The psycho-sociological model has its roots in Campell's work entitled The American Voter publi en 1960. 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 other variants or models that try to accommodate this complexity. 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. 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. Lazarsfeld's book created this research paradigm. Information is central to spatial theories, whereas in the psycho-sociological model, information is much less important. 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. This model shows that there is more than political identities, partisan identification and social inking. 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. 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. Voting is an instrument that serves us to achieve an objective. This is an alternative way which is another answer to the question of how to evaluate the position of different parties and candidates. These are possible answers more to justify and account for this anomaly. 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. Pages pour les contributeurs dconnects en savoir plus. A unified theory of voting: directional and proximity spatial models. Professor Political Science Buena Vista University Two basic concerns: Turnout ("Who votes?") Key questions: What are the characteristics and attitudes of voters vs. nonvoters? This paper examines two models used in survey research to explain voting behavior and finds that both models may be more or less correct. 0000000929 00000 n "i.e., if it is proximity, it is 'yes', otherwise it is 'no' and therefore directional; 'are the preferences of the actors exogenous? According to Fiorina, identification with a party is not necessarily the result of a long phase of socialization, but it is also the result of evaluations of a certain party, it is the fact of voting for that party that makes it possible to develop a partisan identification. 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. The extent to which the usefulness of voters' choices varies from candidate to candidate, but also from voter to voter. This creates a concern for circularity of reasoning. Numerous studies examine voting behavior based on the formal theoretical predictions of the spatial utility model. 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. 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. Property qualifications. The Neighborhood Model. Numerous studies have found that voting behavior and political acts can be "contagious . We need to find identification measures adapted to the European context, which the researchers have done. 0 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 is intended as a development that wants to respond to this criticism. The theoretical account of voting behavior drew heavily upon the metaphor of a 'funnel of causality'. 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. The second explanation refers to the directional model, i.e. The second question is according to which criteria to determine the individual utility of voters. Here we see the key factors, namely electoral choice and, at the centre, the identification variable for a party, which depends on two types of factors, namely primary socialization and group membership. In summary, it can be said that in the economic model of voting, the political preferences of voters on different issues, are clearly perceived by the voters themselves which is the idea that the voter must assess his own interest, he must clearly perceive what are the political preferences of voters. Within the ambit of such a more realistic, limited-rational model of human behavior, mitigation outcomes from . Pp. These are voters who proceed by systematic voting. They find that conscientious and neurotic people tend not to identify with a political party. 0000006260 00000 n Four questions around partisan identification. 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. Models of Voting Behavior Models of Voting Behavior Dr. Bradley Best Asst. The Peoples Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. There was a whole series of critics who said that if it's something rational, there's a problem with the way democracy works. 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. 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. There is a small degree of complexity because one can distinguish between attitudes towards the candidate or the party, attitudes towards the policies implemented by the different parties and attitudes about the benefits that one's own group may receive from voting for one party rather than another. It is an explanation that is completely outside the logic of proximity and the spatial logic of voting. One important element of this model must be highlighted in relation to the others. <]>> The presupposition is that voter preferences are not exogenous but are endogenous - they change within the framework of an electoral process. That is called the point of indifference. 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. This is something that remains difficult in theory, we don't know how much the voter will discount. Voters try to maximize the usefulness of the vote, that is, they try to vote for the party that makes them more satisfied. 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. But there are studies that also show that the causal relationship goes in the other direction. 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. "The answer is "yes", as postulated by spatial theories, or "no", as stated by Przeworski and Sprague, for example. social determinism Spatial theories of voting are nothing other than what we have seen so far with regard to the economic model of voting. Symbols evoke emotions. 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. One possible strategy to reduce costs is to base oneself on ideology. The economic model of the vote puts the notion of electoral choice back at the centre. _____ were the first widespread barriers to the franchise to be eliminated. It is a rather descriptive model, at least in its early stages. The personality model highlights the importance of childhood experiences for political behavior and belief in adulthood; the sociological model highlights the importance of primary and interest . In other words, party activists tend to be more extreme in their political attitudes than voters or party leaders. Another possible strategy is to rely on the judgment of others such as opinion leaders. 0000004336 00000 n 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. 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. In a phase of alignment, this would be the psycho-sociological model, i.e. 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. On the other hand, women tend to have less stable partisan identification, they change more often too. This approach emphasizes a central variable which is that of partisan identification, which is a particular political attitude towards a party. startxref 0000002253 00000 n This is a very common and shared notion. The system in the United States is bipartisan and the question asked was "Do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat or otherwise? 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. Voters vote for the candidate or party closest to their own position which is the proximity model. Grofman's idea is to say that the voter discounts what the candidates say (discounting) based on the difference between current policy and what the party says it will do or promise. 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. Three elements should be noted. We must also, and above all, look at the links between types of factors. In other words, there is the idea of utility maximization which is a key concept in rational choice theory, so the voter wants to maximize his utility and his utility is calculated according to the ratio between the cost and the benefit that can be obtained from the action, in this case going to vote (1) and going to vote for that party rather than this one (2). Lazarsfeld was the first to study voting behaviour empirically with survey data, based on individual data, thus differentiating himself from early studies at the aggregate level of electoral geography. We talk about the electoral market in the media or the electoral supply. The sociological model is somewhat the model that wants to emphasize this aspect. Ideology can also be in relation to another dimension, for example between egalitarian and libertarian ideology. The sociological model obviously has a number of limitations like any voting model or any set of social science theories. An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy, vol. Three Models of Voting Behavior. What determines direction? 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. 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. Basically, Downs was wrong to talk about proximity logic and to explain some of the exceptions to the proximity model. 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. We are going to talk about the economic model. 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. 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. 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. Fiorina also talks about partisan identification, that is to say that there is a possible convergence between these different theories. is partisan identification one-dimensional? 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. So there is this empirical anomaly where there is a theory that presupposes and tries to explain the electoral choices but also the positions of the parties in a logic of proximity to the centre of the political spectrum, but on the other hand there is the empirical observation that is the opposite and that sees parties and voters located elsewhere.