Abstract
While political scientists regularly engage in spirited theoretical debates about elections and voting behavior, few have noticed that elected politicians also have theories of elections and voting. Here, we investigate politicians' positions on eight central theoretical debates in the area of elections and voting behavior and compare politicians' theories to those held by ordinary citizens. Using data from face-to-face interviews with nearly one thousand politicians in 11 countries, together with corresponding surveys of more than twelve thousand citizens, we show that politicians overwhelmingly hold thin, minimalist, "democratic realist" theories of voting, while citizens' theories are more optimistic and policy oriented. Politicians' theoretical tendencies - along with their theoretical misalignment from citizens - are remarkably consistent across countries. These theories are likely to have important consequences for how politicians campaign, communicate with the public, think about public policy, and represent their constituents.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | American Political Science Review |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| ISSN | 0003-0554 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 2024 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant (POLEVPOP, ID: 1010 18105). Support for the Danish data collection/research was provided by the Danish Council for Independent Research (DFF) (Project No. 0133-00034B). Research in Germany was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG \u2013 German Research Foundation) under Germany\u2019s Excellence Strategy \u2013 EXC-2035/1 \u2013 390681379. Research in Sweden was supported by grants from the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte, grant no. 2017:00873) and the Swedish Research Council (VR, grant no. 2017-03397).
Funding Information:
POLPOP is an international collaboration examining elected politicians\u2019 opinions, perceptions, and evaluations in 13 countries. The project is led by Stefaan Walgrave (University of Antwerp) and supported by an ERC Advanced Grant (POLEVPOP, ID:101018105). In Australia, the project is led by Patrick Dumont (Australian National University), in Belgium (Flanders) by Stefaan Walgrave (University of Antwerp), in Francophone Belgium by Jean-Benoit Pilet and Nathalie Brack (Universit\u00E9 Libre de Bruxelles), in Canada by Peter Loewen (Cornell University) and Jack Lucas (University of Calgary), in the Czech Republic by Ondrej Cisar (Charles University Prague), in Denmark by Anne Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen), in Germany by Christian Breunig (University of Konstanz) and Stefanie Bailer (University of Basel), in Israel by Lior Sheffer (Tel Aviv University) and Eran Amsalem (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), in Luxembourg by Javier Olivera (Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research), in the Netherlands by Rens Vliegenthart (Wageningen University) and Marc Van de Wardt (Free University of Amsterdam), in Norway by Yvette Peters (University of Bergen), in Portugal by Miguel M. Pereira (University of Southern California) and Jorge Fernandes (University of Lisbon), in Sweden by Mikael Persson (University of Gothenburg), and in Switzerland by Fr\u00E9deric Varone (University of Geneva) and Pirmin Bundi (University of Lausanne). Three country teams (in Francophone Belgium, Norway, and Luxembourg) did not include all eight questions tapping into voting theories in their survey. Note, moreover, that each country team obtained approval from their respective Research Ethics Boards to conduct the politician surveys. Please see the Supplementary Material for detail on ethics approval for each country.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2024.