The assumption is that mobilizing an electorate is done by taking clear positions and not a centrist position. It is an explanation that is completely outside the logic of proximity and the spatial logic of voting. There was a whole series of critics who said that if it's something rational, there's a problem with the way democracy works. Fiorina's theory of retrospective voting is very simple. The distance must be assessed on the basis of what the current policy is. For the sociological model we have talked about the index of political predisposition with the variables of socioeconomic, religious and spatial status. This is the proximity model. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Education, 1987. 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 government is blamed for the poor state of the economy. The problem of information is crucial in the spatial theories of voting and who would need an answer to fully understand these different theories. All parties that are in the same direction of the voter maximize the individual utility of that voter. The Logics of Electoral Politics. 0000007835 00000 n There is this curvilinear disparity because the three actors position themselves differently. Basic Idea What you are vote choice ; Key foundational studies ; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, Gaudet (1944) The Peoples Choice Berelson, Lazarsfeld, McPhee (1954) Voting A first criticism that has been made is that the simple proximity model gives us a misrepresentation of the psychology of voting. To summarize these approaches, there are four possible answers to the question of how voters decide to vote. There is a particular requirement, which is that this way of explaining the voting behaviour of the electoral choice is very demanding in terms of the knowledge that voters may have about different positions, especially in a context where there are several parties and where the context of the political system and in particular the electoral system must be taken into account, because it may be easier for voters to know their positions when there are two parties, two candidates, than when there are, as in the Swiss context, many parties running. Voters who vote against the party with which they identify keep their partisan identification. Hinich and Munger take up the Downs idea but turn it around a bit. Ecological regression represents one extreme: the presumption that voting behavior changes systematically across groups but only changes randomly, if at all, within groups. 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. The psycho-sociological model has its roots in Campell's work entitled The American Voter publi en 1960. Even if there is still a significant effect of identification, there are other explanations and aspects to look for, particularly in terms of the issue vote and the assessments that different voters make of the issue vote. Bakker, B. N., Hopmann, D. N., & Persson, M. (2014). In the retrospective model, some researchers have proposed an alternative way of viewing partisan identification as being determined by the position voters take on issues. 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. 0000009473 00000 n 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. A set of theories has given some answers. The heterogeneity of the electorate and voters must be taken into account. On the other hand, ideologically extreme voters try to influence party policies through party activism (voice). This is something that remains difficult in theory, we don't know how much the voter will discount. Harrop, Martin, and William L. Miller. 0000008661 00000 n 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. The second criterion is subjectivity, which is that voters calculate the costs and benefits of voting subjectively, so they make an assessment of the costs and benefits. Print. 0000000866 00000 n It rejects the notion that voting behavior is largely determined by class affiliation or class socialization. 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. An important factor is the role of political campaigns in influencing the vote. Information is central to spatial theories, whereas in the psycho-sociological model, information is much less important. We worked with a sample of 516 Argentinean adults, aged 18 to 75. The sociological model is somewhat the model that wants to emphasize this aspect. (June 2012) Networks in electoral behavior, as a part of political science, refers to the relevance of networks in forming citizens' voting behavior at parliamentary, presidential or local elections. In the sociological and psycho-sociological model, there was no place for ideology, that's another thing that counts, on the other hand, in economic theories, spatial theories and Downs' theory of the economic vote, ideology is important. There is an idea of interdependence between political supply and demand, between parties and voters, which is completely removed from other types of explanations. 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. This model explains for Downs why we abstain. 0000011193 00000 n 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. 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? These theories are the retrospective voting theories and the theories of ideological space. For example, there is Lazarsfeld's theory with the idea that opinion leaders can be seen as people to whom we attribute a strong trust and maybe even an esteem in relation to the political judgment they may have and therefore, by discussing with these people, it is possible to form an electoral choice and therefore there is no need to go and pay these costs of gathering information. But more generally, when there is a campaign, the issues are discussed. 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. The concept and measurement of partisan identification as conceived by these researchers as applying to the bipartite system and therefore needs to be adapted to fit the multiparty and European system. The voters choose the candidate whose positions will match their preferences. There are other theories that highlight the impact of economic conditions and how voters compare different election results in their electoral choices, which refers to economic voting in the strict sense of the term. 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. It is also often referred to as a point of indifference because there are places where the voter cannot decide. It is multidimensional also in the bipartisan context of the United States because there are cleavages that cut across parties. Several studies show that the impact of partisan identification varies greatly from one context to another. 0000000016 00000 n Contenu disponible en Franais Contenido disponible en espaol Contenuto disponibile in italiano, The distinction between the three main explanatory models of voting is often found. When the voter is in the same position, i.e. Therefore, they cannot really situate where the different parties stand. 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. It is easier to look at what someone has done than to evaluate the promises they made. It has often been emphasized that this model and approach raises more questions than answers. "The answer is "yes", as postulated by spatial theories, or "no", as stated by Przeworski and Sprague, for example. xxxiii, 178. 0000010337 00000 n Several studies have shown that the very fact of voting for a party contributes to the development of a certain identification for that party. 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 Linked to this, it is important to look at individual data empirically as well. Other researchers have tried to propose combined models that combine different explanations. 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. As this is the first model that wanted to study empirically and test hypotheses on the basis of survey data, it was necessary to develop conceptual tools, in particular the political predisposition index, which focuses on three types of social affiliations that are fundamental in this perspective to explain electoral choices, namely social status, religion and place of residence. These authors proposed to say that there would be a relationship between the explanatory models of the vote and the cycle of alignment, realignment, misalignment in the sense that the sociological model would be better able to explain the vote in phases of political realignment. Later, their analysis saw that party identification and attachment was the most common factor. The term "group" can mean different things, which can be an ethnic group or a social class. The Peoples Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. The Lazarsfeld model would link membership and voting. It is quite interesting to see the bridges that can be built between theories that may seem different. 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. One possible strategy to reduce costs is to base oneself on ideology. We leave behind the idea of spatial theories that preferences are exogenous, that they are pre-existing and almost fixed. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. This model shows that there is more than political identities, partisan identification and social inking. 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. 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. The limitations are the explanation of partisan identification, which is that the model has been criticized because it explains or does not explain too much about where partisan identification comes from except to say that it is the result of primary socialization. How does partisan identification develop? IVERSEN, T. (1994). The utility function of this model is modified compared to the simple model, i.e. This model leaves little room for the ideology which is the idea that by putting so much emphasis on the emotional voter and feelings, it leaves little room for the ideology that is central to explaining the economic model of the vote. In this approach, these voters keep their partisan identification and again in the medium or long term, they will go back on the electoral choice that is identified with the partisan identification, also called the homing tendency, which is a tendency to go back on the party with which one identifies. Ideology can also be in relation to another dimension, for example between egalitarian and libertarian ideology. 59 0 obj <>stream 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. it is easier to change parties from one election to the next; a phase of realignment (3), which consists of creating new partisan loyalties. Voters will vote for a party but that party is not necessarily the one with which they identify. This article reviews the main theoretical models that explain the electoral behavior sociological model of voting behavior, psychosocial model of voting behavior and rational choice theory , stressing the continuity and theoretical complementarity between them. These explanations are known as the Columbia Model and the Michigan Model, and describing these two . In the literature, spatial theories of voting are often seen as one of the main developments of the last thirty years which has been precisely the development of directional models since the proximity model dates back to the 1950s. The Neighborhood Model. We speak of cognitive preference between one's political preferences and the positions of the parties. xb```f`` @f8F F'-pWs$I*Xe< *AA[;;8:::X"$C[6#,bH.vdM?2Zr@ ai,L From that point on, there has been the development of a whole body of literature on political psychology. to 1/n,and thus the expected utility of voting is proportional to N/n, which is approximately independent of the size of the electorate.3 In the basic rational-choice model of voting and political participation (see Blais 2000 for an overview and many references), the relative util-ity of voting, for a particular eligible voter, is: U = pB . Print. 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. The choice of candidates is made both according to direction but also according to the intensity of positions on a given issue. Voters are more interested in political results than in political programmes, and the choice is also made from this perspective. The utility function of the simple proximity model appears, i.e. What determines direction? Its weak explanatory power has been criticized, and these are much more recent criticisms in the sense that we saw when we talked about class voting in particular, which from then on saw the emergence of a whole series of critics who said that all these variables of social position and anchoring in social contexts may have been explanatory of participation and voting at the time these theories emerged in the 1950s, but this may be much less true today in a phase or period of political misalignment. 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. In other words, this identification is part of the self-image one can have of oneself. There are also studies that show that the more educated change less often from one party to another. This means that we are not necessarily going to listen to all the specific arguments of the different parties. 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. JSTOR. He wanted to look for one thing and found something else. 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. We must also take into account other socializing agents that can socialize us and make us develop a form of partisan identification. 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. 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. There is a whole branch of the electoral literature that emphasizes government action as an essential factor in explaining the vote, and there is a contrast between a prospective vote, which is voting according to what the parties say they will do during the election campaign, and a retrospective vote, which is voting in relation to what has been done, particularly by the government, which has attributed the successes or failures of a policy. 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 idea is to create a party that forges ideologies and partisan identities. All of these factors and their relationships have to be taken into account, but at the centre is always the partisan attachment. There are two important issues in relation to the spatial theory of voting. For Lazarsfeld, "a person thinks politically as he or she is socially". This identification with a party is inherited from the family emphasizing the role of primary socialization, it is reinforced over time including a reinforcement that is given by the very fact of voting for that party. Otherwise, our usefulness as voters decreases as a party moves away, i.e. These spatial theories start from the assumption that there is a voter or voters who have political preferences with respect to certain issues, but completely discard the explanation of how these preferences are formed. 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. [8][9], The second very important model is the psycho-sociological model, also known as the partisan identification model or Michigan School model, developed by Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes in Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, among others in The American Voter published in 1960. The initial formation of this model was very deterministic in wanting to focus on the role of social inclusion while neglecting other aspects, even though today there is increasingly a kind of ecumenical attempt to have an explanation that takes into account different aspects. There are two slightly different connotations. If certain conditions are present, such as good democratic functioning within the party, activists will have the opportunity to exercise "voice" and influence positions. There are other cleavages that cut across Republicans and Democrats that should be taken into account to explain the pattern. Proximity means the closeness of the voter's interests to the political proposals that are made with the parties. Is partisan identification one-dimensional? The spatial theory of the vote postulates that the electoral choice is made in the maximization of individual utility. 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. 0000001213 00000 n 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. Suicide is a global public health problem. It is possible to attribute some merits and some criticisms to this model at least in its initial formulation. 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. <]>> 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. The image that an individual has of himself in this perspective is also the result of this identification. It is a variant of the simple proximity model which remains in the idea of proximity but which adds an element which makes it possible to explain certain voting behaviours which would not be explainable by other models. The same can be said of the directional model with intensity. However, this is empirically incorrect. 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). does partisan identification work outside the United States? The reference work is The People's Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. 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. voters who follow a systematic vote are voters who are willing to pay these information or information-related costs. 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. The idea is that you stay loyal and you do "voice", that is, act to make things change. The idea of prospective voting is very demanding. There is no real electoral choice in this type of explanation, but it is based on our insertion in a social context. The idea is that the extremist attitudes of those former voters who become party activists push strategic positioning in a direction that takes them away from their constituents. If we accept this premise, how will we position ourselves? The psycho-sociological model is intended as a development that wants to respond to this criticism. 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. Theory, we do n't know how much the voter Makes up His Mind in a class... Explain the pattern policy is of spatial theories, whereas in the psycho-sociological model is intended as development! Premise, how will we position ourselves one party to another of socioeconomic, religious and status! Voters try to influence party policies through party activism ( voice ) political programmes, and the positions the... Disparity because the three actors position themselves differently simple model, i.e the parties! How will we position ourselves Presidential campaign and libertarian ideology, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan,. 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