Showing papers on "Voting behavior published in 2013"

The Oxford handbook of political psychology

Abstract: 1. The Psychologies Underlying Political Psychology THEORETICAL APPROACHES 2. Models of Decision-Making 3. Childhood and Adult Political Development 4. Personality and Political Behavior 5. Evolutionary Approaches to Political Psychology 6. The Psychology of Emotion and Politics 7. Political Rhetoric INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 8. Political Psychology and Foreign Policy 9. Image Theory and Strategic Interaction in International Relations 10. Conflict Analysis and Resolution MASS POLITICAL BEHAVIOR 11. Communication and Politics in the Age of Information 12. Political Impressions: Formation and Management 13. Information Processing and Public Opinion 14. Values, Ideology, and the Structure of Political Attitudes INTERGROUP RELATIONS 15. Group Identity and Political Cohesion 16. Prejudice and Intergroup Hostility 17. Theorizing Gender in Political Psychology Research POLITICAL CHANGE 18. Education and Democratic Citizenship in a Changing World 19. Collective Political Action 20. Genocide, Mass Killing and Intractable Conflict: Roots, Evolution, Prevention, and Reconciliation EPILOGUE 21. Rescuing Political Science from Itself Index

The Rationalizing Voter

Abstract: Political behavior is the result of innumerable unnoticed forces and conscious deliberation is often a rationalization of automatically triggered feelings and thoughts. Citizens are very sensitive to environmental contextual factors such as the title 'President' preceding 'Obama' in a newspaper headline, upbeat music or patriotic symbols accompanying a campaign ad, or question wording and order in a survey, all of which have their greatest influence when citizens are unaware. This book develops and tests a dual-process theory of political beliefs, attitudes and behavior, claiming that all thinking, feeling, reasoning and doing have an automatic component as well as a conscious deliberative component. The authors are especially interested in the impact of automatic feelings on political judgments and evaluations. This research is based on laboratory experiments, which allow the testing of five basic hypotheses: hot cognition, automaticity, affect transfer, affect contagion and motivated reasoning.

Social media and political communication: a social media analytics framework

Abstract: In recent years, social media are said to have an impact on the public discourse and communication in the society. In particular, social media are increasingly used in political context. More recently, microblogging services (e.g., Twitter) and social network sites (e.g., Facebook) are believed to have the potential for increasing political participation. While Twitter is an ideal platform for users to spread not only information in general but also political opinions publicly through their networks, political institutions (e.g., politicians, political parties, political foundations, etc.) have also begun to use Facebook pages or groups for the purpose of entering into direct dialogs with citizens and encouraging more political discussions. Previous studies have shown that from the perspective of political institutions, there is an emerging need to continuously collect, monitor, analyze, summarize, and visualize politically relevant information from social media. These activities, which are subsumed under “social media analytics,” are considered difficult tasks due to a large numbers of different social media platforms as well as the large amount and complexity of information and data. Systematic tracking and analysis approaches along with appropriate scientific methods and techniques in political domain are still lacking. In this paper, we propose a methodological framework for social media analytics in political context. More specifically, our framework summarizes most important politically relevant issues from the perspective of political institutions and corresponding methodologies from different scientific disciplines.

Retrospective Voting Reconsidered

Abstract: We review advances in the study of retrospective voting, or how citizens evaluate and act on their perceptions of government performance. As a whole, the recent literature provides a more complete and nuanced picture of the retrospective voter as sometimes, but not always, effectively incentivizing elected officials to enhance public welfare. Leveraging examples of retrospective voting in areas other than the economy, the field is heading toward a middle ground in which voters resemble decision makers in many other domains. In many cases, a coherent logic governs voters' choices. In other instances, voters make mistakes, often in predictable ways subject to well-known psychological biases. Understanding the circumstances under which retrospective voting achieves effective democratic accountability and when it fails to do so is an important task for subsequent research. We discuss two additional issues for future exploration: a better understanding of normative benchmarks, and increased attention to the re...

The new right and the welfare state: The electoral relevance of welfare chauvinism and welfare populism in the Netherlands:

Abstract: Next to their well-documented authoritarian cultural agenda, new-rightist populist parties have developed specific views on the welfare state: welfare chauvinism and welfare populism. This article studies the electoral relevance of these views for Dutch new-rightist populist parties by means of survey data representative of the Dutch population (N = 1972). The electorate of those parties shows high levels of both welfare chauvinism and welfare populism. However, only welfare populism underlies support for new-rightist populist parties in addition to well-known cultural motives. Based on these findings, ideological and electoral competition between political parties is discussed, and suggestions for further research are provided.

Facebook Use and Political Participation: The Impact of Exposure to Shared Political Information, Connections With Public Political Actors, and Network Structural Heterogeneity

Abstract: Some recent studies have illustrated a positive relationship between social media use and political participation among young people. Researchers, however, have operationalized social media usage differently. This article adopts a multidimensional approach to the study of the impact of social media. Focusing on Facebook (FB), the most widely utilized social networking site in Hong Kong, this study examines how time spent on FB, exposure to shared political information, network size, network structural heterogeneity, and direct connection with public political actors relate to young people's online and offline political participation. Analysis of a survey of university students (N = 774) shows that participation is explained most prominently by direct connection with public political actors, followed by exposure to shared political information. These two variables also mediate the impact of other dimensions of FB use on political participation.

Social Networks and Political Participation

Abstract: In recent years, the study of political participation has benefited from growing attention to the study of social networks. Historically, most explanations for political participation have focused on characteristics of individuals. Although these individual-level correlates do a “pretty good” job of predicting who participates, incorporating social networks deepens our understanding of the factors that lead people to express voice in the democratic process. Even though the participation literature has long been split between scholars who favor a focus on individuals and others who emphasize social networks, the two approaches need not be in tension. Instead, they complement one another. The individualistic factors known to correlate with participation—including education, religious attendance, political knowledge, political conviction, and civic duty—all have a social dimension.

Political Homophily and Collaboration in Regional Planning Networks

Abstract: We study the extent of political homophily—the tendency to form connections with others who are politically similar—in local governments’ decisions to participate in an important form of intergovernmental collaboration: regional planning networks. Using data from a recent survey of California planners and government officials, we develop and test hypotheses about the factors that lead local governments to collaborate within regional planning networks. We find that local governments whose constituents are similar politically, in terms of partisanship and voting behavior, are more likely to collaborate with one another in regional planning efforts than those whose constituents are politically diverse. We conclude that political homophily reduces the transaction costs associated with institutional collective action, even in settings where we expect political considerations to be minimal.

Electoral and Policy Consequences of Voter Turnout: Evidence from Compulsory Voting in Australia

Abstract: Electoral and Policy Consequences of Voter Turnout: Evidence from Compulsory Voting in Australia

Digital Media and Traditional Political Participation Over Time in the U.S.

Abstract: Research shows that digital media use is positively related to political participation. However, this relationship does not appear in all studies. To date, researchers have generally treated incons...

The Political Legacies of Combat: Attitudes towards War and Peace among Israeli Ex-Combatants

Abstract: Does combat experience foster hardliner approaches to conflict, diminishing the likelihood of reconciliation? We exploit the assignment of health rankings determining combat eligibility in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to examine the effect of combat exposure on support for peaceful resolution of conflict. Given the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to global affairs, and with no resolution to the conflict currently in sight, the question of the political consequences of combat becomes all the more pressing. We find that exposure to combat hardens attitudes towards the rival and reduces support for negotiation and compromise. Importantly, these attitudes translate directly into voting behavior, such that combatants are more likely to vote for hardliner parties. These findings cast doubt on research highlighting the benign effects of combat and underscore the importance of combatant reintegration for the transition from conflict to peace.

Public Opinion in the U.S. States: 1956 to 2010

Abstract: In this article, we create, validate, and analyze new dynamic measures of state partisanship, state policy mood, and state political ideology. The measures of partisanship and policy mood begin in 1956 and the measure of ideology begins in 1976. Our approach uses the advantages of two leading techniques for measuring state public opinion—multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) and survey aggregation. The resulting estimates are based on nearly 500 different surveys with a total of more than 740,000 respondents. After validating our measures, we show that during the last half century, policy preferences in the states have shifted in important and sometimes surprising ways. For example, we find that differences in political attitudes across time can be as important as differences across states.

Partisan representation in congress and the geographic distribution of federal funds

Abstract: EW researchers have examined whether a legislator’s party membership may influence the kind or amount of government funds her district receives. Party membership is known to have a strong effect on the voting behavior of U.S. members of Congress (Lee, Moretti, & Butler, 2004; Albouy, 2011), but it is unclear whether party membership influences actual funding, either because of ideological differences or because of power imbalances between parties. Existing theories of distributional politics give little theoretical guidance as to how or why funding might be influenced by party membership, and empirical studies have yet to establish that party membership does make a difference at the federal level. This article investigates both theoretically and empirically how party membership of legislators in Congress may influence the distribution of federal funds in the United States. The theoretical investigation introduces two political parties to the game-theoretic legislative bargaining model of Baron and Ferejohn (1989, henceforth BF), enriching the model in a number of significant ways. First, majority status may confer greater proposal, or agenda-setting, power to legislators, increasing their access to federal funds. Second, if legislators prefer to form voting coalitions with members of the same party, members of the majority can procure additional funding through a party-coalition effect, which increases with the majority’s size. Beyond the effects due to imbalances in bargaining power, differences in ideology, or taste, between parties may mean that a district will receive a different assortment of funding types depending on the party membership of its representatives. These taste differences may also explain why members of the same party prefer forming coalitions with each other.

What Are the Sources of Political Parties’ Issue Ownership? Testing Four Explanations at the Individual Level

Abstract: Political parties’ issue ownership—their perceived competence in handling issues and problems—is a major ingredient explaining voting behavior. Yet, our understanding of the sources of issue ownership is limited. This study is the first to bring together and evaluate four different explanations of voters’ perceptions of parties’ issue ownership: partisanship, attitudes, perceived real-world developments, and constituency-based ownership. Using novel measures implemented in a national survey, we show that all four sources exert independent, if varying, influences on voters’ issue ownership perceptions. Even though voters’ partisanship tends to dominate issue ownership perceptions, attitudes and performance evaluations also matter. Moreover, the hitherto mostly neglected constituency based component of ownership has a substantial, independent influence on ownership perceptions. These findings indicate that issue ownership is more than merely an expression of partisanship and attitudes.

Urban Poverty and Party Populism in African Democracies

Abstract: 1. Urbanization, voting behavior, and party politics in African democracies 2. Drivers of voting behavior among Africa's urban poor: why populist strategies prevail 3. The bite of 'King Cobra': populist strategies in the Zambian context 4. Gorgui's gamble: the rise and fall of populist strategies in Senegal 5. The view from below: how the urban poor react to political party strategies 6. Beyond the city: building coalitions with rural voters 7. Political parties and populist strategies in other African democracies 8. Conclusions, contributions, and implications.

Political Choice Matters: Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-National Perspective

Abstract: PART I: MODELS, MEASUREMENT AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS 1. Explaining Cleavage Strength: The Role of Party Positions 2. Measuring Party Positions 3. Examining The Impact of Party Positions and Class Voting in 15 Western Democracies: A Pooled Analysis PART II: THE CASE STUDIES Anglo-Saxon Democracies 4. Ideological Convergence and the Decline of Class Voting in Britain 5. The United States: Still the Politics of Diversity 6. The Declining Impact of Class on the Vote in Australia: Testing Competing Explanations 7. The Class-Party Relationship in Canada, 1965- 2004 Mainland Europe 8. Enduring Divisions and New Dimensions: Class Voting in Denmark 9. The Political Evolution of Class and Religion: An Interpretation for the Netherlands 1971-2006 10. Political Change and Cleavage Voting in France: Class, Religion, Political Appeals, and Voter Alignments (1962-2007) 11. Social Divisions and Political Choices in Germany, East and West, 1980-2006 12. Class and Religious Voting in Italy: The Rise of PolicyResponsiveness Recent Democracies 13. Do Social Divisions Explain Political Choices? The Case of Poland 14. Social Class, Religiosity, and Vote Choice in Spain, 1979-2008 PART III: CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 15. The Importance of Political Choice and Other Lessons Learned Bibliography Index

Do Presidential Debates Matter? Examining a Decade of Campaign Debate Effects

Abstract: This study responds to The Racine Group's (2002) call for campaign debate research that explores “the trans-campaign effects of debates on such matters as voting behavior, image formation, and atti...

Entering Politics: General Self‐Efficacy and Voting Behavior Among Young People

Abstract: Political science traditionally conceptualizes efficacy only in relation to politics and government. In this article, we look beyond political efficacy and examine the effect of general self-efficacy on young adults' voting behavior. General self-efficacy, an individual's estimation of capacity to operate successfully across a variety of domains, is often important to the behavioral decisions of individuals entering a new domain of activity. With data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, we examine the effect of general self-efficacy on voting behavior among young, first-time voters. We find that general self-efficacy has a positive effect on voter turnout, and this effect is strongest for young people from low socioeconomic-status families.

The Big Five Personality Factors and Mass Politics

Abstract: In this paper, we argue that a stable set of characteristics—personality—can help explain mass political opinions and behavior. By analyzing data collected from over 750 people, we examine the influence of the Five-Factor Model of personality on ideology, partisanship, political efficacy, and two forms of political participation. After controlling for a host of demographic factors, we find that openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion help explain public opinion and political behavior. Neuroticism is the only factor that does not influence political life. We conclude by comparing these results to other findings in the field and suggest directions for future research.

Mediatization Effects on Political News, Political Actors, Political Decisions, and Political Audiences

Abstract: We define mediatization as the growing intrusion of media logic as an institutional rule into fields where other rules of defining appropriate behavior prevailed (see Chapter 7). Mediatization can lead to an enhancement, adaptation, obstruction, or even substitution of political functions by the logic of the media system. At its extreme it can lead to a state of ‘mediatized politics’ where politics ‘has lost its autonomy, has become dependent in its central functions on mass media, and is continuously shaped by interactions with mass media’ (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999: 250). The professional, commercial, and technological production rules of the media -its operating logic — are important requirements which political actors must take into account if they are to receive publicity, public support, and legitimacy. Media logic provides an incentive structure that contextualizes, and often shapes, political processes — particularly those that are dependent on publicity and public support. From this it follows that — contrary to a priori assumptions of a fully transformed ‘media democracy’ — the concept of mediatization does not assume a complete ‘colonialization’ of politics by the media. Rather we expect that some institutions, stages, and activities in the political process will be mediatized more than others, depending on how media-compatible they are (Marcinkowski 2005).

Universality in voting behavior: an empirical analysis

Abstract: Election data represent a precious source of information to study human behavior at a large scale. In proportional elections with open lists, the number of votes received by a candidate, rescaled by the average performance of all competitors in the same party list, has the same distribution regardless of the country and the year of the election. Here we provide the first thorough assessment of this claim. We analyzed election datasets of 15 countries with proportional systems. We confirm that a class of nations with similar election rules fulfill the universality claim. Discrepancies from this trend in other countries with open-lists elections are always associated with peculiar differences in the election rules, which matter more than differences between countries and historical periods. Our analysis shows that the role of parties in the electoral performance of candidates is crucial: alternative scalings not taking into account party affiliations lead to poor results.

Democratic exclusion. The right to vote in the United States, United Kingdom, and France

Abstract: This research focuses on the forms of exclusion that democratizing processes have historically facilitated. The dynamics of democratization often lead political coalitions to change electoral rules to simultaneously extend and constrict the right to vote across different categories of persons, as well as to reinforce existing exclusions. This pattern occurred in all the 'exemplary models' of early democratization, and yet the historical narratives relied on by the comparative democratization literature neglect its exclusionary dimension, and thereby misinform comparative theory building. The dissertation empirically documents the "dark side of democratization" in the three paradigmatic cases of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, and develops and tests a theory explaining cross-national and cross-time variation. At key moments in a country's development, political entrepreneurs advance ideas of community belonging for the purpose of securing a governing coalition. When successful the ideas of political community are embedded in new institutions and in public opinion, shaping the expectations of political agents across the political spectrum and resulting in higher costs of coalition-building and political mobilization across categories of people. The exclusions were thereby made resilient to subsequent democratizing processes. The dissertation advances research the role of ideas in social science by focusing on the micro-foundations of democratic exclusion. The model predicts various of political behavior that are integrally important to democratization, and is tested against debates, voting behavior, and correspondence in and outside of parliaments, legislatures, and constitutional conventions. The data draws on archival field work research, multiple datasets of legislator behavior, constituency demographics, and institutional change. These allow for the identification of stable patterns as well as change across time, and supplement a process tracing research design.

Political trust : why context matters

Abstract: This book presents cutting-edge empirical research on political trust as a relational concept. From a European comparative perspective it addresses a broad range of contested issues. Can political trust be conceived as a one-dimensional concept and to what extent do international population surveys warrant the culturally equivalent measurement of political trust across European societies? Is there indeed an observable general trend of declining levels of political trust? What are the individual, societal and political prerequisites of political trust and how do they translate into trustful attitudes? Why do so many Eastern European citizens still distrust their political institutions and how does the implementation of welfare state policies both enhance and benefit from political trust? The comprehensive empirical evidence presented in this book by leading scholars provides valuable insights into the relational aspects of political trust and will certainly stimulate future research. This book features: * a state of the art European perspective on political trust; * an analysis of the most recent trends with regard to the development of political trust; * a comparison of traditional and emerging democracies in Europe; * the consequences of political trust on political stability and the welfare state; * a counterbalance of the gloomy American picture of declining political trust levels.

What does “Political” Mean to You?

Abstract: How do regular people define the term “political”? This original study gives Americans and Canadians an opportunity to express their interpretations of the concept. It identifies a great deal of inter-personal variation in terms of how many and what kinds of topics people perceive as the stuff of politics. And this variation comes in predictable patterns: the findings reveal correlations between socio-political attributes (such as gender, nationality and ideology) and the boundaries people draw around the political domain. The study also provides insight into the ways people distinguish the political from the non-political in their minds. And importantly, individuals’ interpretations of the term “politics” relate systematically to other measures of self-reported political behavior including political interest and frequency of political discussion. These results can be used to refine survey analysis and to broaden knowledge of day-to-day citizen politics.

The Political Economy of the Subprime Mortgage Credit Expansion

Abstract: We examine how special interests, measured by campaign contributions from the mortgage industry, and constituent interests, measured by the share of subprime borrowers in a congressional district, may have influenced U.S. government policy toward subprime mortgage credit expansion from 2002 to 2007. Beginning in 2002, mortgage industry campaign contributions increasingly targeted U.S. representatives from districts with a large fraction of subprime borrowers. During the expansion years, mortgage industry campaign contributions and the share of subprime borrowers in a congressional district increasingly predicted congressional voting behavior on housing related legislation. Such patterns do not hold for non-mortgage financial industry. The evidence suggests that both subprime mortgage lenders and subprime mortgage borrowers influenced government policy toward subprime mortgage credit expansion.

Contemporary Political Participation Research: A Critical Assessment

Abstract: This chapter investigates and analyses contemporary research regarding political participation. An extensive discussion on different conceptualizations and definitions of political participation is presented, raising the issue pertaining to the distinction between conventional and unconventional political participation and showing why this distinction is largely artificial and to a certain extent elusive. To facilitate our discussion about extreme and violent political participation activities (as they are described in contemporary research), frequent references are drawn to perceptions of the ancient Athenians as regards the roles and civil duties as citizens within their community, showing that these duties did not necessarily distinguish between different types of participation. The chapter makes further theoretical suggestions for future, pointing out the useful synergy between sociological research and political science analysis.

Why voters do not throw the rascals out?— A conceptual framework for analysing electoral punishment of corruption

Abstract: One of the intriguing phenomena in democracy is the fact that politicians involved in, accused of or condemned for corruption in a court of law get re-elected by their constituents. In some cases, corruption does not seem to negatively affect the development of political careers. In this introductory article, we try to develop a multidimensional framework for analysing electoral punishment of corruption. First, we will look into various studies on electoral punishment and highlight their advancements and shortcomings. Then, we will propose a more dynamic account of electoral punishment of corruption that takes into account individual as well as macro level explanations. Finally, we will disaggregate these two analytical dimensions into various explanatory factors.

Political interest of adolescents before and after lowering the voting age: the case of Austria

Abstract: Young people are said to be uninterested in politics. This lack of political interest among adolescents has been used as an argument against lowering the voting age. But why should someone be interested in politics if he or she is not eligible to vote? In this paper, we examine the differences in political interest of 16- and 17-year-old Austrians before and after lowering the voting age to 16, using cross-sectional survey data. Doing so, we capture a broad concept of political interest, including situational and individual interest. We observe that political interest of 16- and 17-year-olds was higher after lowering the voting age. In addition, the patterns concerning the determinants of political interest changed as well: study findings indicate that parents were of utmost importance in influencing political interest of young people who were not yet enfranchised. The impact of schools on political interest among young people emerged after the voting age had been lowered. In the specific societal and sit...