Showing papers on "Voting behavior published in 1969"

Rational Political Man: A Synthesis of Economic and Social-Psychological Perspectives*

Abstract: In recent years the welter of data accumulated on American voting behavior has been continually reanalyzed by social scientists interested in building theories of electoral choice. Most of the original data-gathering enterprises were guided by general theoretical frameworks which, for the most part, were not developed to a point where the ensuing analyses addressed themselves unambiguously to the overall conceptions by which they were guided. As a result much of our knowledge about voting behavior is in the form of generalizations about what social and psychological variables account for voting choices while we lack conceptual frameworks which systematically interrelate these generalizations and provide comprehensive and parsimonious explanation. If any one unifying conception has emerged from the original large scale studies it is that the average voter is irrational. This inference has been derived from a variety of empirical relationships coupled with varying conceptions of rationality.The more recent reanalyses of these data sets have been characterized by a theoretical sophistication that was lacking heretofore. One of these, a theory of the calculus of voting, has applied some formal rigor to the question of the rationality of the decision to vote, selected empirical equivalents of theoretical entities from survey data on national elections, and conducted a successful test of the theory. Unlike traditional approaches to the rationality question which infer the degree of rationality from quantities of information possessed or from correlates of decisions (background, party affiliation, group memberships, etc.), this investigation conceived of rationality in terms of the kind of calculus employed by the individual in deciding among alternatives (in this case whether or not to vote).

Voting Behavior of National Judges in International Courts

Abstract: It has been assumed in international adjudication that each state in the litigation should be permitted to have a judge of its own nationality on the bench. This practice of employing national judges in international courts is deeply rooted in the history of arbitration and judicial settlement. Responding to a demand for it, the Committee of Jurists in 1920–1921 embodied the plan in Article 31 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice. This article was transferred intact to the Statute of the present International Court of Justice in 1945. Whether judges of the nationality of the parties, either in arbitration tribunals or in courts of justice, can be counted upon to be as “independent” as the processes of justice require, and as Article 2 of the present Statute stipulates, is a question of some moment to present-day international justice. It has been suggested as an alternative that a judge on the International Court of the nationality of the litigant should abstain; thus a state with no judge of its nationality on the Court would not be at a disadvantage.

Backgrounds, Attitudes and the Voting Behavior of Judges: A Comment on Joel Grossman's Social Backgrounds and Judicial Decisions

Abstract: SHELDON GOLDMAN University of Massackusetts T HE DIALOGUE WITHIN the profession concerning judicial behavior research has generally moved from disapproving polemic to sympathetic indeed constructive criticism. A recent valuable contribution to this dialogue was The Journal of Politics article by Joel B. Grossmanl in which he assessed three judicial decisionmaking models which either expressly or implicitly consider social/ political backgrounds insofar as they are at the root of attitudes and values as variables for judicial decision-making. Since I am responsible for one of the models, I would like to respond to Grossman's points of criticism and cite some evidence which supports ome of the assumptions questioned by Grossman. In so doing, the attempt shall be made to clarify the research problems at issue.

Verbal Participation and Leadership Voting Behavior in a Leaderless Group Discussion

Abstract: In a Leaderless Group Discussion the relationship between verbal duration and voting behavior was analyzed for fifteen groups of 3 girls each. It was found that voting behavior was influenced by speech duration very early in the sessions and diminished only slightly during the experimental periods. Reinforcements (S being correct on a given problem) affected voting behavior for only one trial beyond the reinforcement and medium talkers received as many votes as high talkers in the group situation.

An Analysis of Security Council Voting Behavior

Abstract: SThe methodology employed in my analysis of voting behavior in the Security Council is not complicated. My roll-call study is directed primarily toward the examination of the frequency with which various political actors agree with each other. More specifically, my concern is with comparing the voting behavior of the two superpower members (the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.) of the Security Council with that of the other Council members. In effect, then, I am seeking to measure Security Council members according to their degree of support of and opposition to the voting behavior of the Western and Soviet bloc leaders. This is expressed as the percentage of times each member voted the same as and/or differently than the two bloc leaders. Certain peculiarities of the Security Council as a legislative body seemed to me to impose rather severe restraints on the selection and use of various standard statistical operations. Even the simple frequency counts showing the number of times members voted with the bloc leaders involved an element of artificiality in that it was often necessary to consider the voting behavior of a series of different member-states as though it constituted the voting behavior of a "regional member." In addition to this peculiarity deriving from the discontinuous membership of individual member-states, the total number of Council members at any one time is only eleven, and "blocs" may consist of only one or two members. As a consequence of these and other special characteristics of the Security Council, it did not appear to me that various standard strategies of roll-call analysis (such as the analysis of the voting behavior of categoric groups, the many techniques for assessing intra-group cohesion or solidarity, statistics used to assess the differences between two groups, or the identification of empirically defined groups by means of cluster-bloc analysis) were appropriate for my exploratory study. 2 Thomas Hovet, Jr.'s two books Bloc Politics in the United Nations (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1960), and Africa in the United Nations (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1963); and Howard R. Alker, Jr., and Bruce M. Russett, World Politics in the General Assembly (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1965) provide excellent examples of empirically and theoretically rich studies of the General Assembly. Relatively little work has been done on the Security Council. Of course one finds perfunctory academic discussions of the Security Council in textbooks on the United Nations, but these tend to be impressionistic and speculative in nature. Journal articles concerning the Security Council are not notably better. Many tend to deal with Charter legalities to the exclusion of more political or behavioral aspects of the Council's operation. There are, however, some exceptions. Leland M. Goodrich, in "The UN Security Council," International Organization, 12 (Summer 1958), 273-87; A. Leroy Bennett, in "The Rejuvenation of the Security Council Evidence and Reality," Midwest Journal of Political Science, 9 (November 1965), 361-75; and Keith S. Petersen, in "The Business of the United Nations Security Council: History (1946-1963) and Prospects," The Journal of Politics, 27 (November 1965), 818-38 all deal systematically and empirically with the functioning of the Security Council. These articles, however, concentrate on the question of the alleged declining role of the Security Council rather than on voting behavior as such. One book does deserve mention. Although not devoted solely to the Security Council, John G. Stoessinger's The United Nations and the Superpowers (New York: Random House, 1965), does deal empirically and theoretically with certain aspects of Security Council voting patterns.

A Spatial Model for Analyzing Voting Behavior

Abstract: Although voting data collected by areal units are among the types of quantitative data most available to the researcher, they have not, seemingly, afforded the basis for studies in which interpersonal interaction over space is a significant factor. Presumably this is one reason why the vast majority of studies of voting behavior and political participation have not adopted a more spatial approach. Contrariwise, in such fields as locational economics and economic geography a more spatial approach in research has been facilitated by the availability of data descriptive of economic activity for points which can be designated by relatively unambiguous locations and because of the availability of data descriptive of flows between such points. Despite the absence of flow data relevant for most political activities, it should be apparent that spatial effects and interactions in large part generate any voting response surface.' This becomes more obvious when one considers that the individual's voting decision is, to some extent, dependent upon his access to information regarding the candidate or issue, which, in turn, is partially dependent upon his relative location in a communication network within social groups. To elaborate on the above point further, there is evidence which strongly suggests that direct personal contacts of a lasting and intensive nature are primarily established between individuals separated by short physical distances.2 Furthermore, the groups in which a large number of the individual's social relations take place, such as acquaintance circles, work groups, and other -primary groups" would also appear, to a great extent, to be based on short distance interactions. Once an individual has become a group member, his nmembership will further reinforce his propensity to interact over short distances since such contacts largely occur inside the spatially concentrated group. Thus, it would appear that a very large part of the individual's experiences is derived from, and has reference to, his immediate surroundings from which he will also take over many of his political attitudes, beliefs, norms, habits, and ways of behavior. Despite the empirical basis and logical appeal of the above comments, the literature on voting behavior, ecological or otherwise, is devoid of models for evaluating the impact of space upon political process adaptable for empirical testing with the aggregate data so readily available. This is not meant to suggest that the problem is merely one of data availability. Before the researcher hastens to collect more behaviorally and spatially pertinent information on individuals, he should be more certain that he has not failed to construct models the empirical testing of which extracts the maximum possible behavioral information from aggregate data. The model outlined here was developed with this purpose in mind.

The Class Basis of Arqentine Political Parties

Abstract: Students of Latin American political parties have long assumed a strong correlation between social class and party identification, yet this assumption has never been tested empirically in any of the Latin American nations. This is probably due in large part to the lack of reliable survey data; however, even the mass of aggregate voting data has seldom been analyzed systematically. As a result, most of what we know—or think we know—about voting behavior in Latin America is based upon the intuitive assumptions of North American scholars. “If I were a member of the Chilean middle class, I would probably vote for the Radicals or Christian Democrats, but on the other hand if I were quite wealthy I would probably vote for the Conservatives.” Students of Argentine politics assume that the Conservative parties, always representing the interests of the nation's aristocracy, have received the bulk of their votes from the large landowners; that the interests of this group consistently have been opposed by the Radical parties who receive their electoral support from the urban middle classes; and that the more recently formed Peronist parties have championed the cause of, and been supported at the polls by, the industrial workers. It is the purpose of this article to test these assumptions, primarily through analysis of aggregate voting data, but also by examining the social backgrounds of party leaders and their actions while in power.

Community Effects on Political Attitudes: Partisanship and Efficacy*

Abstract: A MAJOR trend in the study of political behavior in America has been the increased utilization of national probability samples, rather than samples drawn from a more limited geographical area. Early voting studies, particularly those carried out by the Bureau of Applied Social Research, focused on political behavior in the context of specific counties or cities (Lazarsfeld et al., 1948; Berelson et al., 1954). More recent research, however, has focused on parameters of the national electorate, and on explanations of political choice that are not contingent upon locality factors (Campbell and Kahn, 1952; Campbell et al., 1954; Campbell et al., 1960, 1966). One result of this trend has been a decrease in the amount of attention paid to the interpersonal dynamics involved in the partisanship decision. Thus, an important and well documented source of variation, conformity to the attitudes of those with whom one associates, has been systematically disregarded (cf. Verba, 1961). Berelson et al. (1954) have suggested that when the primary groups to which one belongs do not provide unambiguous specification of the party one is expected to support, the dominant political climate in the community will attract the individual. Thus, the analysis of voting in a Republican town, Elmira, New York, in the 1948 election revealed that "the Republicans get more than their random share of the adjustment to a conflicting environment because of the pervasive Republican atmosphere of Elmira that thus tends to perpetuate itself." The underlying dynamic, which appears only implicitly in the Berelson et al. work, is that when an individual does not receive political cues from

The electoral politics of gaullists in the fourth french republic: ideology or constituency interest?

Abstract: The complex relationship between a deputy's Parliamentary voting record and his behavior in electoral politics in his constituency has rarely been traced in French political studies in a precise quantitative manner. One would like to contrast the extent to which both the deputy's Parliamentary voting record and his choices regarding coalitions in local politics depend upon his personal ideology with the extent to which the same behavior depends upon the political characteristics of his constituency. Even though ideological cleavages may exist across constituencies themselves, finding behavioral outcomes related to constituency characteristics could suggest that the deputy is motivated by his desire to be reelected.Studies that attempt a systematic analysis of deputies' behavior are few, despite Lerner's early exploration of the relationship between constituency characteristics and voting on the European Defense Community (EDC) issue. Recently, MacRae, in his volume on Fourth Republic Parliaments, has clearly emphasized the primacy of ideology, particularly with respect to the voting patterns that resulted in unstable governments. More specifically, MacRae gives an ideological interpretation to his finding that intra-party voting divisions can be accounted for by issue-related scales.MacRae also tries to relate Parliamentary behavior to analyses of voting behavior in the constituencies. In general, however, his analysis, relegated to one brief chapter dealing with “Assembly Votes and the Constituencies,” appears to have been incomplete.

Elections in Peddur: Democracy at Work in an Indian Town

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to examine the election process in a small town in Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu language state of South India, by identifying some of the factors involved in the election of a candidate for office, in this instance the contest for the State Assembly seat, as reflected in the voting behavior of one particular community during the 1967 general elections.

The Populist era in Kansas: a quantitative study of the relationship between economic conditions and voting behavior

Abstract: THE POPULIST ERA IN KANSAS: A QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND VOTING BEHAVIOR ty Alan D. Anderson The discussion of the nature of Populism has centered to a great extent on the question of the Populist's role in the develop¬ ment of a liberal tradition in America. There are, however, some historians, including the author of this paper, who would like to study Populism outside the framework of this controvq^y. The first step in the new approach was the development of an alternate model of social action. The model chosen suggested that the simple relationship between economic and political behavior assumed by earlier historians of the Populist era was inadequate to explain all aspects of Populism. In order to test these theoretical propositions, a detailed description of the Kansas economic and political systems was pre¬ pared from quantitative data on each county. This data supported the traditional concepts of Populism in some instances; but there were areas in which the older interpretations conflicted with the data. These conflicts arouse primarily from the over-emphasis of the earlier historians on the revolutionary aspect of Populism. The data tended to show that the Populists caused only minor changes in the Kansas political structure and these changes were primarily within the Democratic Party. These results are consistent with the social model developed earlier since it predicted that more than just economic considerations would determine the political behav¬ ior of the individual. The analysis shows that a complete picture of the Populists can be obtained only after these other factors have been determined.