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Provides an overview of the ways political scientists have explained political behaviour. Traces the development of approaches from the early electoral studies to economic models, to combinations of context and political agency in a political sociological response, and finally to a return to the individual voter in the form of political psychology. The politics of race is discussed as an example of the interaction of individual and social effects, representing the direction in which the broader political behaviour sub‐discipline is heading.

Traces political behaviour research as a gradual shift from modernism to post‐modernism, reflected in the use of positivist methodologies in institutional approaches to methodological pluralism and experimental methods. Following this underlying shift from parsimony to complexity, a current stagnation in political behaviour research is highlighted. Urges the integration and combination of insights from theoretical approaches, rather than a shift towards the wholesale relativism of post‐modern critiques.

Summarizes the arguments made in the book about the impact of election outcomes on people’s attitudes about government and reviews the evidence assembled in the empirical chapters. Specifically, it reviews the differences in attitudes between those on the winning side of an election and those on the losing end across countries and individuals as well as over time. Also highlights the critical but underexamined role of losers in democratic politics. In addition, the chapter discusses the role of political institutions in understanding political behaviour. Finally, it calls on scholars to focusing on understanding the impact of elections and election outcomes on citizens’ attitudes and behaviour.

This chapter reviews existing research about the political behaviour of women of colour while arguing that women of colour are still largely invisible and thus experience continuing marginality in studies of American politics. Cohen suggests that future researchers should disaggregate the category of women of colour, broaden of the definition of the “political,” utilize research findings to help improve the lives of women of colour, and continue to develop basic knowledge on the political participation of women of colour.

Provides a dissemination of the differences between ‘old’ and ‘new’ political behaviour research in data analysis, specifically in voting and the study of democracy. The ‘new’ and the ‘old’ differ in methodology, as analysis of large data sets has become more sophisticated and methods of statistical analysis have developed. The new and the old also differ in the range of analysts with access to these methodological advances and data sets. Whilst we have learnt much about voters and the electorate, a new definition of citizenship is emerging. Do the old and the new help us understand it?

Political events and democratization have created emerging questions for the analysis of comparative politics. This provides opportunities to test the role of political culture, voting preferences, and the link between political norms and behaviour prior to stable democracies in equilibrium, on which formerly research has focused. Major advances in comparative political behaviour reflect the individualization of electoral behaviour in value change and modernization, and the contribution of political culture due to patterns of democratization.

Advances a model of voting in multi‐party systems in the light of existing theory and research, with the addition of a mediating variable––party preference profiles. This variable serves as a link between political reasoning and vote choice, and separates the processes of political awareness and voting behaviour. An analysis is offered for the explanation of how party preferences are formed and how they influence voting decisions.

Political scientists who have written about party decline (the ‘crisis of parties’) fall into two broad categories: one group includes those who focus their analysis on the organizational structures, functions and membership of parties, and their performance in government and in representative institutions; a second group has been more concerned with citizens’ attitudes towards political parties, although their empirical studies have rarely focused on the question of the decline in public support for parties, and have instead been primarily concerned with themes such as the evolution of party identification, electoral participation, and the traditional social ties linking parties to citizens. Despite widespread interest in this theme, there have been surprisingly few empirical studies of the extent and possible origins of anti‐party attitudes. Aims to fill this gap in the literature by systematically exploring the hypothesis of the ‘decline of parties’ from the standpoint of citizen support for these key institutions in four Southern European democracies, although the existing literature on the topic has produced contradictory findings. Has four complementary objectives: (1) to develop and discuss attitudinal indicators that can serve as adequate measures of anti‐party sentiments; (2) to observe the evolution of these indicators over time in a variety of contexts; (3) to discuss their relationship with other aspects of political behaviour; and (4) to speculate about the origins of anti‐party sentiments. While most of the analysis focuses on Spain, similar attitudes are also explored in Portugal, Italy, and Greece, in an effort to determine the extent to which an increase in anti‐party sentiments represents a general feature of contemporary West European democracies, and to what extent it maybe linked to a broader concept of political disaffection; also examined are some of the consequences of this phenomenon with regard to electoral behaviour, to psychological identification of citizens with parties, and to the overall level of involvement of citizens in public life.

Although political scientists have recognized the importance of election outcomes for how people feel about the democratic political process for some time, few have systematically examined the effect of elections and election outcomes on people’s attitudes about government. Examines the underpinnings of what we call the ‘winner–loser gap’ in democratic legitimacy from several perspectives. First, it discusses how social scientists have approached the study of political legitimacy over the years as well as the major findings that have emerged from their efforts. Second, it explains the underlying premises for the winner–loser gap in legitimacy beliefs gleaned from different corners of the social sciences. Finally, we develop a model of losers’ consent that forms the theoretical core of our empirical investigation. This model demonstrates how election outcomes and the sorting of voters into winners and losers affects legitimacy beliefs.

This chapter contemplates the broader themes and implications of this work and constructs a new theory of moral choice. Most existing theories designed to guide moral behavior and examine the ethical acts of others fail to adequately capture what appeared in this volume's analysis to be the critical importance of psychological factors. The chapter thus proposes a new, empirically based identity theory of moral choice. It sketches the outlines of this theory and how it was derived from empirical analysis. The chapter then notes important literature in a wide range of fields, from linguistics and cognitive science to primate behavior and neuroscience, which offers scientific underpinnings for the theory. Finally, the chapter suggests how this theory can usefully help us understand other forms of ethical political behavior.

The purpose is to provide an initial assessment of the impact of the introduction of the mixed‐member proportional (MMP) electoral system on the New Zealand political system, especially with regard to the normative criteria established by the New Zealand Royal Commission on the Electoral System. However, since the normative nature of these criteria may limit the breadth of any analysis (they are not necessarily comprehensive and unambiguous, nor do they provide a watertight framework for evaluation), this particular discussion of the impact of MMP on the New Zealand political system is left until the last section. The bulk of the chapter instead employs the findings of political scientists on the relationships between electoral systems, political behavior, and political institutions. These are presented in 10 sections: Anticipating the New Electoral System; The Election and Government Formation; The Political Parties and the Party System; Political Recruitment and Careers; Voting Behavior; Parliament; Government Transition and Durability; Government and the Policy Process; The Future of the New Electoral System; and Winners and Losers. The authors make the point that (as in Germany) personalized geographic representation has continued even as the overall system has been made more proportional.

Provides an overview of the argument. Describes how elections produce unequal outcomes—for some to win, others have to lose. Also highlights the importance of losers’ consent for understanding political legitimacy. Losers’ consent is critical for democratic systems to function because losers are numerous; in part, it is important because of the incentives that losing creates. Also describes examples of graceful and sore losers in various countries around the world. Concludes by providing an alternative view of elections as institutional mechanisms that can enhance or diminish the legitimacy of political systems.

The inaugural mixed‐member proportional (MMP) elections were held in Venezuela in 1993. According to the MMP electoral rules in Venezuela, approximately half of the Chamber of Deputies is elected from single‐seat districts in the nominal tier of the system, and half is elected from closed party lists in the list tier. Analyzes how electoral incentives associated with the two tiers affect campaigns, elections, legislative entrepreneurship, and representation, and considers political behaviour and attitudes to be responses both to the institutional incentives associated with electoral rules and party structures, and to the actions of politically active citizens and interest organizations. The chapter has three sections: the first discusses the effects of MMP on the interparty dimension, examining proportionality and the effective number of parties, and analyzing party strategies for joining pre‐election coalitions in the nominal and list tier elections; the second and third sections look at the intraparty dimension, analyzing distinctions between the incentives and behaviour of members elected in each tier. The second section analyzes legislative entrepreneurship in the Chamber of Deputies before and after the adoption of the MMP system; the third section (Legislators, Parties and Representation) shows that legislators elected in the nominal and list tiers view campaigns and legislative representation differently, but that the adoption of MMP rules has not altered the strong relationships between established interest organizations and representatives in the Congress.

In recent decades, a significant number of political parties have taken steps to increase the representation of women in national assemblies, often by introducing gender quotas. The arguments for this fall into four categories: those that dwell on the role model that successful women politicians offer; those that appeal to principles of justice between the sexes; those that identify particular interests of women that would otherwise be overlooked; and those that see women as introducing new forms of political behaviour. The case for quotas depends on the idea that interests are gendered, but should not presume a unitary set of women's interests. The use of quotas raises new questions about the accountability of representatives to their constituents.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of the book, which is about the political condition of the Arab Minority in the State of Israel during the period 1967—1991. This book examines various aspects of the process of alienation among a part of the Arab minority in terms of achieving full equality in Israel and promoting nationalist Arab aspirations. This study is based on observations of the political behaviour of the Arab minority in Israel, its electoral trends, problems of identity, and political organizations.

This chapter discusses the central focus of this book, the nature of intermediation in a variety of democratic systems, and the implications of differing patterns of intermediation for the nature of politics and the quality of democracy in the countries in the study. It sheds light on the attitudinal factors of the democratic systems in Southern and Eastern Europe, and in Latin America. It examines the relationships between intermediation, attitudes towards democracy, and political behaviour by discussing the ‘social capital’ hypothesis, the behavioural consequence of discontent, support for democracy, intermediation, and the behavioural consequences of disaffection. The findings indicate that fundamental support for democracy, satisfaction with the performance of the system, and attitudes reflecting disaffection from politics are distinct from one another.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the apparent lack of ideological engagement in American society. It argues that the United States possesses a little-understood ability to engage in deep conflicts over political ideas, while at the same time reducing adversarial positions to legitimate derivatives of American history and development. The normal processes of American politics have both the means and the motivation to engage in profound disputes over political ideas but without succumbing to the intractability and entirety of European ideological conflicts. An overview of the chapters in the book is presented.

This chapter reports analyses drawn from the 2006 American National Election Studies Pilot Study. It focuses on the extent to which defensive confidence influences partisan defection and affects other political behaviors. In addition, also considers several interrelated issues: whether or not the levels of defensive confidence differ across demographic and ethnic groups; what we can learn about citizens' attention to politics and government affairs and to the news and if these forms of attention are related to defensive confidence and partisan defection; and if people with higher levels of defensive confidence are more likely to participate in politics than people with lower levels of defensive confidence. The chapter first provides an overview of defensive confidence and its development in the literature. It then presents an analysis of the influence of defensive confidence on partisan defection, attention to government and politics, attention to the news, and political participation.

This chapter explains how values structure political attitudes and behavior, by laying out the theoretical framework and arguing for the relevance of these personal values to politics. It defines ten broad values according to the motivation that underlies each of them. These ten values may encompass the full range of motivationally distinct values recognized across cultures. They are likely to be universal because they are grounded in one or more of three universal requirements of human existence, with which they help people cope: needs of people as biological organisms, requisites of coordinated social interaction, and survival and welfare needs of groups. The chapter's analyses indicate that some of the personal values—in particular, tradition, conformity, hedonism, and universalism—have both direct and indirect effects on voting behavior and political attitudes.