Incommensurability and Issue Voting

John W. Patty
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John W. Patty: Harvard University, jwpatty@gmail.com

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2007, vol. 19, issue 2, 115-131

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.

Keywords: behavioral models; elimination by aspects; policy convergence; taboo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:19:y:2007:i:2:p:115-131

DOI: 10.1177/0951629807074264

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