candidates must be evaluated, which is the partisan differential, i.e. There has been a lot of criticism that has allowed the idea of issue voting to develop in a rationalist context and models. Ideology is a means of predicting and inferring political positions during an election campaign. The reference work is The People's Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. 0000006260 00000 n That is why there are many empirical analyses that are based on this model. 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. 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? 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. There was a whole series of critics who said that if it's something rational, there's a problem with the way democracy works. For Lazarsfeld, we think politically how we are socially, there is not really the idea of electoral choice. The organization is in crisis and no longer reflects our own needs. 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 function of partisan identification is to allow the voter to face political information and to know which party to vote for. Today, there is an attempt to combine the different explanations trying to take into account, both sociological determinants but also the emotional and affective component as well as the component related to choice and calculation. The theory of partisan competition was completely eliminated by the other types of explanations. 1.2 Psychology and behavior 9 1.3 Voting behavior and action 13 1.4 Strategies of explanation 14 1.5 Research questions and outline 16 2 The empirical analysis of voting action 19 2.1 Introduction 21 2.2 The Wrzburg school 21 2.3 Lazarsfeld and the empirical analysis of action 23 2.4 The Columbia approach to voting action 26 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. 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. That discounting depends on where the policy is right now in relation to what the party is promising, and that is the directional element. The fit of a measurement model that differentiates between the various degrees of suicidal severity was verified. 0000007057 00000 n For most theories, and in particular Matthews' Simple Directional Model theory, the neutral point determines direction. In the spatial theories of the vote, we see the strategic link between a party's supply and a demand from voters or electors. 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. 135150. emotional ties between voters and parties; a phase of political misalignment (2), which may be the one we are currently in in Europe since the economic crisis, which is a weakening of partisan loyalties resulting in increased electoral volatility, i.e. There is in fact the idea that the choices and preferences of voters in the centre will cause the parties, since they are aiming in this model, to try to maximize their electoral support. That is what is called the proximity vote, that is, having a preference over a policy. In other words, in this retrospective assessment, the economic situation of the country plays a crucial role. social determinism We see the kinship of this model with the sociological model explaining that often they are put together. We can talk about two major theories or two major models or even three models. the difference in the cost-benefit ratio that different parties give. 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. This model relies heavily on the ability of voters to assess and calculate their own interests and all the costs associated with the action of going to the polls. So, voters evaluate the positions of the parties and from these positions, this party is a left-wing party and this party is a right-wing party. If voters, who prefer more extreme options, no longer find these options within the party they voted for, then they will look elsewhere and vote for another party. %PDF-1.3 % There are different types of individuals who take different kinds of shortcuts or not, who vote systematically or not, and so on. It is a small bridge between different explanations. 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. One important element of this model must be highlighted in relation to the others. As for the intensity model, they manage to perceive something more, that is to say, not only a direction but an intensity through which a political party defends certain positions and goes in certain political directions. Finally, they can vote for the candidate who is most likely in the voters' perception to change things in a way or in a way that leaves them the most satisfied. trailer Several studies have shown that the very fact of voting for a party contributes to the development of a certain identification for that party. Proximity means the closeness of the voter's interests to the political proposals that are made with the parties. It is in this sense that the party identification model provides an answer to this criticism that the sociological model does not highlight the mechanisms that make a certain social inking influence a certain electoral choice. From the point of view of parties and candidates, the economic model and in particular the model that was proposed by Downs in 1957 and which predicts a convergence of a party position towards the centre. By Phone: (386) 758-1026 ext. This model has given rise to the spatial theories of voting which are the dominant theories. Moreover, retrospective voting can also be seen as a shortcut. Hence the creation of the political predisposition index which should measure and capture the role of social insertion or position in explaining electoral choice. However, we see that this is not always true and that there are parties that propose more extreme policies that receive considerable electoral support. Maximizing utility is done in proximity to certain issues. Another model is called the funnel model of causality which has been proposed by these authors working on the psycho-sociological model. If we take into account Przeworski and Sprague's idea that preferences are exogenous and not endogenous, it is possible to create a typology as Iversen did. We often talk about economic theory of the vote in the broadest sense in order to designate a rationalist theory based on rational choice theory and spatial theories of the vote. The psycho-sociological model is intended as a development that wants to respond to this criticism. This theory presupposed that the voter recognizes his or her own interest, assesses alternative candidates, and on the basis of this assessment, will choose for the candidate or party that will be most favourably assessed in the sense of best serving his or her own political interests and interests. The term "group" can mean different things, which can be an ethnic group or a social class. The theories that are supposed to explain the electoral choice also explain at the same time the electoral participation in particular with the sociological model. Hinich and Munger say the opposite, saying that on the basis of their idea of the left-right positioning of the parties, they somehow deduce what will be or what is the position of these parties on the different issues. a new model of legislative behavior that captures when and how lawmakers vote differently than expected. These explanations are known as the Columbia Model and the Michigan Model, and describing these two . is partisan identification one-dimensional? The external factors would be the factors that, in the basic theory of the psycho-sociological approach, it would seem that this is what can do but if we have a certain partisan attachment to vote for another party because we are influenced by one or other of these factors but, basically, we keep our partisan attachment and the next time when these factors change, we return to the normal vote corresponding to the partisan attachment. They find that conscientious and neurotic people tend not to identify with a political party. This is an alternative way which is another answer to the question of how to evaluate the position of different parties and candidates. Various explanations have been offered over the roughly 70-year history of voting behavior research, but two explanations in particular have garnered the most attention and generated the most debate in the literature on voting behavior. If we look at it a little more broadly, partisan identification can be seen as a kind of shortcut. On the other hand, in rationalist approaches, shortcuts are cognitive shortcuts. There are different strategies that are studied in the literature. Fiorina proposed the question of how to evaluate the position of different parties and candidates: how can voters know what the position of different parties is during an election campaign? . The first question is how to assess the position of the different parties and candidates, since we start from the idea of projecting voters' political preferences and party projections onto a map. There are other models and economic theories of the vote, including directional theories that have a different perspective but remain within the framework of economic theories of the vote. There have been attempts to address this anomaly. 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. . The theoretical account of voting behavior drew heavily upon the metaphor of a 'funnel of causality'. Partisan identification becomes stronger over time. This is a very common and shared notion. It is possible to create a typology that distinguishes between four approaches crossing two important and crucial elements: "is voting spatial? The problem of information is crucial in the spatial theories of voting and who would need an answer to fully understand these different theories. 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. 59 0 obj <>stream This table shows that for quite some time now there has been a strong decline in partisan identification. 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. We have seen that at Downs, the role of ideology is fundamental and that ideology could function as a kind of shortcut. It is quite interesting to see the bridges that can be built between theories that may seem different. Personality traits and party identification over time. What explains historical variation in voter turnout? 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. The theory of the economic model of the vote is also a model that allows predictions to be made about party behaviour. Numbers abound, since we have seen that, in the end, both models systematically have a significant effect. The role of the centrality of partisan identification has been criticized, especially today, because partisan identification plays a role that is still important but much less important than it used to be and may be much less important than some researchers within this paradigm have postulated. It is a moment when social cleavages directly influence the vote in this approach and therefore the sociological model, perhaps, at that moment, better explains the vote. 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. The economic model has put the rational and free citizen back at the centre of attention and reflection, whereas if we push the sociological model a bit to the extreme, it puts in second place this freedom and this free will that voters can make since the psycho-sociological model tells us that voting is determined by social position, it is not really an electoral choice that we make in the end but it is simply the result of our social insertion or our attachment to a party. 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. It is the state of the economy that will decide who will win the election or not. Most voters have a sense of allegiance to a party that is inherited through the family. Property qualifications. Prospective voting is based on election promises and retrospective voting is based on past performance. 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. Economic theories of voting explain both voter turnout (1) and electoral choice (2). There is this curvilinear disparity because the three actors position themselves differently. Otherwise, our usefulness as voters decreases as a party moves away, i.e. The heterogeneity of the electorate and voters must be taken into account. In other words, party activists tend to be more extreme in their political attitudes than voters or party leaders. Finally, some studies show that high levels of education lead to weaker attachments to parties. 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. It is an answer that remains faithful to the postulates of Downs' theory and the proximity model. For the sociological model we have talked about the index of political predisposition with the variables of socioeconomic, religious and spatial status. The individual is subjectivity at the centre of the analysis. Four questions around partisan identification. Therefore, they cannot really situate where the different parties stand. [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. For Iversen, distance is also important. Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there has been a strong development of directional models. The idea is that each voter can be represented by a point in a hypothetical space and this space can be a space with N dimensions and each dimension represents an election campaign issue, so that this point reflects his or her ideal set of policies, i.e. 43 17 JSTOR. how does partisan identification develop? A third possible answer is that they will vote for the candidate whose political ideas are closest to their own. . There is also the economic vote, which is the role of the economy. Voters who rely on strong partisan identification do not need to go and do systematic voting or take one of the shortcuts. This is a fairly reasonable development, as is the discounting model, whose proximity was something reasonable and which makes the model more consistent with reality. On the other hand, preferences for candidates in power are best explained by the proximity model and the simple directional model. The premise of prospective voting is too demanding for most voters. Today, this may be less true, but until a certain point, there were relatively few empirical analyses based on the economic model of the vote. In 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 rational reading of one's own needs and the adequacy of different political offers to one's needs. and voters who choose to use euristic shortcuts to solve the information problem. Merrill, Samuel, and Bernard Grofman. The idea is to create a party that forges ideologies and partisan identities. Symbolic politics says that what is important in politics are not necessarily the rationally perceived positions or the political positions of the parties but what the political symbols evoke in relation to certain issues. 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