How Parties have Adapted to Change – Cadre Party
How Parties Have Adapted to Change – The Mass Membership Party
How Parties Have Adapted to Change – The Catch-All Party
How Parties Have Adapted to Change – The Cartel Party
Theories of Party Systems -The Frozen Party System
Theories of Party Systems – The Downs Model
Theories of Party Systems – Satori
How do voters decide who to vote for
How do voters decide who to vote for – The Michigan Studies
How do voters decide who to vote for – Social Class
How do voters decide who to vote for – Partisan Dealignment
Electoral Geography of Great Britain
Electoral Geography of Great Britain – Conservatives
Electoral Geography of Great Britain – Labour
Electoral Geography of Great Britain – Liberals
Electoral Geography of Great Britain – Plaid Cymru
Electoral Geography of Great Britain – SNP
Electoral Geography in Great Britain – UKIP
Electoral Geography of Great Britain – Green Party
Electoral Geography of Great Britain – Respect
Electoral Geography of Great Britain – BNP
General Election Campaign – Choosing the Date
General Election Campaign – The Media
General Election Campaigns – Three types of Media
General Election Campaigns – Opinion Polls
General Election Campaigns – turn-out
Why did people vote the way they did – Social Class
Why did people vote the way they did – Housing Tenure
Why did people vote the way they did – Age
Why did people vote the way they did – Gender
Anthony Downs’s theory of party systems and voting was adapted to the idea that voters in the 1950s were now behaving like consumers when voting, rather than that they were tied to a party by social bonds and traditional loyalties (An Economic Theory of Democracy, 1957). It is a rational choice model and uses similar ideas to those of neo-classical economics.
It is based on a number of assumptions:-
In party system terms, although small parties may stay on the left or right of the spectrum and collect a few voters in those positions, the main parties that hope to win the election will converge in their policy positions on the centre of the spectrum, in order to attract the voters there, as these median voters are the ones that decide the election.
There are problems with the assumptions that Downs’s model makes and this has led others to suggest modifications, some of which almost lead to a different explanation.
A major problem with Downs’s theory is that surveys of parties has shown that they and their candidates tend to take more extreme positions on issues when the theory would suggest that they should converge towards a centrist consensus (Torben Iversen explains this problem and the two alternative theories below – Comparative Political Studies Vol. 27 No. 2, 1994):
This suggest that voters only have vague preferences on issues and are attracted by politicians that clearly and strongly put forward policies on the same side of the issue as themselves (G. Rabinowitz and S. Macdonald American Political Science Vol. 83 1989)
This criticises those approaches that always see the voter as having well defined views and the voter as always influencing party policy positions. Politicians by promoting a policy may be able to influence voters’ views over the longer term so that their policy becomes more popular (A. Przeworski and J. Sprague Paper Stones: a History of Electoral Socialism, 1986)