Voter Behavior

Between the early 1940s and the late 1960s, four basic models of voter behavior were proposed on which almost all studies of electoral behavior draw. These models describe how humans react to environmental factors and choose between different courses of action. Homo sociologicus (more or less implicitly) forms the basis of the approaches to voting behavior [Page 813]laid out in the first three parts of this entry. In contrast, rational voter theory explicitly invokes homo economicus through deductive reasoning. A closer examination reveals, however, that these seemingly different approaches are in fact complementary and can be regarded as aspects of an overarching model. In the past few years this line of reasoning has become increasingly present both in sociopsychological as well as rational choice writings.