 The Center for the Study of Imperfections in Democracies (DISC) would like to invite you to an event. The winter term has produced four excellent final papers on the topic of voting behavior. This event was born after recognizing the need for an infrastructure in which the authors can collaborate to improve and rework their papers with the goal of turning them into publications. We would like invite you to join us in these efforts. The workshop will consist of 12 minute presentations of the papers followed by an 8 minute question and answer session. After the presentations we will break for 15 minutes and reconvene for a round table discussion. Audience participation is welcomed in both sessions. If you can only make one session, please make the paper presentations your priority. Should you be unable to attend written feedback is still appreciated by the authors. Below you will find the abstracts. For the papers see the attachment link on the bottom. Hope to see you at the event. Levente Littvay, Assistant Professor and Organizer Department of Political Science Central European University Budapest, Hungary --- Panel Chair and Co-organizer: Zoltan Fazekas Contact: fazekas_zoltan@student.ceu.hu --- List of papers and abstracts (for the full papers please check the attachment link on the bottom): Challenging the Myth of the Dangerous Uninformed Voter by Paul Weith < weith_paul@student.ceu.hu > Abstract: The theories regarding political information and vote choice have empirically shown that political ignorance tends to increase one's likelihood of voting for left-wing parties in the US and in Britain. In multi-party systems there is virtually no published evidence of any influence of political sophistication on vote choice. The aim of this study is to find whether the political information prevents one to some extent from voting for extreme-right parties. By testing this theory using two mixed-effects models on a sample of 5500 respondents nested in 8 European countries, I have found no significant evidence of such a relationship. However, it appears that education plays a role in the vote for extreme-right parties, and its influence on vote choice is mediated by the national average of formal education. Thus, as the national average increases, the influence of the individual education on one's propensity to vote for extremist parties decreases and becomes negative after passing a certain threshold. This paper calls for further research on the issue of education and the vote for extremist parties. NOTE: Due to advancement in the project a slightly updated version of the paper is available on the site (with 29/04/2009 date). Experts and Partisans: An examination of social network effects by Constantin Manuel Bosancianu < bosancianu_constantin@student.ceu.hu > Abstract: This paper presents and tests a model of convergence in vote turnout between members of a social network. Focusing more on the influence of racial heterogeneity in the social network, it assumes that the residual racial composition of a network does influence the likelihood that two members of a dyad will diverge in vote turnout. Using data from the ANES 2008-2009 Panel Study, I am able to use logistic regression to test a model which, apart from this variable, also includes measures of political interest in the network, as well as dyad-level characteristics. The results confirm my assumptions regarding the influence of political interest in the network; sadly, the influence of network heterogeneity cannot be ascertained given the lack of significance in the result. This study represents the first attempt at examining the effects of heterogeneity of social network on vote turnout in the context of the 2008 election.
Keywords: turnout, social
network, 2008 US election, racial heterogeneity. Economic Voting in Romania. The case of the 2004 elections by Csaba Zsolt Kiss < kiss_csaba@student.ceu.hu > Abstract: The economy has been often used to explain vote choice in western democracies, but is the perceived state of the economy a significant predictor of vote choice in the Eastern European context? Thus, the research question I pose is whether economic evaluations shape the vote in Romania and whether economic voting models developed for Western Europe (e.g. Lewis-Beck, 1988; Wlezien et al., 1997) can successfully be applied for the study of the same phenomenon in Romania. I carried out an individual-level research by using survey data collected before the 2004 parliamentary elections. The data was analyzed through structural equation modeling as it can accommodate a bi-directional relationship between vote choice and the perception of the economy .I tested the models proposed by Lewis-Beck, Wlezien et al., modified versions of these, as well as an original model inspired by the work of Mainwaring and Torcal (2005). The results show that the vote choice of the Romanian average voter is influenced by his perception of the state of the national economy since the incumbent government came to power. Also, this practice is slightly more probable among more educated people. Moreover, it is shown that the perception of the state of the national economy is conditioned by the perception of the state of the local economy, his personal financial well-being, presidential voting intention and vote-choice it-self. Does Difference in Information Really Mean Better Electoral Decisions? by Sebastian Popa < popa_sebastian@student.ceu.hu > Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between political information and voters’ capacity to make good/correct electoral decision. More precisely, I want to show that information has no, or in the best case a small, effect on the capacity of voters to perceive the candidate they voted as being close to them, hence revealing that they made a good electoral decision. The data used in the analysis comes from the post electoral American National Election Survey. The analysis is done by assessing the effects of information across different models and also using a statistical simulation method developed by Bartels (1996), Toka (2008) and Toka and Popescu (2008). The results show that information has at best a small effect on the capacity of individuals to make correct electoral decision. When analyzing how the difference evolves in time, I clearly show that an increased difference in information hypothesized by the knowledge gap does not influence the difference in issue proximity between the more and less informed voters. Thus, it can be assumed that the difference in information can be effectively compensated by using cognitive mechanisms such as heuristics or emotions. |