Collaborative Research: Issues and Economics in Multiparty Democracies

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This collaborative investigation researches the extent of issue-based and economic-based voting in advanced industrial democracies using new innovative discrete choice models. The research has both substantive and methodological components. The investigators employ an integrated model of vote choice which allows them to study the degree of issue- and economic-oriented voting in a set of eight nations. The model also allows investigation of the movement of political parties in issue space, the removal of parties from electoral competition, and changes in the economic context of the election. Methodologically the investigators employ an important discrete choice model new to political research. The researchers argue that past work on voter choice in multiparty democracies has been done using statistical models which impose very restrictive assumptions on how voters make their decisions amongst parties in multiparty systems. Of particular concern is the independence of irrelevant alternatives assumption. Their model, for this project, does not impose this assumption on voters, and it also provides a very flexible way to model multiparty elections empirically. This project will substantially enhance our understanding of the topic and will inform the methodological and theoretical debate about it.