Voting Behavior, Information Level and the Paradoxes of Democracy

Voting Behaviour, Information Level and the Paradoxes of Democracy

Instructor: Gábor Tóka (Central European University, Budapest)

PhD course syllabus, Winter 2005

Department of Political Science Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona

Francis Bacon thought that knowledge is power, but many contemporary studies of democracy disagree with him. At first sight it seems rather trivial that the more knowledgeable citizens are about political matters, the better they can express their preferences through the vote, and there is overwhelming empirical evidence that most people have an extremely haphazard understanding of political issues. Yet democratic governments are not entirely out of touch with citizens’ preferences. How is this possible? Would it make any difference in election outcomes if people were better informed? Are all citizens really equal at the voting booth despite the striking differences between their level of political knowledge and sophistication? This course reviews answers to these question in contemporary empirical studies of electoral behaviour. First we will examine why most citizens in democratic elections lack motivation to be informed about political matters, and why a few citizens nevertheless end up with exceedingly high levels of political knowledge. Is it true that everyone is just as knowledgeable about the issues they really care about as they can possibly be, or are there reasons to believe that some people are chronically ignorant even about the issues that they care about most? Do the politically ignorant have systematically different preferences than the politically more knowledgeable? Is it possible, as many scholars argue, that ingenious information shortcuts – such as observing the campaign behaviour of candidates, or watching polls, or listening to the advice of trusted sources – assure that people with identical political preferences vote much the same way, irrespectively of their political knowledge level? After reviewing the extensive and contradictory literature on these issues, we shall contemplate whether there is any evidence that better informed citizens are more likely than ignorant electorates to bring such governments into power that match citizens preferences on major political issues. If yes, how much difference does the political information level of the electorate makes in election outcomes, and what factors explain that some countries have less knowledgeable voters than others? If the political information level of the voters makes no difference in how closely governments match popular preferences, then how is this possible? What kind of theories or observations can explain this result and what the implications for 21st century governments are? Participants in the course are expected to participate actively in the discussions about these topics and 20 percent of their grade will be based on their in-class contributions. Another 30 percent of the grade will depend on their short summaries of the arguments of the required readings, which will have to be turned in before class. These summaries are expected to reconstruct both the argument and the empirical evidence put forward by the readings on the agenda of the class. Finally, the remaining 50 percent of the grade will be based on a 10 to 15- page long essay related to the subject of the course that all students will have to submit by the end of the semester. The course is divided into 10 classes running in the second half of January. The topics and readings for each class are listed below, following a list of recommended readings that are relevant for the whole course.

Recommended readings: Althaus, Scott L. 2003. Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics: Opinion Surveys and the Will of the People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alvarez, R. Michael. 1997. Information and Elections. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Bennett, Stephen Earl, Staci L. Rhine, and Richard S. Flickinger. 2000. “Reading’s Impact on Democratic Citizenship in America.” Political Behavior 22: 167-195. Brockington, David. 2003. “A Low Information Theory of Ballot Position Effect.” Political Behavior 25: 1-27. Converse, Philip E. 1964. “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.” in Ideology and Discontent, ed. by David Apter. New York: Free Press, pp. 206-61. (selected sections only) Druckman, James N., and Nelson, Kjersten R. 2003. “Framing and Deliberation: How Citizens’ Conversations Limit Elite Influence.” American Journal of Political Science 47: 729-45. Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Scott Keeter. 1996. What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Edelman, Murray J. (1964). 1985. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 22-43. Feldman, Stanley. 1990. “Measuring Issue Preferences: The Problem of Response Stability.” in Political Analysis Vol. 1, ed. by James A. Stimson. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 25-60. Fishkin, James. 1995. The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy. Expanded ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hill, Lisa. 2002a. “On the Reasonableness of Compelling Citizens to ‘Vote’: the Australian Case.” Political Studies 50: 80-101. Hill, Lisa. 2002b. “Compulsory Voting: Residual Problems and Potential Solutions.” Australian Journal of Political Science 37: 437-55. Holbrook, Thomas M. 2002. “Presidential Campaigns and the Knowledge Gap.” Poliitcal Communication 19: 437-454. Huckfeldt, Robert, and John Sprague. 1995. Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutchings, Vincent L. 2003. Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn about Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fishkin, James S., and Robert C. Luskin. 1999. “Bringing Deliberation to the Democratic Dialogue.” in The Poll with a Human Face: The National Issues Convention Experiment in Political Communication, ed. by Maxwell E. McCombs and Amy Reynolds. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 3-38. Lupia, Arthur. 1994. “Shortcuts versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections.” American Political Science Review 88: 63-76. 3

Lupia, Arthur, and Mathew D. McCubbins. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma. Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lupia, Arthur, Mathew D. McCubbins, and Samuel L. Popkin eds. 2000. Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luskin, Robert C. 2003. “The Heavenly Public: What Would a Fully Informed Citizenry Be Like?” in Electoral Democracy, ed. by Michael B. MacKuen and George Rabinowitz. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 238-61. Macdonald, Stuart Elaine, George Rabinowitz, and Holly Brasher. 2003. “Policy Issues and Electoral Democracy.” in Electoral Democracy, ed. by Michael B. MacKuen and George Rabinowitz. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp. 172-99. Marcus, George E., W. Russell Neuman, and Michael MacKuen. 2000. Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Neuman, W. Russell. 1986. The Paradox of Mass Politics: Knowledge and Opinion in the American Electorate. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 51-67. 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. Schuessler, Alexander A. 2000. The Logic of Expressive Choice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 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. 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. Smith, Graham, and Corinne Wales. 2000. ”Citizens’ Juries and Deliberative Democracy.” Political Studies 48: 51-65. Tóka, Gábor. 2003, 2004. “Can Voters Be Equal? [Parts 1-2.]” The Review of Sociology 9 (2): 51-72, and 10 (1): 47-65. Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.

1. Introduction: the major schools and issues in electoral research. Basic findings of the Columbia, Michigan, and Rochester schools

Recommended readings (there are no mandatory readings for the first two classes): Dalton, Russell 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.

2. Campaign information and election outcomes: does it matter after all? The state of the art answers in election studies.

Recommended reading: Johnston, Richard, Michael G. Hagen, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. 2004. The 2000 Presidential Election and the Foundations of Party Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapters 1, 4, 5 and 7.

3. Democracy and voter inequality: the example of turnout. Determinants and consequences of turnout and the paradox of voting. Can the unequal intensity of preferences explain unequal participation? Can citizen involvement in politics be equal across groups with different preference profiles?

Mandatory readings: Lijphart, Arend. 1997. “Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma.” American Political Science Review 91: 1-14. Citrin, Jack, Eric Schickler, and John Sides. 2003. “What if Everyone Voted? Simulating the Impact of Increased Turnout in Senate Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 47: 75-90.

4. The extension of voter inequality theorems to the problem of information. Parallels between voting and other forms of political involvement, and the generality of the paradox of voting. The expressive model of human action and its implications for political information processing. The implications of an expressive model of voting for voter inequality and the convergence of expressive and instrumental accounts of voting in empirical applications.

Mandatory reading: Brennan, Geoffrey, and Alan Hamlin 1998. “Expressive Voting and Electoral Equilibrium.” Public Choice 95: 149-75.

5. The problem of (mis)information in the sociological model of the vote. Two-step information flows, social conformity and cue-taking effects in interpersonal and impersonal communication

Mandatory readings: Cutler, F. 2002. “The Simplest Shortcut of All: Sociodemographic Characteristics and Electoral Choice.” Journal of Politics 64: 466-490. McKelvey, Richard D., and Peter C. Ordeshook. 1986. “Information, Electoral Equilibria, and the Democratic Ideal.” Journal of Politics 48: 909-937.

6. The problem of information in the psychological model of the vote. The nature of party identification and the problem of on-line vs. memory based information processing.

Mandatory readings: 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. Redlawsk, David P. 2001. “You Must Remember This: A Test of the On-line Model of Voting.” Journal of Politics 63: 29-58.

7. The problem of non-attitudes and the existence of policy preferences in the mass public. From Converse’s black-and-white model of attitude formation to the “out- of-top-of-our-head” model of the survey response.

Mandatory readings: Converse, Philip E. 2000. “Assessing the Capacity of Mass Electorates.” Annual Review of Political Science 3: 331-53. 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.

8. Cognitive shortcuts and the Drunkard’s Search: why we deploy them and why they fail us?

Mandatory readings: Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. 1974. “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science 185: 1124-31. Lau, Richard R., and David P. Redlawsk. 2001. “Advantages and Disadvantages of Cognitive Heuristics in Political Decision Making.” American Journal of Political Science 45: 951- 71.

9. Political attitude differences by political knowledge level and the impact of deliberative polls on the attitudes. The impact of political information level on electoral outcomes.

Mandatory readings: Bartels, Larry M. 1996. “Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 40: 194-230. Lau, Richard R., and David P. Redlawsk. 1997. “Voting Correctly.” American Political Science Review 91: 585-98.

10. The impact of citizens’ information level on what governments do.

Mandatory reading: Adserà, Alícia, Carles Boix, and Mark Payne. 2003. “Are You Being Served? Political Accountability and Quality of Government.” Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 19: 445-90.