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. 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. 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. In a phase of alignment, this would be the psycho-sociological model, i.e. Ecological regression represents one extreme: the presumption that voting behavior changes systematically across groups but only changes randomly, if at all, within groups. Often, in Anglo-Saxon literature, this model is referred to as the party identification model. <]>> The degree of political sophistication, political knowledge, interest in politics varies from voter to voter. In other words, this identification is part of the self-image one can have of oneself. Later, their analysis saw that party identification and attachment was the most common factor. Economic theories of voting explain both voter turnout (1) and electoral choice (2). This is the proximity model. The anomaly is that there is a majority of the electorate around the centre, but there are parties at the extremes that can even capture a large part of the preferences of the electorate. Thus, they were well suited not only to develop and test theories of voting behavior, but also to provide an historical record of the considerations shaping the outcomes of specific national elections. There is an opposite reasoning. The government is blamed for the poor state of the economy. 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. Another model is called the funnel model of causality which has been proposed by these authors working on the psycho-sociological model. A distinction is made between the sociological model of voting from the Columbia School, which refers to the university where this model was developed. The relationship between partisan identification and voting is that the model postulates that partisan identification is the explanatory variable and that voting for the electoral choice is the explained variable. 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. It is a model that is very close to data and practice and lends itself very easily to empirical testing through measures of partisan identification and different measures of socio-demographic factors among others. For some, these are theories that offer reflections on the proper functioning of democracy, on presuppositions, the role of information or the role of citizens for the proper functioning of democracy and the role of parties. 0000011193 00000 n 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. Certain developments in the theory of the psycho-sociological model have in fact provided answers to these criticisms. He wanted to look for one thing and found something else. The voters have to make that assessment and then decide which one brings more income and which one we will vote for. For Przeworski and Sprague, there may be another logic that is not one of maximizing the electorate in the short term but one of mobilizing the electorate in the medium and long term. 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. 0000007835 00000 n voters who follow a systematic vote are voters who are willing to pay these information or information-related costs. If we accept this premise, how will we position ourselves? 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. p. 31). . Lazarsfeld was interested in this and simply, empirically, he found that these other factors had less explanatory weight than the factors related to political predisposition and therefore to this social inking. 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. 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. Spatial theories of voting are nothing other than what we have seen so far with regard to the economic model of voting. 0000010337 00000 n What interests us is that the idea of issue voting is fundamental to spatial theories of voting. That is called the point of indifference. Ideal point models assume that lawmakers and bills are represented as points in a latent space. 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. Grofman introduces a central element which is the position of the status quo which is not necessarily the neutral point but the current policy. (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. This model predicts a convergence of party program positions around two distinct positions, there are two types of convergence. In other words, party activists tend to be more extreme in their political attitudes than voters or party leaders. We want to know how and why a voter will vote for a certain party. Discounting is saying that the voter does not fully believe what the parties say. The spatial theory of the vote postulates that the electoral choice is made in the maximization of individual utility. 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. Nevertheless, some of these spatial theories depart from this initial formulation. 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. Much of the work in electoral behaviour draws on this thinking. There is a whole literature on opinion formation, quite consensually, that says that citizens have a limited capacity to process information. The psycho-sociological model, also known as the Michigan model, can be represented graphically or schematically. As the authors of The American Voter put 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. Some people talk about membership voting for the first two theories and cognitive voting for the economic model of voting. Applied to the electorate, this means no longer voting for one party and going to vote for another party. 43 17 The basic idea is the representation of a point that is an ideal point for each voter in a hypothetical space. The role of the media and campaigns simplifies information by summarizing it. But there are studies that also show that the causal relationship goes in the other direction. 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. A lawmaker's (stochastic) voting behavior is characterized by the relationship between her position in this space and the bill's position [1 . How to assess the position of different parties and candidates. 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. The economic model of the vote puts the notion of electoral choice back at the centre. This is more related to the retrospective vote. Does partisan identification work outside the United States? This is a very common and shared notion. 0000000929 00000 n Hence the creation of the political predisposition index which should measure and capture the role of social insertion or position in explaining electoral choice. Prospective voting says that the evaluation is based on what the parties and candidates are going to say. In other words, the homing tendency that is the explanation that the model postulates is much less true outside the United States. Numbers abound, since we have seen that, in the end, both models systematically have a significant effect. There are three actors at play in this theory: there are voters, candidates, and an intermediate group represented by activists who are in fact voters who become activists going to exercise "voice". There is also a literature on whether certain parties have certain issues, which voters believe are the parties that are better able to deal with a certain issue. Bakker, B. N., Hopmann, D. N., & Persson, M. (2014). According to Merril and Grofman, one cannot determine whether one pure model is superior to another because there are methodological and data limitations. 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. Numerous studies examine voting behavior based on the formal theoretical predictions of the spatial utility model. Other researchers have tried to propose combined models that combine different explanations. 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. Pp. It is an answer that remains faithful to the postulates of Downs' theory and the proximity model. Furthermore, "social characteristics determine political preferences". As far as the psycho-sociological model is concerned, it has the merit of challenging the classical theory of democracy which puts the role on the rational actor. These are possible answers more to justify and account for this anomaly. Proximity means the closeness of the voter's interests to the political proposals that are made with the parties. Value orientations refer to materialism as well as post-materialism, among other things, cleavages but no longer from a value perspective. 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. 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. 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. This ensures congruence and proximity between the party and the electorate. Although the models rely on the same data they make radically different predictions about the political future. The explanatory factors and aspects highlighted by these different models are always taken into account. The presupposition for spatial theories of voting has already been mentioned, namely the stake vote. 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. Due to the internet of behaviors (IoBe) information, user-specific recommendations can be customized in various fields such as trade, health, economy, law, and entertainment. The intensity directional model adds an element that is related to the intensity with which candidates and political parties defend certain positions. the translation of personal preference into a voluntary action designed to influence public policy 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. (Second edition.) Misalignment creates greater electoral volatility that creates a change in the party system that can have a feedback on the process of alignment, misalignment or realignment. However, we see that this is not always true and that there are parties that propose more extreme policies that receive considerable electoral support. This model explains for Downs why we abstain. A third criticism of the simple proximity model is the idea of the median voter, which is the idea that all voters group around the centre, so parties, based on this observation, will maximize their electoral support at the centre, and therefore if they are rational, parties will tend to be located more at the centre. On the other hand, the intensity directional model better explains the electoral choices of candidates who are not currently in power. The idea is that you stay loyal and you do "voice", that is, act to make things change. 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. trailer 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. It is multidimensional also in the bipartisan context of the United States because there are cleavages that cut across parties. 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. changes in voting behaviour from one election to the next. There was a whole series of critics who said that if it's something rational, there's a problem with the way democracy works. The voters choose the candidate whose positions will match their preferences. _____ were the first widespread barriers to the franchise to be eliminated. 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. 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. 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. The theory of partisan competition was completely eliminated by the other types of explanations. By finding something else, he shaped a dominant theory explaining the vote. There has also been the criticism of abstention as the result of rational calculation. Moreover, retrospective voting can also be seen as a shortcut. 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. McClung Lee, A. 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. 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. Property qualifications. For many, voting is a civic duty. 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 idea was that there were two possible responses that are put in place by members of that organization: one of "exit", to withdraw, to go to another organization. Theoretically, it is possible to have as many dimensions as there are issues being discussed in an election campaign. The distance must be assessed on the basis of what the current policy is. In other words, social, spatial or group membership largely determines individual political actions. 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. The psycho-sociological model is intended as a development that wants to respond to this criticism. This is called the proximity model. 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. Finally, there is an instrumental approach to information and voting. The importance of symbols lies in what arouses emotions. . Since the economic crisis, there has been an increasing focus on the economic crisis and economic conditions and how that can explain electoral volatility and electoral change. 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