Complex Theories, Insufficient Models, and Over-Strained Voters?

Abstract

Theoretical approaches and empirical results on electoral behaviour suggested for larger parts of the 20th century that party choice was primarily determined by socio demographic factors like class or religion and by attitudinal factors, especially party identification. Today, after societal individualisation, de-alignment, medialisation of politics, appearance of political issues beyond left-right and other developments, scholars of electoral behaviour are confronted with a much more complicated puzzle. This results not only in more complex survey designs and estimation models but also in more complex theoretical approaches trying to unify various approaches while at the same time focusing on decision-making processes of rational individuals. Multi-dimensional issue voting based on the pure proximity, discounted proximity or directional benefit calculations are typical examples of this development. Obviously, such approaches do not only test the limits of measurement – regarding questionnaire design and modelling – but they rely also on a very demanding model of man. Here, party choice is not about being a manual worker or a catholic. In a literal translation, it is about holding attitudes on political issues, knowing the respective policy positions of competing parties, weighting different issues regarding their salience, calculating the different utilities and so on and so forth. However, are these realistic assumptions in the alleged age of political disenchantment and apathy? Under which circumstance, individual as well as contextual, do these assumptions hold? How much and what kind of information do scholars need to analyse decisions based on choice sets? This panel invites methodological and substantive papers dealing with the applicability of complex models of electoral behaviour. Potential contributions could focus on the role of information environments, political sophistication or biased information processing and evaluation. Moreover, we are interested in the impact of item non-response as well as survey and questionnaire design on empirical tests.

Title	Details
Coalitions Signals, Thresholds and Strategic Voting. A Survey Experimental Study	View Paper Details
When Models and Data Collide: Item Non-response and Its Consequences in the Context of the Spatial Voting Model	View Paper Details
Can Voters in Proportional Multi-Party Systems act Strategically? Challenging the Concept of Strategic Voting using Evidence from Exit-Poll Data at the 2012 Belgian Municipal Elections	View Paper Details
Centrifugal Dynamics of Party Competition	View Paper Details
Personality Traits, Item Non Response and Guessing in Ideological Placements	View Paper Details