Downs, stokes and the dynamics of electoral choice

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 41, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 287-314

  Sanders, David ^a   Clarke, Harold D ^b   Stewart, Marianne C ^b   Whiteley, Paul ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 82455249486     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123410000505     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).
2. Donald E. Stokes, 'Spatial Models of Party Competition', American Political Science Review, 57 (1963), 368-77.
3. See also Donald E. Stokes, 'Valence Politics', in Dennis Kavanagh, ed., Electoral Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 141-64.
4. Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart and Paul Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004);
5. Harold D. Clarke, Allan Kornberg and Thomas Scotto, Making Political Choices: Canada and the United States (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009);
6. David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart and Paul Whiteley, Performance Politics and the British Voter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
7. See also Christopher Wlezien and Pippa Norris, 'Conclusion: Whether the Campaign Mattered and How', in Pippa Norris and Christopher Wlezien, eds, Britain Votes 2005 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 214-31
8. Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller and Donald Stokes, The American Voter (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960).
9. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy.
10. See, for example, Bernard Grofman, 'The Neglected Role of the Status Quo in Models of Issue Voting', Journal of Politics, 47 (1985), 231-7;
11. Stuart Elaine Macdonald and George Rabinowitz, 'Solving the Paradox of Nonconvergence: Valence, Position and Direction in Democratic Politics', Electoral Studies, 17 (1998), 281-300;
12. George Rabinowitz and Stuart Elaine Macdonald, 'A Directional Theory of Issue Voting', American Political Science Review, 83 (1989), 93-121;
13. Samuel Merrill and Bernard Grofman, A Unified Theory of Voting: Directional and Proximity Spatial Models (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
14. Stephen Ansolabehere and James M. Snyder, 'Valence Politics and Equilibrium in Spatial Election Models', Public Choice, 103 (2000), 327-36;
15. Anthony Heath, Roger Jowell and John Curtice, The Rise of New Labour: Party Policies and Voter Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
16. James Adams, Samuel Merrill and Bernard Grofman, A Unified Theory of Party Competition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
17. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy.
18. Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, The American Voter.
19. See, for example, James Enelow and Melvin Hinich, The Spatial Theory of Voting (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984);
20. Adams, Merrill and Grofman, A Unified Theory of Party Competition.
21. Stokes, 'Spatial Models of Party Competition'.
22. Stokes, 'Spatial Models of Party Competition';
23. Stokes, 'Valence Politics'.
24. Samuel L. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1991);
25. Paul M. Sniderman, Richard A. Brody and Phillip E. Tetlock, eds, Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
26. Arthur Lupia and Matthew D. McCubbins, The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Really Need to Know? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
27. Gerd Gigerenzer, Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
28. Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, Performance Politics and the British Voter, chap. 5.
29. Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock, Reasoning and Choice.
30. On the latter,
31. see, for example, Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, The American Voter.
32. Morris P. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981).
33. See, for example, Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain, chap. 5;
34. Clarke, Kornberg and Scotto, Making Political Choices;
35. Harold D. Clarke and Allan McCutcheon, 'The Dynamics of Party Identification Reconsidered', Public Opinion Quarterly, 73 (2009), 704-28;
36. Anja Neundorf, Daniel Stegmaeller and Thomas J. Scotto, 'The Individual Dynamics of Bounded Partisanship' (unpublished manuscript, Department of Government, University of Essex).
37. David Sanders, Harold D. Clarke, Marianne C. Stewart and Paul Whiteley, 'Does Mode Matter for Modeling Political Choice? Evidence from the 2005 British Election Study', Political Analysis, 15 (2007), 257-85.
38. Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain, chap. 4.
39. Since the 2005 pre-campaign panel asked the standard BES party identification question of a random half-sample only, we use the next five waves of panel data (2005 campaign-2009) to assess individual-level partisan dynamics.
40. For discussion and analysis
41. see, for example, Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, Political Choice in Britain, chap. 3.
42. Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, Performance Politics and the British Voter, chap. 4.
43. Stephen Finkel, Causal Analysis with Panel Data (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995).
44. See, for example, Walter Enders, Applied Econometric Time Series, 2nd edn (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2004).
45. Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, Performance Politics and the British Voter.
46. On the analysis of discrete choice models with lagged endogenous variables and large N, small T panel data
47. see Jeffrey Wooldridge, Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002).
48. Some dynamic discrete choice panel models are complex and raise difficult estimation issues;
49. see, for example, Lorenzo Cappellari and Stephen P. Jenkins, 'Modelling Low Income Transitions', Journal of Applied Econometrics, 19 (2004), 593-610.
50. see Clarke, Sanders, Stewart and Whiteley, Performance Politics and the British Voter, chap. 5.
51. The policy areas were the economy, the NHS, crime and terrorism.
52. See, for example, Ian Budge and Dennis Farlie, Voting and Party Competition (London and New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977);
53. D. Roderick Kiewiet, Macroeconomics & Micropolitics: The Electoral Effects of Economic Issues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983);
54. Judith Bara and AlbertWeale, eds, Democratic Politics and Party Competition: Essays in Honour of Ian Budge (New York: Routledge, 2006).
55. See, for example, David Sanders and Neil Gavin, 'Television News, Economic Perceptions and Political Preferences in Britain, 1997-2001', Journal of Politics, 64 (2004), 1245-66.
56. See Geoffrey Evans, 'Europe: A New Electoral Cleavage?' in Geoffrey Evans and Pippa Norris, eds., Critical Elections: British Parties and Voters in Long-Term Perspective (London: Sage Publications, 1999), pp. 207-22.
57. See Wojeich Charemza and Derek F. Deadman, New Directions in Econometric Practice (Aldershot, Surrey: Edward Elgar, 1997). On a related note,
58. see David Sanders, Harold D. Clarke, Marianne C. Stewart and Paul Whiteley, 'The Endogeneity of Preferences in Spatial Models: Evidence from the 2005 British Election Study', Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 18 (2008), 413-31.
59. See, for example, Wooldridge, Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data, pp. 118-22.
60. See Kenneth P. Burnham and David R. Anderson, Model Selection and Multimodel Inference: A Practical Information-theoretic Approach, 2nd edn (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2002).
61. AIC is the Akaike Information Criterion;
62. BIC is the Bayesian Information Criterion.
63. Results are available from the authors on request.
64. See J. Scott Long, Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1997).
65. Probabilities are computed using the CLARIFY program.
66. See Michael Tomz, Jason Wittenberg and Gary King, CLARIFY: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results (Cambridge, Mass.: Department of Government, Harvard University, 1999).
67. See, for example, Charemza and Deadman, New Directions in Econometric Practice;
68. Wooldridge, Econometric Analysis.
69. Political efficacy is a 0-10 scale: 'On a scale from 0 to 10 where 10 means a great deal of influence and 0 means no influence, how much influence do you have on politics and public affairs?
70. Civic duty is 5-point Likert scale reflecting the degree of agreement/disagreement with the statement: I would be seriously neglecting my duty as a citizen if I didn't vote.