The presupposition is that voter preferences are not exogenous but are endogenous - they change within the framework of an electoral process. 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. Political parties that compete in elections often promote themselves through affirmative political concepts for the development of society. Fiorina also talks about partisan identification, that is to say that there is a possible convergence between these different theories. The importance of symbols lies in what arouses emotions. WebVoting behavior pertains to the actions or inactions of citizens in respect of participating in the elections that take place for members of their local, regional, or national governments. Spatial theories of voting are nothing other than what we have seen so far with regard to the economic model of voting. 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. This refers to the Michigan model, the psycho-sociological model. We project voters' preferences and political positions, that is, the positions that parties have on certain issues and for the preferences that voters have on certain issues. 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. This diagram shows the process of misalignment with changes in the generational structure and changes in the social structure that create political misalignment. Four questions around partisan identification. 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. For some, this model overestimates the capabilities that voters have. 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. 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 has been a lot of criticism that has allowed the idea of issue voting to develop in a rationalist context and models. Today, in the literature, we talk about the economic vote in a narrower and slightly different sense, namely that the electoral choice is strongly determined by the economic situation and by the policies that the government puts in place in particular to deal with situations of economic difficulty. 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. It's believed that the social class was the most accurate indicator of likely voting intention. The law of curvilinear disparity takes up this distinction. The ideological space can be defined as a left-right ideological space but can also be defined more precisely in relation to certain issues. 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. On that basis, voters calculate the utility income of the different parties and then they look at and evaluate the partisan differential. In the spatial theories of the vote, we see the strategic link between a party's supply and a demand from voters or electors. Since the idea is to calculate the costs and benefits of voting for one party rather than the other, therefore, each party brings us some utility income. This is a very common and shared notion. But more generally, when there is a campaign, the issues are discussed. 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. 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. How was that measured? We are going to talk about the economic model. Expectedly, in their function 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. Studies have shown that, for example, outside the United States, a much larger proportion of voters who change their vote also change their partisan identification. 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. Yes, voted; no. 0-8, 9, 10. The theory of the economic model of the vote is also a model that allows predictions to be made about party behaviour. 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. 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". Distance is understood in the sense of the proximity model for whom voter preference and party position is also important. WebThe Columbia model describes the influence of socialization on decision-making about whether to vote or not, and who to vote for; in this way, it highlights the importance of social integration as a motivating element for political participation. For Lazarsfeld, "a person thinks politically as he or she is socially". Is partisan identification one-dimensional? 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. 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. voters who follow a systematic vote are voters who are willing to pay these information or information-related costs. 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. For Lazarsfeld, we think politically how we are socially, there is not really the idea of electoral choice. 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. So, we are going to the extremes precisely because we are trying to mobilize an electorate. If we do not accept the idea that actors will vote according to their assessment of certain issues, to be more precise, according to their assessment of the position that the various parties have on certain issues, if we do not understand that, we cannot understand the spatial theories of voting either. We talk about the electoral market in the media or the electoral supply. For the sociological model we have talked about the index of political predisposition with the variables of socioeconomic, religious and spatial status. (1949). Psychological theories are based on a type of explanation that does not focus on the issues discussed during a political campaign, for example. Prospective voting says that voters will listen to what candidates and parties have to say. Many researchers have criticised the Downs proximity model in particular. This is especially important when applying this type of reasoning empirically. 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. It is a rather descriptive model, at least in its early stages. This is related to its variation in space and time. Ideology is to be understood as a way of simplifying our world in relation to the problem of information. So all these elements help to explain the vote and must be taken into account in order to explain the vote. That is what is called the proximity vote, that is, having a preference over a policy. Hence the creation of the political predisposition index which should measure and capture the role of social insertion or position in explaining electoral choice. 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 choice of candidates is made both according to direction but also according to the intensity of positions on a given issue. Prospective voting says that the evaluation is based on what the parties and candidates are going to say. This model explains for Downs why we abstain. Nevertheless, some of these spatial theories depart from this initial formulation. On the other hand, ideologically extreme voters try to influence party policies through party activism (voice). The study of swing voters has its origins in the seminal works of the Columbia school of voting behavior (Berelson et al. 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. Political Behaviour: Historical and methodological benchmarks, The structural foundations of political behaviour, The cultural basis of political behaviour, PEOPLE'S CHOICE: how the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign, https://doi.org/10.1177/000271624926100137, https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414094027002001, https://baripedia.org/index.php?title=Theoretical_models_of_voting_behaviour&oldid=49464, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Survey findings on votersmotivations Ideal point models assume that lawmakers and bills are represented as %%EOF One must assess the value of one's own participation and also assess the number of other citizens who will vote. 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. 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. The behavior results either in support for political candidates or parties or abstention from the voting process. A particular configuration is the fact that there are dissatisfied party activists who are extremist compared to voters and elected party leaders. 0000000929 00000 n In other words, they propose something quite ecumenical that combines directional and proximity models. It is also possible to add that the weight of partisan identification varies from one voter to another. From the perspective of the issue vote, there are four main ways to explain how and why voters are going to vote a certain way and why parties are going to position themselves. 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. This ensures congruence and proximity between the party and the electorate. it takes a political position that evokes the idea of symbolic politics in a more salient way. It is possible to determine direction based on the "neutral point" which is the point in the middle, or it is also possible to determine direction from the "status quo". There are other variants or models that try to accommodate this complexity. Voters assess the utility income of parties and candidates. Weba new model of legislative behavior that captures when and how lawmakers vote differently than expected. About a quarter of the electorate votes in this way. The reference work is The Peoples Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. The economic model of the vote puts the notion of electoral choice back at the centre. 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 is called retrospective voting, which means that we are not looking at what the parties said in their platforms, but rather at what the parties did before. it is an element of direction and not an element of distance or proximity that counts. 0 There has also been the criticism of abstention as the result of rational calculation. WebThis voting theory suggests that models of the vote choices of rational individuals should work with social rather than selfish utility functions. 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. 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. 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. There are different types of individuals who take different kinds of shortcuts or not, who vote systematically or not, and so on. On the other hand, women tend to have less stable partisan identification, they change more often too. 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. Q. These three models diverge in methodology and application of research, but each has provided important data regarding the factors that influence voter choice. party loyalties are freed from their social base and thus these party identifications are formed and crystallized. Three notions must be distinguished: a phase of political alignment (1), which is when there is a strengthening of partisan loyalties, i.e. 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. 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. JSTOR. 30 seconds. 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. 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. There are several responses to criticisms of the proximity model. 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. WebThe politics of Colombia take place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Colombia is both head of state and head of government, This approach has often been criticized as a static approach since socio-economic or even socio-demographic characteristics do not change in the short term and yet the vote increasingly changes in the short term, what is called in electoral volatility, i.e. Voters will vote for a party but that party is not necessarily the one with which they identify. 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. 0000005382 00000 n There is no real electoral choice in this type of explanation, but it is based on our insertion in a social context. Another model is called the funnel model of causality which has been proposed by these authors working on the psycho-sociological model. 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. xref 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. Voting represents an important aspect of public participation in a democratic system. How to assess the position of different parties and candidates. LAZARSFELD, PAUL F., BERNARD BERELSON, and HAZEL GAUDET. [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. A third possible answer is that they will vote for the candidate whose political ideas are closest to their own. In the psychological approach, the information problem is circumvented by the idea of the development of partisan identification, which is an emotional shortcut that voters operate. 0000006260 00000 n What voters perceive are directional signals, that is, voters perceive that some parties are going in one direction and other parties are going in another direction on certain issues. 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 is an idea of interdependence between political supply and demand, between parties and voters, which is completely removed from other types of explanations. Even more plausibly, election campaigns are built around several issues. On this basis, four types of voters can be identified in a simplified manner: It is possible to start from the assumption that the characteristics of these different voters are very different. 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Ideology is to say or the electoral market in the social class was the most accurate indicator of likely intention...

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