Behavioral Theory of Elections

by Bendor, Jonathan; Diermeier, Daniel; Siegel, David A.; Ting, Michael M.

• ISBN13: 9780691135076
• ISBN10: 069113507X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-17
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Most theories of elections assume that voters and political actors are fully rational. While these formulations produce many insights, they also generate anomalies--most famously, about turnout. The rise of behavioral economics has posed new challenges to the premise of rationality. This groundbreaking book provides a behavioral theory of elections based on the notion that all actors--politicians as well as voters--are only boundedly rational. The theory posits learning via trial-and-error: actions that surpass an actor's aspiration level are more likely to be used in the future, while those that fall short are less likely to be tried later on.Based on this idea of adaptation, the authors construct formal models of party competition, turnout, and voters' choices of candidates. These models predict substantial turnout levels, voters sorting into parties, and winning parties adopting centrist platforms. In multiparty elections, voters are able to coordinate vote choices on majority-preferred candidates, while all candidates garner significant vote shares. Overall, the behavioral theory and its models produce macroimplications consistent with the data on elections, and they use plausible microassumptions about the cognitive capacities of politicians and voters. A computational model accompanies the book and can be used as a tool for further research.

Author Biography

Jonathan Bendor is the Walter and Elise Haas Professor of Political Economics and Organizations at Stanford University. Daniel Diermeier is the IBM Professor of Regulation and Competitive Practice and professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Northwestern University. David A. Siegel is assistant professor of political science at Florida State University. Michael M. Ting is associate professor of political science and public affairs at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Bounded Rationality and Elections	p. 1
Framing and Representations	p. 5
Heuristics	p. 8
Aspiration-based Adaptation and Bounded Rationality	p. 12
Plan of This Book	p. 21
Aspiration-based Adaptive Rules	p. 23
ABARs Defined	p. 23
Some Important Properties of ABARs	p. 33
The Evidential Status of Aspiration-based Adaptation	p. 46
Party Competition	p. 52
Related Work	p. 54
The Model and Its Implications	p. 56
Informed and/or Sophisticated Challengers	p. 68
Robustness Issues	p. 74
Conclusions	p. 78
Turnout	p. 80
The Model	p. 82
Main Results	p. 85
Variations in Participation	p. 96
Conclusions	p. 107
Voter Choice	p. 109
The Model	p. 112
The Endogenous Emergence of Party Affiliation	p. 116
Misperceptions	p. 121
Retrospection and Prospection Combined	p. 122
Voter Sophistication and Electoral Outcomes	p. 124
Institutions and Unsophisticated Retrospective Voters	p. 128
Conclusions	p. 130
An Integrated Model of Two-Party Elections	p. 132
Full Computational Model for Two Parties	p. 134
Some Results of the Basic Integrated Model	p. 138
The Choices of Voters	p. 141
Party Location	p. 145
Turnout	p. 148
New Questions	p. 152
Conclusion	p. 159
Elections with Multiple Parties	p. 161
Extending Our Results to Multiple Parties	p. 161
Multicandidate Competition and Duverger's Law	p. 166
The Model and Simulation Results	p. 173
An Intuition	p. 180
ABARs and Dynamic Stability	p. 183
Model Meets Data	p. 184
Conclusions: Bounded Rationality and Elections	p. 191
Testing the Theory	p. 194
Normative Considerations: Voter Error and Systemic Performance	p. 196
Extensions	p. 198
Proofs	p. 205
The Computational Model	p. 215
Overview	p. 215
Graphical Model	p. 216
Batch Model	p. 229
Bibliography	p. 233
Index	p. 249
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