IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwwpp/dp268.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Decision Heuristic for Party Identification: New British and German Data and a New Understanding for a Classic Concept

Author

Listed:
  • Alan S. Zuckerman
  • Malcolm Brynin

Abstract

The concept party identification lies at the heart of much research on political preferences and behavior in established democracies. Drawing on data obtained from the British Household Panel Survey (1991-99) and the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (1984-1998), we offer a fresh approach to the concept. Party identification is a stance that people take towards the political parties. They apply a consistent rule -a decision heuristic -persistently returning to the same preference year after year or behaving haphazardly, moving with no clear pattern among the choices. Most take a definitively negative stance towards one of the parties and a positive stance towards the other major party. Of these, about half display behavior that reflects a psychological commitment and about half are as likely as not to pick that party when asked. For most people, party identification is neither a loyalty, as conceived by traditional understanding associated with the Michigan -nor a calculated choice -as offered by rational choice theory -but a way to situate oneself persistently in relation to the relatively distant objects of politics.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan S. Zuckerman & Malcolm Brynin, 2001. "A Decision Heuristic for Party Identification: New British and German Data and a New Understanding for a Classic Concept," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 268, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp268
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.38629.de/dp268.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shively, W. Phillips, 1972. "Party Identification, Party Choice, and Voting Stability: The Weimar Case," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(4), pages 1203-1225, December.
    2. Norpoth, Helmut, 1984. "The Making of a More Partisan Electorate in West Germany," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 53-71, January.
    3. Franklin, Charles H. & Jackson, John E., 1983. "The Dynamics of Party Identification," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(4), pages 957-973, December.
    4. Kotler-Berkowitz, Laurence A., 2001. "Religion and Voting Behaviour in Great Britain: A Reassessment," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(3), pages 523-554, July.
    5. Page, Benjamin I. & Jones, Calvin C., 1979. "Reciprocal Effects of Policy Preferences, Party Loyalties and the Vote," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 73(4), pages 1071-1089, December.
    6. Klingemann, Hans-Dieter & Wattenberg, Martin P., 1992. "Decaying Versus Developing Party Systems: A Comparison of Party Images in the United States and West Germany," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(2), pages 131-149, April.
    7. Abramson, Paul R., 1992. "Of Time and Partisan Instability in Britain," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 381-395, July.
    8. Johnston, R. J. & Pattie, Charles, 2000. "Inconsistent Individual Attitudes within Consistent Attitudinal Structures: Comments on an Important Issue Raised by John Bartle's Paper on Causal Modelling of Voting in Britain," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 361-374, April.
    9. Miller, Warren E., 1991. "Party Identification, Realignment, and Party Voting: Back to the Basics," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 85(2), pages 557-568, June.
    10. David Sanders & Malcolm Brynin, 1999. "The Dynamics of Party Preference Change in Britain, 1991–1996," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 47(2), pages 219-239, June.
    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. Ali Abdelzadeh, 2014. "The Impact of Political Conviction on the Relation Between Winning or Losing and Political Dissatisfaction," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(2), pages 21582440145, May.
    2. Andy Anim & John Obeng Addai & Ernest Osei Akuoko & Rebecca Hammond & Casey Esaa Sey, 2022. "Candidate Policy Ideas and Other Factors that Affect Election Results: A Case Study of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology," Journal of Social and Development Sciences, AMH International, vol. 13(1), pages 44-58.
    3. Alan S. Gerber & Gregory A. Huber & Ebonya Washington, 2009. "Party Affiliation, Partisanship, and Political Beliefs: A Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 15365, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. John Jackson, 2014. "Location, location, location: the Davis-Hinich model of electoral competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 197-218, April.
    5. Chang Wen-Chun, 2008. "Toward Independence or Unification?," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-32, January.
    6. Migheli, Matteo, 2022. "Lost in election. How different electoral systems translate the voting gender gap into gender representation bias," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    7. Caroline Le Pennec & Vincent Pons, 2019. "How Do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multi-Country Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates," NBER Working Papers 26572, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Ana Silvia de Matos Vas, 2012. "Interpersonal Influence Regarding the Decision to Vote Within Mozambican Households," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2012-14, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    9. Robert Smith, 1996. "Social structure and voting choice: hypotheses, findings, and interpretations," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 137-160, May.
    10. Arbatli, Cemal Eren & Gomtsyan, David, 2019. "Voting retrospectively: Critical junctures and party identification," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 356-390.
    11. Remo Nitschke, 2019. "Zwischen Baum und Borke – Die Parteipräferenzen von ehemaligen Ostdeutschen, die mittlerweile in Westdeutschland leben," ifo Dresden berichtet, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 26(05), pages 09-15, October.
    12. Jennings, Colin & Drinkwater, Stephen, 2012. "An Analysis of the Electoral Use of Policy on Law and Order by New Labour," SIRE Discussion Papers 2012-77, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    13. Andrew B. Whitford, 2007. "Competing Explanations for Bureaucratic Preferences," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(3), pages 219-247, July.
    14. Meyer, Patrick & Schophaus, Fenja M. & Glassen, Thomas & Riedl, Jasmin & Rohrer, Julia M. & Wagner, Gert G. & von Oertzen, Timo, 2019. "Using the Dirichlet process to form clusters of people’s concerns in the context of future party identification," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 14(3), pages 1-20.
    15. Russell J Dalton, 2017. "Citizens’ representation in the 2009 European Parliament elections," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(2), pages 188-211, June.
    16. Kriesi, Hanspeter, 2001. "Die Rolle der Öffentlichkeit im politischen Entscheidungsprozess: Ein konzeptueller Rahmen für ein international vergleichendes Forschungsprojekt," Discussion Papers, Working Group Political Communication and Mobilization P 01-701, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    17. James Adams, 1998. "Partisan Voting and Multiparty Spatial Competition," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 10(1), pages 5-31, January.
    18. Rune Stubager, 2003. "Preference‐shaping: an Empirical Test," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 51(2), pages 241-261, June.
    19. Arnstein Aassve & Gianmarco Daniele & Marco Le Moglie, 2018. "Never Forget the First Time: The Persistent Effects of Corruption and the Rise of Populism in Italy," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1896, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    20. Chrysanthou, Georgios Marios & Guilló, María Dolores, 2016. "The Dynamics of Heterogeneous Political Party Support and Egocentric Economic Evaluations: the Scottish Case," QM&ET Working Papers 16-3, University of Alicante, D. Quantitative Methods and Economic Theory.

    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:diw:diwwpp:dp268. 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: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.html .

    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.