Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting

Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting PDF Author: James M. Enelow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521352840
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This volume brings together eight original essays designed to provide an overview of developments in spatial voting theory in the past ten years. The topics covered are: spatial competition with possible entry by new candidates; the "heresthetical" manipulation of vote outcomes; candidates with policy preferences; experimental testing of spatial models; probabilistic voting; voting on alternatives with predictive power; elections with more than two candidates under different election systems; and agenda-setting behavior in voting. Leading scholars in these areas summarize the major results of their own and other's work, providing self-contained discussions that will apprise readers of important recent advances.

Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting

Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting PDF Author: James M. Enelow
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521352840
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This volume brings together eight original essays designed to provide an overview of developments in spatial voting theory in the past ten years. The topics covered are: spatial competition with possible entry by new candidates; the "heresthetical" manipulation of vote outcomes; candidates with policy preferences; experimental testing of spatial models; probabilistic voting; voting on alternatives with predictive power; elections with more than two candidates under different election systems; and agenda-setting behavior in voting. Leading scholars in these areas summarize the major results of their own and other's work, providing self-contained discussions that will apprise readers of important recent advances.

The Spatial Theory of Voting

The Spatial Theory of Voting PDF Author: James M. Enelow
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521275156
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This book provides an introduction to an important approach to the study of voting and elections: the spatial theory of voting. In contrast to the social-psychological approach to studying voting behaviour, the spatial theory of voting is premised on the idea of self-interested choice. Voters cast votes on the basis of their evaluation of the candidates or policy alternatives competing for their vote. Candidates fashion their appeals to the voters in an effort to win votes. The spatial theory provides explicit definitions for these behavioural assumptions to determines the form that self-interested behaviour will take. The consequences of this behaviour for the type of candidate or policy that voters will select is the major focus of the theory. There is a twofold purpose to this work. The first is to provide an elementary but rigourous introduction to an important body of political science research. The second is to design and test a spatial theory of elections that provides insights into the nature of election contests. The book will appeal to a wide audience, since the mathematics is kept to an accessible level.

A Unified Theory of Voting

A Unified Theory of Voting PDF Author: Samuel Merrill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521665490
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Professors Merrill and Grofman develop a unified model that incorporates voter motivations and assesses its empirical predictions--for both voter choice and candidate strategy--in the United States, Norway, and France. The analyses show that a combination of proximity, direction, discounting, and party ID are compatible with the mildly but not extremely divergent policies that are characteristic of many two-party and multiparty electorates. All of these motivations are necessary to understand the linkage between candidate issue positions and voter preferences.

Ideology and Spatial Voting in American Elections

Ideology and Spatial Voting in American Elections PDF Author: Stephen A. Jessee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139537024
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Ideology and Spatial Voting in American Elections addresses two core issues related to the foundations of democratic governance: how the political views of Americans are structured and how citizens' voting decisions relate to their ideological proximity to the candidates. Focusing on testing the assumptions and implications of spatial voting, this book connects the theory with empirical analysis of voter preferences and behavior, showing Americans cast their ballots largely in accordance with spatial voting theory. Stephen A. Jessee's research shows voters possess meaningful ideologies that structure their policy beliefs, moderated by partisanship and differing levels of political information. Jessee finds that while voters with lower levels of political information are more influenced by partisanship, independents and better informed partisans are able to form reasonably accurate perceptions of candidates' ideologies. His findings should reaffirm citizens' faith in the broad functioning of democratic elections.

The Spatial Model of Politics

The Spatial Model of Politics PDF Author: Norman Schofield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134357397
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Using unique and cutting-edge research, Schofield a prominent author in the US for a number of years, explores the growth area of positive political economy within economics and politics. The first book to explain the spatial model of voting from a mathematical, economics and game-theory perspective it is essential reading for all those studying positive political economy.

A Behavioral Theory of Elections

A Behavioral Theory of Elections PDF Author: Jonathan Bendor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069113507X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Most theories of elections assume that voters and political actors are fully rational. This title provides a behavioral theory of elections based on the notion that all actors - politicians as well as voters - are only boundedly rational.

Ideology and Spatial Voting in American Elections

Ideology and Spatial Voting in American Elections PDF Author: Stephen A. Jessee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107025702
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
"The central feature of democracy is that the will of the people determines the policies enacted by the government. In representative democracies such as the United States, citizens influence the government primarily through voting in elections. The success of democratic governance, therefore, rests in large part on the ability of citizens to select leaders who will act in accordance with their policy preferences. In the end, a government lives up to this democratic ideal (or doesn't) through the enactment of specific policies. How, then, do citizens' votes relate to their preferences over government policy outputs? What intervening factors either assist or interfere with voters' selection of candidates who espouse views closest to their own? Understanding the relationship between citizens' policy views and their voting behavior is central to the evaluation of elections and of democratic governance more generally. This book studies the opinions of ordinary citizens on specific policies and the relationships between these policy views and people's vote choices in presidential elections. Specifically, I focus on testing the empirical implications of spatial theories of voting, which, in their simplest form, assume that each citizen's policy views can be represented by a location on some liberal-conservative policy spectrum, with candidates in a given election each taking a position on this same dimension. Each voter then casts his or her ballot for the candidate whose position is closest to the voter's own ideological location"-- Provided by publisher.

Incremental Polarization

Incremental Polarization PDF Author: Justin Buchler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019086561X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
As the last decade has shown, ideological polarization in Congress has reached historic levels. Yet, spatial theory has become increasingly important for how scholars understand Congress and legislative elections. In spatial models, candidates select positions along an ideological spectrum, and voters choose candidates based on those locations. However, the central tendency of these models is for the candidates to converge to the location of the median voter, so polarization has become increasingly problematic for spatial theory, even as scholars have come to rely increasingly on these models. In Incremental Polarization, Justin Buchler provides a unified spatial model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting to explain the development of polarization in Congress. His model moves beyond elections and factors in legislators' roll call voting, where a different but related spatial process operates. By linking these models, Incremental Polarization fills a critical gap in our understanding of the strategic, electoral, and procedural roots of polarization-and the role that parties play in the process.

Incremental Polarization

Incremental Polarization PDF Author: Justin Buchler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019086558X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
As the last decade has shown, ideological polarization in Congress has reached historic levels. Yet, spatial theory has become increasingly important for how scholars understand Congress and legislative elections. In spatial models, candidates select positions along an ideological spectrum, and voters choose candidates based on those locations. However, the central tendency of these models is for the candidates to converge to the location of the median voter, so polarization has become increasingly problematic for spatial theory, even as scholars have come to rely increasingly on these models. In Incremental Polarization, Justin Buchler provides a unified spatial model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting to explain the development of polarization in Congress. His model moves beyond elections and factors in legislators' roll call voting, where a different but related spatial process operates. By linking these models, Incremental Polarization fills a critical gap in our understanding of the strategic, electoral, and procedural roots of polarization-and the role that parties play in the process.

A Unified Theory of Party Competition

A Unified Theory of Party Competition PDF Author: James F. Adams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139444002
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This book integrates spatial and behavioral perspectives - in a word, those of the Rochester and Michigan schools - into a unified theory of voter choice and party strategy. The theory encompasses both policy and non-policy factors, effects of turnout, voter discounting of party promises, expectations of coalition governments, and party motivations based on policy as well as office. Optimal (Nash equilibrium) strategies are determined for alternative models for presidential elections in the US and France, and for parliamentary elections in Britain and Norway. These polities cover a wide range of electoral rules, number of major parties, and governmental structures. The analyses suggest that the more competitive parties generally take policy positions that come close to maximizing their electoral support, and that these vote-maximizing positions correlate strongly with the mean policy positions of their supporters.