Three Competing Paradigm in
Explaining Voting Behavior
• The Sociological Approach
• The Psychological Approach
• The Economic Approach
• Sociological Approach: The Columbia school
– The structural conditions and social constraints
that voters found them in should be the starting
point for voting behavior. The focal point is social
class or ethnicity.
• Psychological Approach: The Michigan school
– All human behaviors are guided by pre-existing
psychological propensities. The focal point is the
mediating role of long-term psychological
predisposition—party identity in guiding citizen
voting.
• The Economic Approach: The Rochester school
– All human behaviors are driven by utilitymaximizing motivation. The focal point is the
expected net material benefits that
parties/candidates bring to the voter.
Explaining Voting and Non-Voting
•
Psychological Approach: Propensity to
vote is a function of
1. Sense of citizen duty
2. Political efficacy
3. Intensity of partisanship
•
Rational Choice Approach
– The paradox of voting
– First remedy by Anthony Downs: to support
and sustain democratic system
Efforts to Resolve the Paradox
• Anthony Downs: R = pjB - C (R為投票所得報酬，
B為利益落差，pj為個人投票能夠導致此利益落差
的機率，C為投票成本
• Riker and Ordeshook: R = pjB ＋D - C
(D為支持民主或候選人得到的滿足）
• Ferejohn and Fiorina: Decision rule based on
Minimax strategy to minimize the possibility of
maximum regret
• Retrospective Voting: Party identification is no
more than a running tally of past evaluation of the
performance of one party versus the other.