IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v19y2007i2p115-131.html

Incommensurability and Issue Voting

Author

Listed:
  • John W. Patty

    (Harvard University, jwpatty@gmail.com)

Abstract

In this article, I examine several models of voter behavior that are consistent with recent work in political psychology (Fiske and Tetlock, 1997) concerning incommensurability and individuals’ reluctance to make decisions involving explicit trade-offs between competing ideals or principles. In so doing, I show that one ramification of such cognitive dissonance is policy convergence in multidimensional (i.e. multi-issue) electoral competition between two parties or candidates. Furthermore, the predicted policy outcome is a weighted median, which represents, on each issue, each voter’s preferences to the degree that he or she is likely to use that issue to choose between the candidates.

Suggested Citation

  • John W. Patty, 2007. "Incommensurability and Issue Voting," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(2), pages 115-131, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:19:y:2007:i:2:p:115-131
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629807074264
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629807074264
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629807074264?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patty, John Wiggs, 2005. "Local equilibrium equivalence in probabilistic voting models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 523-536, May.
    2. Patty, John W, 2002. "Equivalence of Objectives in Two Candidate Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 112(1-2), pages 151-166, July.
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    4. repec:cup:apsrev:v:64:y:1970:i:02:p:426-448_12 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Duggan, John & Fey, Mark, 2005. "Electoral competition with policy-motivated candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 490-522, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. McKelvey, Richard D. & Patty, John W., 2006. "A theory of voting in large elections," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 155-180, October.
    2. Kamada, Yuichiro & Kojima, Fuhito, 2013. "The equivalence between costly and probabilistic voting models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 179-185.
    3. Alejandro Saporiti, 2008. "Existence and Uniqueness of Nash Equilibrium in Electoral Competition Games: The Hybrid Case," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(5), pages 827-857, October.
    4. Maria Gallego & Norman Schofield & Kevin McAlister & Jee Jeon, 2014. "The variable choice set logit model applied to the 2004 Canadian election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 427-463, March.
    5. Drouvelis, Michalis & Saporiti, Alejandro & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2014. "Political motivations and electoral competition: Equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 86-115.
    6. Fournier, Gaëtan & Francou, Amaury, 2023. "Location games with references," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 17-32.
    7. Rahul Swamy & Timothy Murray, 0. "Computing equilibrium in network utility-sharing and discrete election games," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-29.
    8. Drouvelis, Michalis & Saporiti, Alejandro & Vriend, Nicolaas J., 2014. "Political motivations and electoral competition: Equilibrium analysis and experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 86-115.
    9. De Donder, Philippe & Gallego, Maria, 2017. "Electoral Competition and Party Positioning," TSE Working Papers 17-760, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    10. Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias K., 2012. "Political competition between differentiated candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 249-271.
    11. Rahul Swamy & Timothy Murray, 2022. "Computing equilibrium in network utility-sharing and discrete election games," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 2056-2084, October.
    12. L. Lambertini, 2010. "Oligopoly with Hyperbolic Demand: A Differential Game Approach," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 145(1), pages 108-119, April.
    13. Aragonès, Enriqueta & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2025. "Ideological consistency and valence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 160-182.
    14. Patty, John Wiggs, 2005. "Local equilibrium equivalence in probabilistic voting models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 523-536, May.
    15. Oleg Smirnov & James H. Fowler, 2007. "Policy-Motivated Parties in Dynamic Political Competition," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(1), pages 9-31, January.
    16. Luca Lambertini, 2007. "Platform stickiness in a spatial voting model," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 4(40), pages 1-11.
    17. James Cochran & David Curry & Rajesh Radhakrishnan & Jon Pinnell, 2014. "Political engineering: optimizing a U.S. Presidential candidate’s platform," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 215(1), pages 63-87, April.
    18. Alejandro Saporiti, 2010. "Power, ideology, and electoral competition," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1003, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    19. Bernhardt, Dan & Duggan, John & Squintani, Francesco, 2007. "Electoral competition with privately-informed candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 1-29, January.
    20. Duggan, John & Fey, Mark, 2005. "Electoral competition with policy-motivated candidates," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 490-522, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:19:y:2007:i:2:p:115-131. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.