Voting Behaviour, Political Preferences and Policy Evaluations

Voting Behaviour, Political Preferences and Policy Evaluations

Course syllabus, Autumn 2000

Lecturer: Gábor Tóka, (Department of Political Science, CEU, room 803, phone: extension 3084)

Class hours: 16:20 to 18:00 on every Wednesday and Thursday

Office hours: Monday 14:00 to 16:00; Wednesday and Thursday 15:00 to 16:00

Goals

This is a four-credit course and is open to both MA and PhD students with an interest in any one of the following fields: public policy analysis; comparative politics; public opinion; empirical democratic theory; survey methodology; communication, electoral and political behaviour research. We shall look at the electoral process in order to investigate how citizens form and express political preferences in a democratic society, and how politicians respond. In particular, we will examine the impact of the mass media, political issues, social cleavages, economic conditions, ideology, party identification, factual information and various other factors on how voters decide. Variations in institutional variables will be related to the diverse empirical evidence on whether democratic elections hold policy-makers accountable to citizens and responsive to popular preferences. Our central question is how much constraint elections can establish for policy choices - given the limits both to the information possessed by individual voters and to the clarity of their preferences. We will discuss the implications of different models of electoral behaviour for political theory and public policy primarily from this angle, while also giving some attention to the practical lessons that can be drawn for electoral strategists and political information campaigns.

The theoretical and technical problems of empirical analyses in survey based, time-series, experimental, and ecological research designs will be discussed briefly. The course should improve your understanding of statistical analyses, tables, and the implicit premises of complex arguments that rely on quantitative evidence. An elementary prior knowledge of basic statistical techniques and concepts (significance tests and multiple regression) is assumed, but your statistics skills will not count in the grading. In fact, you should be able to get a good grade without any training in algebra and statistics.

The course does not specifically deal with particular countries or periods, but the reader inevitably reflects the extent to which post-war North American contributions have been dominating electoral and public opinion research. All participants are encouraged to bring the electoral experiences of their own country in the discussion.

Requirements

It is essential that (A) you contribute to the seminar discussions every week, and do so in ways that reflect a thorough digesting of the mandatory readings and enable us to spot both their errors and their normative and practical implications. You will also have to submit (B) a six to ten thousand words long essay reviewing the scholarly literature on a topic related to the course or presenting your own analysis. In weeks 1, 2, and 3, you will have to (C) send summaries of the mandatory readings by e-mail to the TOKAG.STAFF (or TOKAG@CEU.HU) email address before Wednesday. Finally, a no-retake in-class test will assess your understanding of the concepts and theoretical issues covered by the readings, lectures and seminars (D). Twenty percent of your grade will depend on (A), and forty percent on (B) and (D) each. In order to pass, you will have to get at least half the available points for each of (A), (B), and (D), and satisfy requirement (C).

You can also satisfy requirement (B) by turning in written summaries of the mandatory readings every week. Should you nevertheless prefer writing an essay, you will need to get my approval for a topic and the list of the literature that your review is to cover by 31 October. You can, pending my approval, still change the topic afterwards. The essay must be written in an academic journal format and give evidence that you thought critically about the issues covered, and not just summed up the relevant literature or your own findings (which you must do, nevertheless, and do so fairly and accurately). Whether you write a review or an original analysis, you are expected to assess the merits and drawbacks of alternative methods, theories, conceptualizations, and interpretations. There must be a clear and circumspect reasoning about why one (if any) of the arguments, methods, etc. is better than some others encountered in the literature. Concepts must be clearly defined, empirical assertions carefully documented. A reference must be formally cited any time the ideas, research findings, or data of someone else is mentioned or otherwise utilized. A list of references has to be provided at the end of the paper - this, of course, must list no more and no less than every work actually referred to in the paper.

If you write a literature review, then you must go through all articles covering your topic since January 1996 in the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, the European Journal of Political Research, and The Journal of Politics, and any relevant monographs that you can obtain (by inter-library loan, if necessary). If this requires an excessive amount of library work, then the topic must be narrowed further.

First drafts are due by 28 November and final drafts must be turned in before the end of the semester. Note that the point of writing the essays is less the demonstration of skills that you had already acquired before the course started than their further development. Therefore, we will have to discuss several successive drafts during office hours.

Readings

The mandatory readings are listed below by topics. The weekly load was kept at a reasonable minimum. Where no exciting readings were available, boring substitutes were avoided and the lectures will cover the topic instead. The recommended readings are what the name says: you are not required to consult any one of them.

The course will not cover all existing perspectives on electoral research. For a very critical opinion on many aspects of the approach pursued in the course you can check out for Helena Catt's Voting Behaviour: A Radical Critique (London, Leicester University Press, 1996), or, for a summary and extension of the same argument, Patrick Dunleavy's "Political Behavior: Institutional and Experimential Approaches", in A New Handbook in Political Science, ed. by Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 276-93).

For an introduction to the basic technical terms and statistical concepts used in survey research see pp. 202-12 of David Broughton' Public Opinion Polling and Politics in Britain (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995, CEUL 303.3.809.41) and pp. 1-26 of David Denver's Elections and Voting Behaviour in Britain (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 2nd ed. 1994, CEUL 324.9.41).

Recommended general readings

Alvarez, R. Michael 1997. Information and Elections. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Dalton, Russel J. 1996. Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 2nd ed. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House.

Ferejohn, John A., and James H. Kuklinski eds. 1990. Information and Democratic Processes. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Shepsle, Kenneth A. 1991. Models of Multiparty Electoral Competition. Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers.

Zaller, John 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mandatory and recommended readings by topic

Topic 1: When the explanation is not in the voters: automatic response models and endogeneity of voters' preferences to the electoral process. The long road from minimal to massive media effect theories in communication research: learning, activation, reinforcement, persuasion, agenda setting, priming and framing effects

Mandatory readings:

Nannestad, Peter, and Martin Paldam 1994. "The VP-Function: A Survey of the Literature on Vote and Popularity Functions after 25 Years." Public Choice 79: 213-45.

Iyengar, Shanto, and Donald R. Kinder 1987. News That Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 16-33.

Dalton, Russell J., Paul A. Beck, and Robert Huckfeldt 1998. "Partisan Cues and the Media: Information Flows in the 1992 Presidential Election." American Political Science Review 92: 111-26.

Recommended further readings:

Erikson, Robert S., and Kent L. Tedin 1994. American Public Opinion: Its Origins, Content, and Impact. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, pp. 216-47.

Iyengar, Shanto, and Richard Reeves, eds. 1997. Do the Media Govern? Politicians, Voters, and Reporters in America. London: Sage.

Kleinnijenhuis, Jan, and Ewald M. Rietberg 1995. "Parties, Media, the Public and the Economy: Patterns of Societal Agenda-setting." European Journal of Political Research 28: 95-118.

Miller, William L. 1991. Media and Voters: The Audience, Content, and Influence of Press and Television at the 1987 General Election. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 200-19.

Page, Benjamin I., and Robert Y. Shapiro 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in American's Policy Preferences. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 321-54.

Semetko, Holli A. 1996. "The Media." in Comparing Democracies, ed. by Lawrence LeDuc, Richard Niemi, and Pippa Norris. London: Sage, pp. 254-79.

Zaller, John 1996. "The Myth of Massive Media Impact Revived: New Support for a Discredited Idea." in Political Persuasion and Attitude Change, ed. by Diana C. Mutz, Paul M. Sniderman, and Richard A. Brody. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 17-78.

Topic 2: When the explanation is in the voter: a brief history of electoral behaviour research. Advantages and disadvantages of participant observation, ecological analysis, survey, deductive and experimental research methods

Mandatory readings:

Frey, Bruno S., and Hannelore Weck 1983. "A Statistical Study of the Effect of the Great Depression on Elections: The Weimar Republic 1930-1933." Political Behavior 5: 403-20.

Downs, Anthony 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper, pp. 4-13, 296-300.

Piazza, Thomas, Paul M. Sniderman, and Phillip E. Tetlock 1990. "Analysis of the Dynamics of Reasoning: A General-Purpose Computer-Assisted Methodology." in Political Analysis Vol. 1, ed. by James A. Stimson. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 99-119.

Recommended further readings:

Dalton, Russel J., and Martin P. Wattenberg 1993. "The Not So Simple Act of Voting." in Political Science: The State of the Discipline II, ed. by Ada W. Finifter. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, pp. 193-218.

Harrop, Martin, and William L. Miller 1987. Elections and Voters: A Comparative Introduction. London: Macmillan, pp. 130-62.

Scarbrough, Elinor 1991. "Micro and Macro Analysis of Elections." European Journal of Political Research 19: 361-74.

Topic 3: Political opinion as a function of social group membership. The notions of two-step information flow, cleavages, voter encapsulation, and electoral volatility

Mandatory readings:

Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet (1944) 1948. The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign, 2nd ed. New York-London: Columbia University Press, pp. VII-XXV, 74-5, 80-1, 87-99, 150-8.

Berelson, Bernard R., Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee 1954. Voting: A Study of Public Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 14-7, 72-5, 88-9, 108-15, 305-23.

Recommended further readings:

Bartolini, Stefano, and Peter Mair 1990. Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability: The Stabilisation of the European Electorates 1885-1985. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-5, 20-46.

Carmines, Edward G., and Robert Huckfeldt 1996. "Political Behavior: An Overview." in A New Handbook in Political Science, ed. by Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 223-54.

Dalton, Russel J. 1996. Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 2nd ed. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, pp. 165-95.

Denver, David 1994. Elections and Voting Behaviour in Britain, 2nd ed. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 60-78.

Franklin, Mark N. 1992. "The Decline of Cleavage Politics." in Mark N. Franklin, Thomas T. Mackie, Henry Valen, with Clive Bean et al., Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 383-405.

Huckfeldt, Robert, and John Sprague 1995. Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lipset, Seymour M., and Stein Rokkan 1967. "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments. Introduction." in Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. by Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan. New York: The Free Press, pp. 1-64.

Przeworski, Adam, and John Sprague 1986. Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

T¢ka, G bor 1998. "Party Appeals and Voter Loyalty in New Democracies." in Parties and Democracy, ed. by Richard Hofferbert. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 167-88.

Zuckerman, Alan S., Laurence A. Kotler-Berkowitz, and Lucas A. Swaine 1998. "Anchoring Political Preferences: The Structural Bases of Stable Electoral Decisions and Political Attitudes in Britain." European Journal of Political Research 33: 285-321.

Topic 4: Political opinions in the service of the ego. The contrast between instrumental and expressive voting. Psychological theories of party identification, on-line vs. memory based information processing, projection and persuasion

Mandatory readings:

Dalton, Russel J. 1996. Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 2nd ed. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, pp. 196-219.

Granberg, Donald, and S”ren Holmberg 1988. The Political System Matters: Social Psychology and Voting Behavior in Sweden and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 38-59.

Recommended further readings:

Converse, Philip E. 1969. "Of Time and Partisan Stability." Comparative Political Studies 2: 139-71.

Lodge, Milton, Marco R. Steenbergen, and Shawn Brau 1995. "The Responsive Voter: Campaign Information and the Dynamics of Candidate Evaluation." American Political Science Review 89: 309-26.

Miller, Warren E., and Merril Shanks 1996. The New American Voter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 117-49.

Schmitt, Hermann, and S”ren Holmberg 1995. "Political Parties in Decline?" in Citizens and the State, ed. by Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Dieter Fuchs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 95-133.

Zelle, Carsten 1995. "Social Dealignment versus Political Frustration: Contrasting Explanations of the Floating Vote in Germany." European Journal of Political Research 23: 319-45.

Topic 5: Voting as a purposeful political act. Preferences and responsibility attribution regarding collective goods. The limited influence of self-interest and the importance of symbolic attitudes

Mandatory reading:

Anderson, Christopher J. 2000. "Economic Voting and Political Context: A Comparative Perspective." Electoral Studies 19: 151-70.

Sears, David O., and Carl P. Hensler, and Leslie K. Speer 1979. "Whites' Opposition to 'Busing': Self-Interest or Symbolic Politics?" American Political Science Review 73: 369-84.

Recommended further readings:

Brennan, Geoffrey, and Loren Lomasky 1994. Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preferences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Edelman, Murray J. (1964) 1985. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 22-43.

Feldman, Stanley 1985. "Economic Self-Interest and the Vote: Evidence and Meaning." in Economic Conditions and Electoral Outcomes: The United States and Western Europe, ed. by Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Heinz Eulau.New York: Agathon, pp. 144-66.

Kinder, Donald R., and D. Roderick Kiewiet 1981. "Sociotropic Politics: The American Case." British Journal of Political Science 11: 129-61.

Kramer, Gerald H. 1983. "The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate versus Individual-Level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting." American Political Science Review 77: 92-111.

Lewin, Leif 1992. Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lowery, David, and Lee Sigelman 1981. "Understanding the Tax Revolt: Eight Explanations." American Political Science Review 75: 963-74.

Mansbridge, Jane J. ed. 1990. Beyond Self-Interest. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. CEUL 320.011

Sears, David O. 1993. "Symbolic Politics: A Socio-Psychological Theory." in Explorations in Political Psychology, ed. by Shanto Iyengar and William J. McGuire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993, pp. 113-49. CEUL 320.019

Sears, David O., and Carolyn L. Funk 1991. "The Role of Self-Interest in Social and Political Attitudes." in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Vol. 24, ed. by Mark P. Zanna. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, pp. 1-91.

Topic 6: Do voters have policy preferences at all? Can we measure them? How can they be aggregated? Non-attitudes, response sets, acquiescence bias, belief systems, attitude centrality, issue salience and preference aggregation problems

Mandatory readings:

Converse, Philip E. 1964. "The Stability of Belief Elements Over Time." (pp. 238-45 of "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics." in Ideology and Discontent, ed. by David Apter. New York: Free Press, pp. 206-61.)

Page, Benjamin I., and Robert Y. Shapiro 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in American's Policy Preferences. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 4-26.

Lockerbie, Brad, and Stephen A. Borrelli 1990. "Question Wording and Public Support for Contra Aid, 1983-1986." Public Opinion Quarterly 54: 195-208.

Recommended further readings:

Andrews, Frank M. 1984. "Construct Validity and Error Components of Survey Measures: A Structural Modeling Approach." Public Opinion Quarterly 48: 409-42.

Fleishman, John A. 1988. "Attitude Organization in the General Public: Evidence for a Bidimensional Structure." Social Forces 67: 159-83.

McKelvey, Richard D. 1979. "General Conditions for Global Intransitivities in Formal Voting Models." Econometrica 47: 1085-112.

Neuman, W. Russell 1986. The Paradox of Mass Politics: Knowledge and Opinion in the American Electorate. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 51-67.

Pollock, Philip H. III, Stuart A. Lilie, and M. Elliot Vittes 1993. "Hard Issues, Core Values and Vertical Constraint: The Case of Nuclear Power." British Journal of Political Science 23: 29-50.

Riker, William H. 1982. Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Sniderman, Paul M. 1993. "The New Look in Public Opinion Research." in Political Science: The State of the Discipline II, ed. by Ada W. Finifter. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, pp. 219-45.

Sniderman, Paul M., Richard A. Brody, and James H. Kuklinski 1993. "The Principle-Policy Puzzle: The Paradox of American Racial Attitudes." in Paul M. Sniderman, Richard A. Brody, and Phillip E. Tetlock, Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 58-69.

Zaller, John, and Stanley Feldman 1992. "A Simple Theory of Survey Response: Answering Questions vs. Revealing Preferences." American Journal of Political Science 36: 579-616.

Topic 7: How do voters relate information and policy preferences to the vote choice? The impact of political sophistication, information costs, and uncertain party positions. Voter inequality theorems

Mandatory readings:

Popkin, Samuel L. 1993. "Decision Making in Presidential Primaries." in Explorations in Political Psychology, ed. by Shanto Iyengar and William J. McGuire. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 361-79.

Sniderman, Paul M., James M. Glaser, and Robert Griffin 1990. "Information and Electoral Choice." in Information and Democratic Processes, ed. by John A. Ferejohn and James H. Kuklinski. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 117-35.

Bartels, Larry M. 1996. "Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections." American Journal of Political Science 40: 194-230.

Recommended further readings:

Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Scott Keeter 1996. What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, and Dieter Fuchs 1989. "The Left-Right Schema." in Continuities in Political Action, ed. M. Kent Jennings and Jan W. van Deth. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 203-34.

Laponce, J. A. 1981. Left and Right: The Topography of Political Perceptions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 3-28.

Lupia, Arthur 1994. "Shortcuts versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections." American Political Science Review 88: 63-76.

Lupia, Arthur, and Mathew D. McCubbins 1998. The Democratic Dilemma. Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Topic 8: Do elections give mandates to enact specific policies? Interpreting election outcomes. Controversies about issue voting and its measurement. Path models, normal vote analysis, the evaluation of introspective responses

Mandatory readings:

Hershey, Marjorie Randon 1992. "The Constructed Explanation: Interpreting Election Results in the 1984 Presidential Race." The Journal of Politics 54: 943-76.

Heath, Anthony, John Curtice, Roger Jowell, Geoffrey Evans, Julia Field, and Sharon Witherspoon 1991. Understanding Political Change: The British Voter 1964-1987. Oxford: Pergamon, pp. 32-51.

Kelley, Stanley, Jr. 1983. Interpreting Elections. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 10-25, 43-71.

Recommended further readings:

Anker, Hans 1992. Normal Vote Analysis. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, pp. 1-19.

Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald Stokes 1960. The American Voter. New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 44-63.

Harrop, Martin, and William L. Miller 1987. Elections and Voters: A Comparative Introduction. London: Macmillan, pp. 130-62.

Herstein, John A. 1981. "Keeping the Voters' Limits in Mind: A Cognitive Process Analysis of Decision Making in Voting." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40: 843-61. Reprinted in Experimental Foundations of Political Science, ed. by Donald R. Kinder and Thomas R. Palfrey. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1993, pp. 129-58. CEUL 320.072

Niemi, Richard G., and Herbert F. Weisberg eds. 1993. Classics in Voting Behavior. Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Inc, pp. 93-159. CEUL 324.9.73

RePass, David 1971. "Issue Salience and Party Choice." American Political Science Review 65: 389-400.

Topic 9: The calculus of utility. Proximity, directional and salience models of party choice

Mandatory readings:

Iversen, Torben 1994. "Political Leadership and Representation in West European Democracies: A Test of Three Models of Voting." American Journal of Political Science 38: 45-74.

Macdonald, Stuart Elaine, and George Rabinowitz 1998. "Solving the Paradox of Nonconvergence: Valence, Position, and Direction in Democratic Politics." Electoral Studies 17: 281-300.

Recommended further readings:

Adams, James, and Samuel Merrill, III 1999. "Party Policy Equilibrium for Alternative Spatial Voting Models: An Application to the Norwegian Storting." European Journal of Political Research 36: 235-55.

Budge, Ian, and Dennis Farlie 1983. "Party Competition - Selective Emphasis or Direct Confrontation? An Alternative View with Data." in Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change, ed. by Hans Daalder and Peter Mair. Beverly Hills: Sage, pp. 267-305.

Enelow, James M., James W. Endersby, and Michael C. Munger 1993. "A Revised Probabilistic Spatial Model of Elections: Theory and Evidence." in Information, Participation and Choice: 'An Economic Theory of Democracy' in Perspective, ed. by Bernard Grofman. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 125-40.

Macdonald, Stuart Elaine, George Rabinowitz, and Ola Listhaug 1998. "On Attempting to Rehabilitate the Proximity Model: Sometimes the Patient Just Can't Be Helped." The Journal of Politics 60: 653-90.

Madsen, Bart 1996. "Directional Theory of Issue Voting: The Case of the 1991 Parliamentary Elections in Flanders." Electoral Studies 15: 53-70.

Merrill, Samuel, III, and Bernard Grofman 1999. A Unified Theory of Voting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Petrocik, John R. 1996. "Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study." American Journal of Political Science 40: 825-50.

Topic 10: The contingent nature of economic voting and political business cycles

Mandatory readings:

Fidrmuc, Jan 2000. "Political Support for Reforms: Economic Voting in Transition Countries." European Economic Review 44: 1491-513.

Kiewiet, D. Roderick 2000. "Economic Retrospective Voting and Incentives for Policy-Making." Electoral Studies 19: 427-44.

Remmer, Karen L. 1993. "The Political Economy of Elections in Latin America." American Political Science Review 87: 393-407.

Recommended further readings:

Alesina, Alberto, Nouriel Roubini, and Gerald D. Cohen 1997. Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Anderson, Christopher J. 1995. "The Dynamics of Public Support for Coalition Governments." Comparative Political Studies 28: 350-83.

Evans, Geoffrey, and Stephen Whitefield 1995. "The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment: Support for Democracy in Transition Societies." British Journal of Political Science 25: 485-514.

Nannestad, Peter, and Martin Paldam 1994. "The VP-Function: A Survey of the Literature on Vote and Popularity Functions after 25 Years." Public Choice 79: 213-45.

Paldam, Martin 1991. "How Robust Is the Vote Function? A Study of Seventeen Nations over Four Decades." in Economics and Politics: the Calculus of Support, ed. by Helmut Norpoth, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, and Jean Dominique Lafay. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 9-32.

Powell, G. Bingham, Jr., and Guy D. Whitten 1993. "A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context." American Journal of Political Science 37: 391-414.

Przeworski, Adam 1996. "Public Support for Economic Reforms in Poland." Comparative Political Studies 29: 520-43.

Sanders, David 1995. "Forecasting Political Preferences and Election Outcomes in the UK: Experiences, Problems and Prospects for the Next General Election." Electoral Studies 14: 251-72.

Saunders, Peter 1995. "Privatization, Share Ownership and Voting." British Journal of Political Science 25: 131-43.

Topic 11: Should voting be compulsory? The determinants of electoral turnout and its impact on public policies

Mandatory readings:

Lijphart, Arend 1997. "Unequal Participation: Democracy's Unresolved Dilemma." American Political Science Review 91: 1-14.

Hirczy, Wolfgang 1995. "Explaining Near-Universal Turnout: The Case of Malta." European Journal of Political Research 27: 255-72.

IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) 1997. Voter Turnout from 1945 to 1997: A Global Report on Political Participation. Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, pp. 14-15.

Blais, Andr‚, and Agnieszka Dobrzynska 1998. "Turnout in Electoral Democracies." European Journal of Political Research 33: 239-61.

Recommended further readings:

Aldrich, John 1993. "Rational Choice and Turnout." American Journal of Political Science 37: 246-78.

Brady, Henry E., Sidney Verba, and Kay Lehman Schlozman 1995. "Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation." American Political Science Review 89: 271-94.

Jackman, Robert W., and Ross A. Miller 1995. "Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies in the 1980s." Comparative Political Studies 27: 467-92.

Mueller, Dennis C. 1989. Public Choice II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 348-69.

Powell, Bingham Jr. 1982. Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability and Violence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 12-5, 111-22.

Topic 12: The interaction between voters and parties. Spatial models of party competition. The empirical evidence on the impact of public opinion on public policies. Elections and public opinion research as feedback mechanisms in policy development

No mandatory readings for this topic.