POLS 1140
Models of Democratic Choice
Updated Mar 9, 2025
Monday
Plan
Review models of political cognition
Begin discussion of retrospective voting (DfR Chapter 4/5)
- Selection and Sanctioning
- Blind retrospection
Wednesday: Economic voting (DfR Chapter 6)
Friday: Finish Economic voting, Course review
Assignments
Assignment 1 feedback this week
-
- Section Next Week
- Wed 5-6 pm 300 Sayles Hall
- Thur 5-6 pm 111 Thayer Rm 140
Reading Reflections:
- 1st by October 15
- 2nd by November 8
- 3rd by December 6
Term Paper: October 31
Attendance Survey?
Click here to see if today is your lucky day
Term Papers
Here’ is the prompt for your first term paper
Due October 31, 2024 by midnight.
Term Papers: Prompt
Using what you’ve learned about public opinion in the course so far, make the case for or against citizens’ competence in a democracy. Whatever side you take in this debate, present the best evidence for your argument, consider the strongest objections to that argument, and reassure us that your claims stand inspite of these arguments. Along the way, you may want to offer some discussion of what you mean by competence, and the various roles that citizens and their opinions might play in a democracy. You should conclude by discussing the implications of your argument for democratic theory, politics, and policy.
Term Papers: Structure
You may structure your paper how you please, but something like:
- Introduction (~1-2 pages)
- Argument (~3-4 pages)
- Critique (~1-2 pages)
- Response (~1-2 pages)
- Conclusion (~1-2 pages)
will make it easier for your reader (and grader) to follow along.
- Length: 7-12 pages double spaced, 1-inch margins, 12 point font
Wednedsay
Plan
Critiques of Blind Retrospection
Begin Economic voting (DfR Chapter 6)
Friday: Finish Economic voting, Course review
Exit Polling Opportunity
The Realizing Rights Lab is conducting exit polling for school board elections in Rhode Island school districts. This opportunity would be for roughly 7.5 hours total (at $30/hour), including two pre-election trainings and a shift on Election Day.
Contact: Cameron Arnzen ([email protected])
Attendance Survey?
Click here to see if today is your lucky day
Friday
Yet another survey?
Click here be the change you want to see in this class
What’s in a name?
Plan
Friday: Finish Economic voting
Begin Course review for midterm
Next week:
No class on Monday
Feedback on Proposals by Tuesday
Read:
- Achen, C. H. and Bartels, L. M. (2017). Democracy for realists: Why elections do not produce responsive government. Princeton University Press Chapters 8 – 10
- Huddy, L. (2018). The Group Foundations of Democratic Political Behavior. Critical review, 30(1-2):71–86
Sections
- Wed 5-6 pm 300 Sayles Hall
- Thur 5-6 pm 111 Thayer Rm 140
Retrospective Voting
Overview
Retrospective voting reflects an alternative response to problems raised by Converse (1964)
Redefine the problem of citizen competence
- Democracy doesn’t need perfectly informed, ideal citizens
- Just requires citizens to select competent leaders and sanction bad leaders
Two Models of Retrospective Voting
- Leadership selection:
- Select the most competent candidate
- Sanctioning
- Punish “bad” candidates who fail to work on citizens behalf
Both models depend on the quality of the information or signal citizens have
Leadership Selection
As the information environment becomes noiser, it becomes harder to select good leaders
Leadership Sanctioning
As the information environment becomes noisier, it becomes
Harder for voters to sanction ineffective leaders
Easier for leaders to shirk their duties
Retrospective Voting
So what should people base their retrospective evaluations on?
In order to ascertain whether the incumbents have performed poorly or well, citizens need only calculate the changes in their own welfare. (Fiorina 1981)
Economic Voting
Economic Voting (Fiorina 1978)
Aggregate Evidence of Retrospective Voting
Debates in Economic Voting
Broad consensus that economic factors matter, but lots of ongoing debates within the field of economic voting:
Macro vs Micro | Sociotropic vs Egocentric | National vs Pocketbook
- Do national or individual economic factors matter?
Time horizons | Myopic voters
- Do voters maintain a “running tally” of long term events or are they overly swayed by recent changes
Negative vs positive shocks
- Is there a negativity bias where wait bad news more heavily than good?
Mechanisms and moderators
- Partisans biases in evaluations of the economy
Achen and Bartel’s Critique of Retrospective Voting
A&B’s critique boils down to two claims:
- Voters retrospective capabilities appear hapazard at best
- Punish politicians for things that are out of their control (Blind Retrospectiion)
- Ignoring policy failures they could address (e.g. Spanish Influenza)
- Voter’s Economic evaluations are:
- Short sighted
- Poor predicters of competence
- Open to Manipulation
Blind Retrospection
Review
Take a moment to review the arguments in Chapter 5. Specifically:
Table 5.1 and Figure 5.1 and 5.3
Table 5.2 and Figure 5.4
Shark Attacks and Blind Retrospection
Shark Attacks and Blind Retrospection
Shark Attacks and Blind Retrospection
Droughts and Blind Retrospection
Droughts and Blind Retrospection
Summary
In Chapter 5, Achen and Bartels present evidence that voters enage in blind retrospection, punishing elected officials for events outside of their control.
They show that Woodrow Wilson’s vote totals in 1916 appear to be lower in beach counties during a summer when shark attacks in New Jersey were particularly salient
They suggest this phenomena is more general, by showing how extreme weather (droughts and floods) negatively impacts incumbent vote share.
But how robust are these results?
Do Shark Attacks Really Sway Elections
Do Shark Attacks Really Sway Elections
Did Shark Attacks Influence the 1912 Election
The Garden of Forking Paths
Summary
The shark attack example is flashy and surprising
Fowler and Hall (2018) offer compelling critiques of this particular finding
- Achen and Bartels (2018) response
But still others find evidence of irrelevant events influencing electoral behavior:
- Healy et al. 2010 analyze football games ( Fowler and Montange offer a similar critique)
- Busby and Druckman (2017) offer experimental evidence using Ohio State - Oregon game
What can we conclude?
Economic Voting
Achen and Bartel’s Second Critique
If shark attacks and droughts were the only evidence against retrospective voting, maybe we wouldn’t feel so bad
But Achen and Bartels then attack the supposed rational foundations of retrospective voting based on economic evaluations
Critique of Economic Voting (Chapter 6)
Voters are myopic
Do a poor job predicting competence
May be open to manipulation
Figure 1: Voters are Short sighted and influenced only by recent economic events
Figure 2: Voters Do a Poor Job of Selecting Competent Leaders
Figure 3: Voters do a poor job of selecting competent leaders
Figure 4: Voters May be Subject to Manipulation/Electoral Business Cycles
Summary
Theories of Retrospective Voting seek to offer an alternative acount of democratic accountability that more realistically reflects the abilities of average citizens
Rather than assuming coherent beliefs, complete knowledge, RV asks citizens to select good leaders and sanction bad leaders using assessments of their welfare as indicator of competence
Critics of RV contend that retropsective evaluations are:
- Haphazard: Citizens punish elected officials for things they have know control over
- Myopic: Only recent economic evaluations seem to matter, can be manipulated/biased.
A Realist Theory of Democracy
A Realist Theory of Democracy
“The primary sources of partisan loyalties and voting behavior … are social identities, group attachments, and myopic retrospections, not policy preferences or ideological principles.”
“How can we tell in any given case that identity is the key moving force?”
The Very Basis of Reasons (Chapter 8)
- Summarizes critique of two theories of democracy
- Populist folk theory
- Rationalistic retrospective theory
- Traces the decline and reemergence of a more “realist” view of democracy with a focus on pluralist group conflict
- What explains this decline and re-emergence of groups in political theory and science?
- What needs to be done to “develop a modern group-theoretic understanding of political attitudes and behavior”
Evidence of Group Identity (Chapter 9)
Chapter 9 presents evidence of the important of “identities” to understanding political behavior using three types of evidence:
Historical analysis of Catholic voting behavior
Time series cross sectional survey analysis of the partisan identity and policy beliefs of White Southerners
Panel survey analysis of abortion attitudes and partisanship
For Thursday be prepared to discuss the following:
Historical analysis of Catholic voting behavior
- What are the key takeaways from Figure 9.1?
- What evidence supports the claims:
- “[T]he impact of Kennedy’s candidacy on Catholic support for the Democratic Party was temporary” (p. 245)
- “It is hard to imagine a clear demonstration of the political impact of group attachments and the trade offs among them” (p. 244)
- Why was “the social significance of a Catholic presidential candidacy … no longer sufficient to produce substantial deviations from accustomed voting behavior” (p. 246)
The Realignment of Partisan Identities in the South
Achen and Bartels present an alternative interpretation of realignment in the south emphasizing the role of social identities over standard accounts that emphasized partisan policies using the following evidence:
Analyzing trends in PID and Voting overtime (Fig 9.1) and by age cohort (Fig 9.2)
Analyzing trends in PID by policy position (Fig 9.4, 9.5)
Regression analysis predicting PID with feelings toward Southerners over time (Table 9.1)
PID, Gender and Abortion
Who are we talking about?
Who changes parties given attitudes about abortion?
Who changes attitudes about abortion given party?
Pitfalls of Group Identity (Chapter 10)
Achen and Bartels conclude by considering the role of partisan identities in politics, and look at:
Partisan misperceptions of party positions
Partisan misperceptions of objective facts
The impact of scandals on unrelated partisan policies
Partisan misperceptions of party positions
What do we learn from Figure 10.1
How do individuals at the ends differ from individuals at the center of the scale
Why are these differences important
Partisan misperceptions of objective facts
What are the key takeaways from table 10.1 and figure 10.2?
How do these results relate to our earlier discussions of misinformation?
The impact of scandals on unrelated partisan policies
What are the key coefficients in Table 10.2 and 10.3 for Achen and Bartel’s argument
How compelling and consistent are these results?
Midterm Review
Are citizens up to the tasks democracy requires?
In your groups, write down:
An argument for or against competence from readings and concepts we’ve discussed so far
A counter-argument to this claim
A counter to this counter
References
POLS 1140
POLS 1140 Models of Democratic Choice Updated Mar 9, 2025