Radical approach regards class-based (structural) model as outdated and insufficient to explain . Some people talk about membership voting for the first two theories and cognitive voting for the economic model of voting. For most theories, and in particular Matthews' Simple Directional Model theory, the neutral point determines direction. 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. The voters have to make that assessment and then decide which one brings more income and which one we will vote for. Although the models rely on the same data they make radically different predictions about the political future. 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. changes in voting behaviour from one election to the next. At the aggregate level, the distribution of partisan identification in the electorate makes it possible to calculate the normal vote. 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. Curiously, the intensity directional model that adds an element to the simple directional model chronologically precedes the simple directional model. 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. The utility function of this model is modified compared to the simple model, i.e. 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. (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. The spatial theory of the vote postulates that the electoral choice is made in the maximization of individual utility. 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. xxxiii, 178. These authors have tried to say that the different explanatory theories of the vote can be more or less explanatory in the sense of having more or less importance of explanatory power depending on the phases in which one is in a process of alignment and misalignment. They find that conscientious and neurotic people tend not to identify with a political party. 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. 0000006260 00000 n Downs already put ideology at the centre of his explanation. the further a party moves in the same direction as the voter, the more likely it is to be chosen by that voter. Furthermore, "social characteristics determine political preferences". Hirschman wanted to explain what happens in organizations when they enter a situation of crisis or decline. A distinction is made between the sociological model of voting from the Columbia School, which refers to the university where this model was developed. Ideology is a means of predicting and inferring political positions during an election campaign. We must assess the costs of going to the polls, of gathering the information needed to make a decision, but also the value of one's own participation, since the model is also supposed to explain voter turnout. 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. Voters calculate the cost of voting. There are other variants or models that try to accommodate this complexity. social determinism 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. 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. 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. 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. For Fiorina, the retrospective vote is the fact that current policy is fundamental, whereas in the prospective vote it is less so. We are going to talk about the economic model. The law of curvilinear disparity takes up this distinction. The initial formulation of the model is based on the Downs theory in An Economic Theory of Democracy publi en 1957. Voting for a party and continuing to vote for such a party repeatedly makes it possible to develop an identification with that party which, in a way, then reinforces the electoral choice. 3105. Voting behavior is a form of electoral behavior. Other researchers have tried to propose combined models that combine different explanations. When the voter is in the same position, i.e. 0000001213 00000 n The idea is to create a party that forges ideologies and partisan identities. Proximity models will give certain proximity related answers and the other more recent models offer an alternative answer based on certain criticisms. The concept of electoral choice does not belong to the sociological model but rather to rationalist theories. There are a whole host of typologies in relation to issues, and we distinguish different types of issues such as position issues and issues that are more or less emotional. Parties do not try to maximize the vote, but create images of society, forge identities, mobilize commitments for the future. There have been attempts to address this anomaly. The fit of a measurement model that differentiates between the various degrees of suicidal severity was verified. 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. As far as the proximity model with discounting is concerned, there is a concern when we are going to apply it empirically: we need to be able to determine what the degree of discounting is, how much the voter is going to discount. Voters who rely on strong partisan identification do not need to go and do systematic voting or take one of the shortcuts. 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. By finding something else, he shaped a dominant theory explaining the vote. McElroy's connection to Vancouver didn't end there. 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. For Iversen, distance is also important. Ideology is to be understood as a way of simplifying our world in relation to the problem of information. is premised on the assumption that elections connect the will of the people to the actions of government. Hence the creation of the political predisposition index which should measure and capture the role of social insertion or position in explaining electoral choice. 0000011193 00000 n Voters who vote against the party with which they identify keep their partisan identification. 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. 65, no. The goal of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the measurement of suicide severity based on the Columbia suicide severity rating scale. According to Merril and Grofman, one cannot determine whether one pure model is superior to another because there are methodological and data limitations. 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. How does partisan identification develop? A unified theory of voting: directional and proximity spatial models. There are also intermediate variables that relate to loyalties to a certain group or sense of belonging. Thus, the interpretation of differences in voting behaviour from one group to another is to be sought in the position of the group in society and in the way its relations with parties have developed. 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. This diagram shows the process of misalignment with changes in the generational structure and changes in the social structure that create political misalignment. (Second edition.) 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. There has also been the criticism of abstention as the result of rational calculation. It is also often referred to as a point of indifference because there are places where the voter cannot decide. [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. These are some of the criticisms and limitations often made by proponents of other approaches. There are different strategies that are put in place by voters in a conscious or unconscious way to reduce these information costs, which are all the costs associated with the fact that in order to be able to evaluate the utility income given by one party rather than another, one has to go and see, listen, hear and understand what these parties are saying. There is the important opposition between an economic vote based on a choice, which is the idea that the voter makes a real choice based on a cost-benefit calculation, a choice that is rational in the end according to Weber's typology, while the psycho-sociological vote is rather based on a concept of loyalty that often makes the opposition between choice and loyalty. The explanatory factors and aspects highlighted by these different models are always taken into account. 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. 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. On the other hand, the intensity directional model better explains the electoral choices of candidates who are not currently in power. However, this is empirically incorrect. The idea is that this table is the Downs-Hirschman model that would have been made in order to summarize the different responses to the anomaly we have been talking about. LAZARSFELD, PAUL F., BERNARD BERELSON, and HAZEL GAUDET. 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. What we see here in relation to the sociological model and that these variables highlighted by the sociological model such as socialization, inking or social position play a role but only indirectly. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 261(1), 194194. There is this curvilinear disparity because the three actors position themselves differently. This model of voting behavior sees the voter as thinking individual who is able to take a view on political issues and votes accordingly. This model of directional proximity with intensity illustrates what is called symbolic politics which is related to the problem of information. 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 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. 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. 43 0 obj <> endobj 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. The book's focus was sociological, mainly considering socio-demographic predictors, interpersonal influence, cross-pressures, and the effects of social groups, as well as analyzing voter activation, reinforcement, and conversion across the election year. 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 first answer is that basically, they vote according to their position, according to their social characteristics or according to their socialization, which refers to the sociological model. In this model, there is a region of acceptability of positional extremism which is a region outside of which the intensity of the positions or the direction shown by a party cannot go because if it goes beyond that region, the voter will no longer choose that party. Suicide is a global public health problem. The image that an individual has of himself in this perspective is also the result of this identification. It is an explanation that is completely outside the logic of proximity and the spatial logic of voting. From that point on, there has been the development of a whole body of literature on political psychology. 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. the earlier Columbia studies, the Michigan election studies were based upon national survey samples. The vote is seen here as an instrument, that is to say, there is the idea of an instrumental vote and not an expressive one. In essence, those studies provided the core concepts and models used in contemporary voting research. 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. 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. It is a small bridge between different explanations. Ideology can also be in relation to another dimension, for example between egalitarian and libertarian ideology. Fiorina reverses the question, in fact, partisan identification can result from something else and it also produces electoral choices. Pp. Linked to this, it is important to look at individual data empirically as well. In short, it is an explanatory model that emphasizes the role of political attitudes. 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. Finally, there is an instrumental approach to information and voting. 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. 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 second explanation refers to the directional model, i.e. There may be one that is at the centre, but there are also others that are discussed. 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. A third possible answer is that they will vote for the candidate whose political ideas are closest to their own. Theoretically, it is possible to have as many dimensions as there are issues being discussed in an election campaign. These are voters who proceed by systematic voting. This is the basic motivation for the development of these directional models. preferences and positions. There is an idea of interdependence between political supply and demand, between parties and voters, which is completely removed from other types of explanations. 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. 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. 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. Another possible strategy is to rely on the judgment of others such as opinion leaders. These criticisms and limitations are related to the original model. Ideal point models assume that lawmakers and bills are represented as points in a latent space. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948. What is interesting is that they try to relate this to personality traits such as being open, conscientious, extroverted, pleasant and neurotic. For Lazarsfeld, we think politically how we are socially, there is not really the idea of electoral choice. Proximity means the closeness of the voter's interests to the political proposals that are made with the parties. 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. It is no longer a question of explaining "why" people participate but "how", that is, in terms of voter turnout, what choice is made and what can explain an electoral choice. Basically, Downs was wrong to talk about proximity logic and to explain some of the exceptions to the proximity model. The theory of the economic model of the vote is also a model that allows predictions to be made about party behaviour. 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. 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. . and voters who choose to use euristic shortcuts to solve the information problem. One important element of this model must be highlighted in relation to the others. This article reviews the main theoretical models that explain the electoral behavior sociological model of voting behavior, psychosocial model of voting behavior and rational. 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. This approach emphasizes a central variable which is that of partisan identification, which is a particular political attitude towards a party. These are possible answers more to justify and account for this anomaly. The psycho-sociological model has its roots in Campell's work entitled The American Voter publi en 1960. 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. Prospective voting says that the evaluation is based on what the parties and candidates are going to say. Three Models of Voting Behavior. There is a direct link between social position and voting. 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. 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. Reinforcement over time since adult voters increasingly rely on this partisan identification to vote and to face the problems of information, namely partisan identification seen as a way of solving a problem that all voters have, which is how to form an idea and deal with the abundance and complexity of the information that comes to us from, for example, the media, political campaigns or others in relation to the political offer. Directional model with intensity: Rabinowitz, Four possible answers to the question of how voters decide to vote, Unified Voting Model: Merrill and Grofman, Responses to criticisms of the proximity model, Partisan Competition Theory: Przeworski and Sprague, Relationship between voting explanatory models and realignment cycle. Partisan identification becomes stronger over time. Information is central to spatial theories, whereas in the psycho-sociological model, information is much less important. Grofman introduces a central element which is the position of the status quo which is not necessarily the neutral point but the current policy. There may be a vote that is different from partisan identification, but in the medium to long term, partisan identification should strengthen. _____ were the first widespread barriers to the franchise to be eliminated. 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. All parties that are in the same direction of the voter maximize the individual utility of that voter. 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. For many, voting is a civic duty. Much of the work in electoral behaviour draws on this thinking. Later, their analysis saw that party identification and attachment was the most common factor. 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.
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