The rational behavior theory of voter participation

Silberman, Jonathan; Durden, Garey C.

doi:10.1007/bf01718096

Cited by 77 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In contrast to the results for Presidential elections, studies for American Congressional elections (Silberman and Durden, 1975) and French parliamentary elections (Rosenthal and Sen, 1973) strongly indicate that closeness counts. Since the French data are not contaminated by multiple races and since these elections are generally two candidate plurality elections in jurisdictions of roughly equal size and for roughly similar stakes within each country, the results at first blush look like reasonable support for the Downsian model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect

1987

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect

1987

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“…Through elections individuals chose their political delegates and also hold them accountable. Studies show that vote choice is affected by a number of issues that include individuals' personal characteristics (Silberman andDurden, 1975, Bartels, 1986), the policies candidates stand for (Boy and Mayer, 1993, Dalton et al, 1984, Norpoth, 1992, Flanagan, 1991, Kitschelt, 1994, Johnston et al, 1992, Alvarez, 1998, Baker, 2002, uncertainty about what policies candidates stand for (Shepsle, 1972), or even the form in which the ballot is presented to voters, in particular the effects of ordering on printed ballots (Scott Jr, 1972, Miller and Krosnick, 1998, Koppell and Steen, 2004, Ho and Imai, 2008.…”

Section: Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Economy of Pension Reform: Public Opinion in Latin America and the Caribbean

Machado

Vesga²

2015

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license. Terms of use: Documents inFollowing a peer review process, and with previous written consent by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a revised version of this work may also be reproduced in any academic journal, including those indexed by the American Economic Association's EconLit, provided that the IDB is credited and that the author(s) receive no income from the publication. Therefore, the restriction to receive income from such publication shall only extend to the publication's author(s). With regard to such restriction, in case of any inconsistency between the Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license and these statements, the latter shall prevail.Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license.The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.http://www.iadb.org 2015 1 AbstractCountries around the world are facing important challenges to the sustainability of their pension systems. Changing policies, especially those of large scope and financial magnitude, is a political challenge. It takes a combination of willingness, capacity and enough political support to change the status quo and avoid costly subsequent reversals. Taking advantage of several waves of public opinion data in Latin America and the Caribbean, this paper aims to identify and analyze individual-level factors that are relevant to gauging political support for pension reform.JEL classifications: D72, H55, P16

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“…This model and the related proxy variables, except for the black interaction term, are presented and discussed in detail in other studies. For example, see Silberman and Durden (1975). Here we provide a brief discussion of each proxy and the expected sign of its influence on voting participation.…”

Section: The Model Data and Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous works by Silberman and Durden (1975), Tollison and Willett (1973) and others have suggested that it is less rational for blacks to vote than other subgroups within the population. There are two related questions which should be of interest and which the parameter equivalency tests will allow us to address.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The rational behavior theory of voting participation: Evidence from the 1970 and 1982 elections

Durden

Gaynor

1987

Public Choice

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In recent years a substantial literature on the determinants of voting participation has been developed. In many of these studies voting is assumed to be an expression of rational behavior. That is, people vote when they expect that the benefits will exceed the related costs. Voting is largely an act of consumption based upon the widely held belief that one should vote to fulfill a civic duty or upon some combination of personal characteristics which is sufficiently vague to make precise measurement impossible. The rational behavior theory, however, holds that voting is influenced at the margin by personal and environmental factors which incrementally affect expected benefits and costs, making the act of voting more or less rational. Those factors which increase expected benefits will, ceteris paribus, enhance the probability that one will vote. Those factors which increase expected costs will, of course, have the opposite effect. This study is presented as a primarily empirical contribution to the literature which assumes that, since voting is an expression of rational behavior, it can be modeled and tested using standard economic analysis and methodology.The study is designed to fulfill several purposes. First, we update previous empirical work using data from the 1980 census and from the 1982 congressional elections. The results of our regressions strongly support the rational behavior theory. In addition, we test to determine whether it is less rational for southern blacks to vote as compared to their white counterparts. Our results suggest that the answer is affirmative. Tests of parameter equivalency between the 1970 and 1982 congressional elections are performed with some interesting results. Finally, tests for specification error provide evidence that the rational behavior model and congressional district data generate statistically valid estimates of the determinants of voting participation,

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The rational behavior theory of voter participation

Cited by 77 publications

References 7 publications

The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect

The Downsian model of electoral participation: Formal theory and empirical analysis of the constituency size effect

The Political Economy of Pension Reform: Public Opinion in Latin America and the Caribbean

The rational behavior theory of voting participation: Evidence from the 1970 and 1982 elections

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