Showing papers on "Voting behavior published in 1989"

Foreign Affairs and Issue Voting: Do Presidential Candidates “Waltz Before a Blind Audience?”.

Abstract: VWhile candidates regularly spend much time and effort campaigning on foreign and defense policies, the thrust of prevailing scholarly opinion is that voters possess little information and weak attitudes on these issues, which therefore have negligible impact on their voting behavior. We resolve this anomaly by arguing that public attitudes on foreign and defense policies are available and cognitively accessible, that the public has perceived clear differences between the candidates on these issues in recent elections, and that these issues have affected the public's vote choices. Data indicate that these conclusions are appropriate for foreign affairs issues and domestic issues.

Similarity of Political Behavior Among Large American Corporations

Abstract: Political sociologists have debated for decades, without resolution, whether elites in advanced capitalists societies are integrated. Rather than ask whether elites are integrated, this study examines the conditions under which convergence of political behavior occurs, focusing on campaign contributions of political action committees in the American business community. A model of similarity in corporate political behavior is proposed that draws on principles developed by resource-dependence and social class theorists of intercorporate relations. The model was supported by an examination of the 1,596 dyads created by relations among 57 large U.S. manufacturing firms in 1980. Membership in the same primary industry or several similar industries, geographical proximity of headquarters locations (but not plant locations), market constraint, and common relations with financial institutions (through either stock ownership or directorate ties) were positively associated with the similarity of political behavior ...

National Elections and Political Attitudes: The Case of Political Efficacy

Abstract: Elections constitute a principal avenue of citizen involvement in political life, and knowledge of their effects on public attitudes towards the polity and the role of the individual therein has important implications for theories of democratic governance. One sucli attitude is political efficacy, ‘the feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact on the political process’. Although many studies have documented that political efficacy is positively associated with electoral participation, the causal mechanisms involved are not well understood. Most researchers have simply assumed that the ‘causal arrow’ runs from efficacy to participation, i.e. from the attitude to the behaviour. Investigations of the hypothesis that the behaviour (participation) affects the attitude (efficacy) are rare. Rarer still are enquiries focusing on the impact of election outcomes on efficacy, and studies that examine both effects are virtually non-existent. In this Note covariance structure analysis is used to investigate the effects of voting, campaign activity and the outcomes of the 1984 national elections on political efficacy in the American electorate.

Sense of community and political participation

Abstract: Current conceptualizations of sense of community suggest that this quality may be correlated with various forms of political participation This notion was tested in the current study by measuring and computing relationships between sense of community and five different types of political participation: voting, campaigning, contacting political officials, working on public problems, and talking about politics Indices of these political activities were further subdivided into those with local relevance and those with nonlocal relevance Self-report measures of sense of community and political participation were administered by telephone interview to 546 randomly selected respondents in Birmingham, Alabama Results showed that sense of community was significantly related to voting, to contacting officials, to working on public problems, to local and nonlocal participation, and to an index of overall political participation The findings are discussed

Construct accessibility and electoral choice

Abstract: Chronic accessibility refers to a long-term bias to notice, process, and have available for recall certain types of information across a variety of different stimulus objects in a variety of different situations. This paper illustrates the usefulness of studying the chronic accessibility of political constructs in the field of political behavior. The chronic accessibility of four generic political constructs are operationalized: candidates, issues, groups, and parties. The accessibility of these four political constructs is shown to be relatively stable over time and to guide the processing of information about a wide variety of political objects. Next, a voting model is tested that identifieswhich voters will rely chiefly on issue orientations, group orientations, candidate orientations, and/or party orientations in making their vote decision. The voting model is validated across two distinct ways of operationalizing the political chronicities and three different election studies spanning a 28-year period. Finally, although this paper has focused onindividual political behavior, several ways that an information processing approach could shed light on macrolevel political questions are discussed.

The economics of illusion

Abstract: When individuals choose not only goods, but also how to process information, there is a bias: people tend to process information so that they feel good about themselves. This bias is particularly important in voting behavior, where agents have almost no individual effect on public choice outcomes, and therefore almost no incentive for unbiased use of information. Two examples are given. In one example, an adaptation of the classic overdepletion problem, the public chooses not to counteract externalities by appropriate tax policy. In the second example public policy follows the choices of experts, contrary to the interest of the public.

Specific and General Beliefs in Union Voting Models

Abstract: Survey data have revealed that roughly three-fourths of nonunion employees view unions as effective in improving wages and working conditions, yet only about one-third would vote for unionization o...

The new political economy : positive economics and negative politics

Abstract: This paper discusses the theory that less politics makes better economics. It argues that this perspective on politics misrepresents the dynamics of policymaking in developing countries and is seriously limited in its ability to explain how policy changes come about or how policies are chosen that lead to socially beneficial outcomes. The author indicates that most models of political economy are not relevant for developing countries and are therefore unable to explain policy changes or wise policy choices. In light of this, the paper recommends an alternative approach to political economy that does not treat politics as a negative factor in policy choice. It emphasizes understanding the preferences and perceptions of policy elites, the circumstances that surround the emergence of policy issues, the concerns of decision makers, and the factors that affect the implementation and sustainability of policy change. In such an alternative, politics consists of efforts at problem solving through bargaining and the use of political resources in the context of great uncertainty.

The influence of attitudes and normative pressures on voting decisions in a union certification election

Abstract: This paper investigates how both attitudes and normative pressures influenced the voting decisions of public university clerical workers in a December 1984 union representation election. Not surprisingly, the voters' attitudes, shaped by the results they expected to follow from union certification and their evaluation of those results as good or bad, appear to have been an important determinant of voting intentions and, in turn, actual votes. Also influential, although less so, was normative pressure, a function of how the voters thought others (family, co-workers, other clericals, supervisors, and other management staff) wished them to vote and how strongly they were inclined to satisfy those wishes. ALTHOUGH several studies have examined voting behavior in union representation elections and individual attitudes toward union representation, very few have investigated how normative or social pressures influence individuals' votes on representation. Among the parties who may have an opinion or desire regarding a worker's vote are employers and their representatives, unions and their repre

Uncovering the Political Impacts of Gender: An Exploratory Study

Abstract: TU YNDERSTANDING how women's lives shape their political attitudes and affect their policy orientations remains a significant challenge for today's social science. The different social experiences of women and men appear to affect not only individuals (Chodorow 1974; Weitzman 1975; Dinnerstein 1978; Brooks-Gunn and Matthews 1979; Gilligan 1982) but also institutions, through the design of hierarchical structures and through the application of particular governing rules and norms (Keller 1979; Ferguson 1984; Menkel-Meadow 1987). In an attempt to uncover the specific political impacts of socialized gender differences, political scientists have scrutinized female officials' voting behavior, support of women's issues, selfprofessed feminism, and family status, among other "gender-related" variables. However, scant attention has been given to examining how women's and men's differing world experiences might mold political attitudes and, ultimately, shape a broad range of policy outcomes rather than those centering around women's issues only. As a consequence, these approaches are neither adequate nor explicit in accounting for the impact of "gender driven" factors in the formation of public policy preferences. This exploratory study examines the relations among gender, policy preference, and policy formation. The first section begins by reviewing and contrasting current political and psychological approaches to assessing and interpreting gender differences. Following is a critique of political science methodologies as generally unsuitable for capturing the subtle complexities of gender differences. The second section links psychological theories of gender differences in moral decision making and the political context by creating two attitudinal constructs hypothesized as gender-related. Drawing

The Political Dynamics of Urban Voting Behavior

Abstract: credentials in council elections. Data for the analysis are drawn from Cincinnati, Ohio, a city whose electoral system is representative of the majority of American cities of over 25,000 population that currently employ nonpartisan, at-large elections. The data consist of a sample of 103 council campaigns that were waged in five successive elections over a ten-year time span. The results support several conclusions. First, they demonstrate the critical importance of political legitimacy in urban elections. Thus, the most important predictors of electoral success are those that measure the candidates' relative political acceptability. In approximate rank order, they are the candidates' political following, political resources, civic endorsements, and personal achievements. Second, the results show that two different voting models are necessary to explain the calculus of candidate choice: one for first-time candidates and a second for incumbents and former losers. For first-time candidates, the key credentials are those that enhance their name familiarity, especially partisan and newspaper endorsements. In subsequent campaigns, what appears to be decisive are the size of their political following and the racial and partisan coalitions that coalesce around them. Finally, the results suggest that a candidate's political following may play a role in local elections similar to the stabilizing function of party identification in national elections. The voting behavior of Americans in urban elections represents one of the most important, yet least understood, topics in the voting literature. Consider, for example, that in a federal system of over 80,000 governments, local elections are both the most numerous and frequent type in American politics. Consider too that local office is often the first and most important stepping-stone to higher elected positions of public trust and responsibility.' Finally, recall that local and state issues have profoundly altered the course of national politics, as reflected, for example, in the progressive reform movement; the ascendancy of the Democratic party in northern cities around the time of the Great Depression; and more recently, the diffusion of the neopopulist, Proposition 13 tax revolt.

Self-interest, Agency Theory, and Political Voting Behavior: The Ratification of the United States Constitution

Abstract: Two hundred years ago the United States Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation as the fundamental law of the land when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution on June 21, 1788. The document represented the successful culmination of a movement to strengthen the national government. Scholars long have debated the possible causes for this important change in political institutions (see James Hutson, 1984), a change which was to have major consequences for the development of the nation (Douglass North, 1981, ch. 14). Despite the intense debate, few scholars have either offered any theoretical model of the delegates' voting behavior or employed formal statistical analysis to test their hypotheses about voting behavior at the 13 state ratifying conventions. These omissions are surprising, particularly since Charles A. Beard (1913) long ago stated that the contest over ratification represented the ultimate test of the role of economic interests in the making of the Constitution, a test he never conducted. Given the recent interest exhibited by economists in explaining political behavior, the absence of a rigorous analysis of voting at the 13 ratifying conventions is even more surprising. Economists and economic historians have all but ignored the ratification process. In a progress report on our study of the making of the Constitution, we (Robert McGuire and Robert Ohsfeldt, 1984) recently provided a tentative theoretical model and summarized preliminary indications, drawn from incomplete data, of delegates' voting behavior during the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. More recently, we (McGuire and Ohsfeldt, 1986; McGuire, 1988) presented the final results of our econometric studies of the voting behavior during the drafting of the Constitution at the Federal Convention of 1787. In the present paper, we offer a principalagent model and econometric tests of voting behavior during the ratification of the Constitution at the 13 state conventions. An analysis of voting at the ratification stage allows for a stronger test of the factors influencing voting behavior than an analysis of the Federal Convention of 1787, because of a greater number of delegates (over 1200 versus 55) and a more straightforward voting process.' The paper not only addresses an important and controversial issue in economic history (the role of economic interests in the ratification of the Constitution), it also advances our general understanding of polit-

Political sophistication and political deviance: a matter of context

Abstract: The results show that most of the predictions of the context hypothesis are confirmed: (1) There are linear relationships between racism and intellectual and political sophistication, indicating that the greater an individual's level of racism, the lower his or her cognitive and political sophistication; (2) Quadratic relationships are found between political-economic conservatism and political sophistication, indicating that the more individuals deviate from the center of political-economic issue space, the higher their observed levels of political sophistication; and (3) LISREL structural equation analyses disclose that the causal assumptions underlying the context hypothesis relating political sophistication, self-esteem, various indices of political deviance and racism are, in large part, consistent with the empirical data. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.

Strategic Voting in Agenda-Controlled Committee Experiments

Abstract: This paper reports results of committee voting experiments with a fixed agenda that specified a sequence of binary decisions. In this particular context, the agenda setter can control the ultimate committee decision if it is known whether voting behavior is myopic or strategic. Subjects initially voted in accordance with myopic voting rules; strategic behavior was more prevalent with experience. The use of the same induced preferences in successive meetings was more likely to induce strategic voting than the provision of public information concerning the numbers of voters of each preference type. Copyright 1989 by American Economic Association.

The retention of state governors

Abstract: In this paper, we have provided some support for several hypotheses about the determinants of which governors get reelected. The benefit from being a member of a particular party varies from state to state and from year to year. Personal characteristics such as age are also important. The logits give some support to the importance of coalition formation; reelection is easier in states with low voter turnout and in farm states. The paper is most concerned with the connection between the economic performance and the electoral success of incumbent candidates for governor, and we find support for a model of electoral acountability, in which governors are powerful in state governments and state governments have the ability to differentially tax fixed factors relative to neighboring states. This paper raises some important issues regarding the measurement of variables in political economy, which have wide applicability to other studies in the economics of politics. Peltzman (1988) finds that the difference between the growth rate in state personal income and the national growth rate over a one to four year period prior to the election does not affect gubernatorial electoral outcomes. Concurrently, we find that the current year's growth rate in state personal income and its difference from the national growth rate are not significantly related to electoral success but that the average deviation from predicted state personal income during the governor's tenure in office is significantly related to the odds of getting reelected. That is, the data reject simplistic views of voter behavior and support a sophisticated model of voter behavior. Similarly, Peltzman (1988) has greater success using more sophisticated, cumulative measures of national economic performance. This suggests that great care must sometimes be taken to create variables that are capable of giving our economic models a fair hearing. Voting studies often find that only current period effects matter, which is attributed either to voter myopia or — and this is the more popular explanation nowadays — to the confinement of effects by rational expectations to current period, ‘white noise’ effects. The specifications in these voter studies ignore the cumulative information generated in political economy. Both our results and Peltzman's (1988) results suggest that variables that reflect this cumulative information may be more successful than variables that are based only on the current year.

Voting Patterns in the California Assembly:: Role and Gender

Abstract: The literature on roll call voting behavior in the United States Congress points to small, but significant, differences in the ideological proclivities and voting decisions of male and female legislators. However, comparable studies have not been done on the state level. This article explores gender differences in roll call voting behavior in the California Assembly on two measures, liberalism and support for women's issues. The findings suggest, in contrast to the study of women in Congress, that female assemblymembers are not more liberal than their male counterparts; they are, in fact, less so. However, a gender difference in the predicted direction is manifested in the women's rights index. Specifically, whem party is controlled, Republican women tend to be much more supportive of women's rights issues than Republican men while Democratic women are slightly more supportive than Democratic men.

The making of new deal Democrats : voting behavior and realignment in Boston, 1920-1940

Abstract: "Why is "The Making of New Deal Democrats" so significant? One of the major controversies in the study of American elections has to do with the nature of electoral realignments. One school argues that a realignment involves a major shift of voters from one party to another, while another school argues that the process consists largely of mobilization of previously inactive voters. The debate is crucial for understanding the nature of the New Deal realignment. Almost all previous work on the subject has dealt with large-scale national patterns which make it difficult to pin down the precise processes by which the alignment took place. Gamm's work is most remarkable in that it is a close analysis of shifting voter alignments on the precinct and block level in the city of Boston. His extremely detailed and painstaking work of isolating homogeneous ethnic units over a twenty-year period allows one to trace the voting behavior of the particular ethnic groups that ultimately formed the core of the New Deal realignment." Sidney Verba, Harvard University"

Economics of Voting: Theories and Evidence

Abstract: In seeking to extend rational choice theory from “market” to “political” behaviour, economists have encountered a paradox: namely, that the act of voting itself appears to be inconsistent with the assumption of rationality. This is true not only when self‐interest is assumed, but also when altruistic behaviour (at least in its non‐Kantian form) is allowed for. This article surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the determinants of the decision to participate in voting, and concludes that this decision is responsive to changes in the expected benefits and costs of voting; even though the expected costs of voting must normally outweigh the expected benefits. Interpretations of this behaviour include the possibility that voters act rationally, but are misinformed about the likely effectiveness of their votes; alternatively, the electorate may include more Kantians than economists have generally been willing to admit.

Economic interests and ideological conviction: A note on PACs and agricultural acts

Abstract: This note seeks to determine factors in the U.S. Senate's voting behavior on agricultural issues. A narrowly defined capture model, based on Peltzman's economic theory of regulation, does poorly in explaining and predicting votes compared to a model enhanced by the addition of each senator's personal ideological convictions. While ideology is found to be significant, contributions from agricultural political action committees are insignificant in explaining and predicting the U.S. Senate's votes on eight 1981 and six 1985 Farm Bill amendments.

Orthodox Political Participation in Australia

Abstract: In the study of Australian mass political behaviour, political party preference has been well documented but political par ticipation has not. Using factor analysis this article establishes that the four modes of orthodox political participation which have been identified in a wide variety of national settings, viz. campaigning, voting, communal activity and personalised con tacting, apply also in Australia. Furthermore, Australia is in the cross-national mainstream in terms of the factors most promi nent in determining participation and also, to the extent the data permit such judgements, in the proportions of its citizens who participate in different political activities. The article develops an explanatory model containing an array of social background and subjective political orientation variables and applies it in turn to the four separate dimensions and to a com bined participation scale. Among other factors, interest in pol itics, strength of partisanship, place of residence and education feature a...

Partisan Representation and the Failure of Realignment in the 1980s

Abstract: This paper advances the concept of partisan representation and suggests that such representation plays a role in the process of realignment. Partisan representation focuses attention on how well the parties in Congress, as groups, represent their rank-and-file identifiers, as groups. Improved partisan representation within the advantaged party, as well as increased congruence between independents and the advantaged party should be important factors in transforming short-term electoral change into durable new patterns of partisan preference and voting behavior. Failure to represent well both existing identifiers and independents should inhibit the process of realignment. Since the public opinion data necessary to test this hypothesis are unavailable for any period of realignment, the hypothesis is tested by examining the failed realignment of the 1980s with the expectation that the relationship of Republican House voting patterns to the issue preferences of Republicans and independents in the mass public should not improve between 1980 and 1984. A comparison of public opinion with House roll call voting in the 97th and 98th Congresses supports the null hypothesis, as expected.

Comparing the Policy Positions of Supreme Court Justices from Different Periods

Abstract: T HHE small size of the Supreme Court creates a number of difficulties for analysis of decision making on the Court. One of these difficulties concerns explanation of differences among justices in their voting behavior. The membership of 435 in the House of Representatives allows sophisticated analysis of characteristics associated with individual voting behavior. In contrast, the Supreme Court's membership of 9 largely precludes even the most elementary analysis of such characteristics. Largely for this reason, some students of the Court have undertaken analyses that go beyond the nine justices who sat at a single time to include all the justices who served during a period of several decades. C. Neal Tate (1981) and S. Sidney Ulmer (1986), for instance, have taken this approach in examining relationships between personal background characteristics and voting behavior (see also Handberg 1986). The benefit of this approach in increasing the number of justices to analyze is counterbalanced by a problem of comparability. The most systematic basis for comparisons among justices, and the one that scholars typically use, is their voting support for particular values or types of claims made by litigants. However, since justices who sat during different parts of a period faced different sets of cases, such measures of their voting behavior are not fully comparable. Differences among justices in support for certain claims or values might result from differences in the case stimuli to which they responded rather than from true differences in their policy positions. If one justice supported challenges to government economic regulation more often than another, that difference might stem at least in part from the greater "difficulty" of supporting such challenges in the cases that the second justice faced.

The Political Context of Political Behavior

Abstract: Too often our research ignores the effects of the legal and political context on the political behavior of individuals. The argument is made that our research should incorporate measures of political context and is illustrated through a discussion of the effects of political culture on political behavior in the American states. The utility of using culture to account for political mobilization processes as reported in several recent studies is discussed. Measures of political culture can help explain both differences between states and variations within a state in political mobilization processes.

Rating the Performance of the Ada in the U.S. Congress

Abstract: URING the 1970s, literally dozens of interest groups began to assemble and publish ratings of U.S. senators and congressmen.1 The express purpose of these evaluations is to assess a legislator's roll-call voting behavior against either a broad ideological standard or a narrow set of interests most salient to the rating organization. Presumably, this exercise allows one to determine the extent to which a representative or senator is liberal, conservative, pro-labor, pro-business, pro-family, moral, etc. Naturally, the rating organizations promulgate their scales to reward their friends and punish their opponents in Congress. From a putatively more dispassionate perspective, political scientists also have employed some of these measures as independent and dependent variables in their research. In either case, an index arguably says something about the behavior of the congressmen and senators. In this paper, however, the primary objective is to evaluate the ratings of what is perhaps the most experienced rating organization, namely the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). Even though some studies have examined composite indices, none has assessed the overall measure on the basis of the separate roll call which constitute the rating. In the present research, the key roll-call votes selected by the ADA for inclusion in its Liberalism Quotient (LQ) will be analyzed in order to determine if they form a reliable and valid measure of liberalism.

The intersection of gender politics and religious beliefs

Abstract: Traditional understanding has placed conservatism at the intersection of religion and politics and has assumed that this relationship is stronger for women than it is for men. Yet rarely has gender been a principal analytic category in such explorations, and the relationships have not been thoroughly documented. We analyze the 1980 and 1984 National Election Study data and find that religion is not a more conservatizing influence on voting behavior for women than it is for men. Reagan did best with the small group of women fundamentalist believers, and did rather well among highly religious Catholic women. In most other cases the gender gap actually widened with increasing religiosity. Although women are more religious than men, political observers are cautioned that this finding cannot be taken as evidence of women's greater support for conservative candidates.

Information and Voting in California Senate Elections

Abstract: Senators seeking reelection are much more vulnerable than representatives, and senators from the largest states are the most vulnerable of all. Patterns of information and voting behavior in the 1980 and 1986 Senate elections in California provide some possible explanations. The relatively low salience of Alan Cranston, the incumbent in both elections, raised the importance of the campaigns and of other short-term factors. Only an attractive, well-financed challenger could derive any advantage from this circumstance, however, and Cranston escaped such a threat until 1986. When forced by an able opponent, the incumbent was able to counter with his own campaign to frame the issues and define the contest.

Information and Voting in California Senate Elections

Abstract: Senators seeking reelection are much more vulnerable than representatives, and senators from the largest states are the most vulnerable of all Patterns of information and voting behavior in the 1980 and 1986 Senate elections in California provide some possible explanations The relatively low salience of Alan Cranston, the incumbent in both elections, raised the importance of the campaigns and of other short-term factors Only an attractive, well-financed challenger could derive any advantage from this circumstance, however, and Cranston escaped such a threat until 1986 When forced by an able opponent, the incumbent was able to counter with his own campaign to frame the issues and define the contest

Revealed preferences for public goods: Applying a model of voter behavior

Abstract: Most analyses of preferences for government-supplied goods disregard the fact that in a democratic society, these preferences are revealed by an individual choice: the vote. In this paper this is taken account of in a model, explaining the dynamics in voting behavior in a multi-party system. The model assumes that voters may be categorized into K groups of individuals, pursuing the same interests, who remember how parties do in representing these interests (given the level to which they are held responsible for government policy). The model allows one to estimate party identification, sensitiveness to economic performances, time preference, and relative preferences for public versus private goods, all for each of the groups. Furthermore, the model allows for an estimation of the level to which various parties are held responsible for government policies. An empirical application of the model to the Netherlands is presented, albeit that data restrictions did not allow a distinction of more than one group. The results in terms of significance of the coefficients as well as the interpretation of the original parameters are promising. The two main conclusions are that the relative preference for private versus collective consumption is lower than the existing ratio in the Netherlands, and that two parties forming a government coalition are not held equally responsible for the policies. Financial support from the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research is gratefully acknowledged. Previous drafts of this paper were presented at the following congresses: The European Consortium for Political Research (Amsterdam, 10–15 April 1987); the Meeting of the European Public Choice Society (Reggio Calabria, 22–25 April 1987), and the Econometric Society European Meeting (Copenhagen, 24–28 August 1987). The participants in these sessions, as well as the participants in the seminar of the Sociological Institute of the University of Milan are gratefully acknowledged for their useful suggestions. Special thanks are due to Nathaniel Beck and Friedrich Schneider for carefully reading the manuscript and presenting helpful comments.