Ideology and the rationality of non-voting

Abstract

What is the theoretical impact of the erosion of partisan ties on electoral abstention? This question comes from Downs–North’s theory of political ideology, which is a tool to reduce the cost of understanding the political debates. Then, when the left–right political divide becomes less visible, the costs of understanding political debates rise and electoral abstention occurs. This interpretation of abstention has three implications: first, it shows that among the multiple reasons responsible for the ‘democratic crisis’ in France, the weakening of the traditional notion of the left and the right is significant. Second, it highlights that voters’ level of education and the Downsian theory of programme convergence affect electoral behaviours and political entrepreneurship. Third, it explains why the relationship between abstention and economic crisis is nonlinear.

Selective tolerance and the radical right

“…At the same time, however, the Front National adopted a more hostile stance towards Islam (Mayer, 2013(Mayer, , 2015. This approach has arguably assisted the competitiveness of the party in French elections as social values appear to take on more prominence than the traditional economic left/right divide in politics (Facchini and Jaeck, 2019). In the Netherlands, openly-gay Pim Fortuyn led a populist movement calling for an end to Muslim immigration before his assassination in 2002 and the political space he occupied has since been filled by Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom, which similarly combines tolerance towards women's rights, LGBT people and Jews with hostility towards Islam (Akkerman, 2005;Vossen, 2011).…”

Populism and the rational choice model: The case of the French National Front

“…It has been shown that ideological indistinctiveness would fuel disinterest in politics, and ultimately, electoral abstention (Facchini and Jaeck, 2019). However, in such cognitive contexts whereby the costs of gathering and processing political information become prohibitive, behavioral economics teaches us that in order to reduce these costs, individuals rely on the heuristic of availability to form their opinions (Kuran and Sunstein, 1999;Tversky and Kahneman, 1974).…”

“…The PS moved 23.1 to the right between 1978 and 2002 and the RPR/UMP moved 28.0 points to the left. The primary effect of ideological indistinctiveness is electoral abstention since voters can no longer make the distinction between traditional left-wing and right-wing parties (Facchini and Jaeck, 2019). The secondary effect is twofold.…”

“…Briefly, voters stay away from traditional parties and cast their vote for right-wing populist parties such as the FN, because the benefits of voting for this party have increased while its costs have decreased. To go further, it is necessary to take up the voting equation of Riker and Odershook (1968), and enrich it with recent developments around the notions of expressive utility and justification costs of ideology (Facchini and Jaeck, 2019).…”

Do informal reasoning fallacies really shape decisions? Experimental evidence

“…Political parties and voters' election behavior and results attract considerable research attention (e.g. in this journal, Facchini and Jaeck, 2019;Pensiero, 2020). In US history, there are a lot of unexpected election outcomes.…”