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Identity voting

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Abstract

This paper analyzes voting behavior in parliamentary elections in which positional and identity issues sustain the party system. We extend the conventional spatial voting model to incorporate identity issues. Identity is tied to the race, language, religion or culture of the voters and both voters and political parties may belong to different identity groups. By identity voting we show that voters, who are otherwise centrist, move toward the parties that align with their identities. To illustrate the mechanics of identity voting, we provide an empirical analysis of parliamentary elections to the Basque Autonomous Community. Besides the two positional issues in the region—left–right ideology and nationalism—we show that language and Basque sentiment have significant effects on voting. Our analysis suggests that identity voting polarizes voters and can sustain stable multi-party systems. This finding is of immediate importance to other regions and countries where the electorate is divided by strong ties to different religions, languages or cultures.

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Notes

  1. Some authors justify that ethnic identification is not merely inherited, but comes from human motivations to pursue physical security, material resources, or status (Hale 2004; Jenkins 2008).

  2. The BAC is also an excellent case study of the economic cost of conflict (Abadie and Gardeazabal 2003).

  3. In 1991, 33 % of the population defined themselves as Euskera speakers or passive speaker (those who understand Euskera but they cannot speak the language). This figure raised to 49 % in 2011 with a non-decreasing trend (according to the Sociolinguistic Survey conducted by the Basque Government every five years since 1991).

  4. Baron and Ferejohn (1989) analyzed the problem of inter-party bargaining from a non-cooperative game theory approach (see Ansolabehere et al. 2005, footnote 6 for additional references).

  5. For the sake of clarity, the model does not include valence issues (Ansolabehere and Snyder 2000; Aragonès and Palfrey 2002; Schofield 2003, 2004).

  6. In the case of Basque regional elections, these two groups are Spanish speakers and Euskera speakers. These groups are consistent with the two different cultures that co-exist in the Basque region (Llera 1989).

  7. Following Mc Fadden (1973), the proposed binary model can be extended to a multinomial model in which we analyze the vote choice among more than two political parties.

  8. Since the PNV is the governing party in all elections except for 2009, we expect any economic assessment to be a retrospective assessment of the PNV and a retrospective assessment of the PSE in 2012.

  9. The difference arises because of the lopsided distribution of votes for PNV over PP in the sample.

  10. As argued by De Swaan (1985), coalition theory analysis can only acquire its significance within the context of historical social research.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the suggestions from Salvador Barberà, Bruno Bosco, Javier Gardeazabal, Maria Montero, Noemi Navarro, Thomas Palfrey, Charlie Plott, Kenneth Shepsle, Erik Snowberg, MarcVorsatz and the editor in chief, William F. Shughart II for his detailed reading of the manuscript. Financial assistance from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación under Projects ECO2014-53767-P and ECO2014-57673REDT, and Junta de Andalucía under project SEJ5980 is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Government, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Stephen Ansolabehere

  2. Departamento de Teoría e Historia Económica, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Málaga, Campus El Ejido, 29071, Málaga, Spain

    M. Socorro Puy

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  1. Stephen Ansolabehere
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  2. M. Socorro Puy
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Correspondence to M. Socorro Puy.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5 and 6.

Table 5 Basque parliament election results, 1980–2012
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Table 6 Basque parliament governments, 1980–2012
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Ansolabehere, S., Puy, M.S. Identity voting. Public Choice 169, 77–95 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-016-0371-2

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