The Simple Art of Voting: The Cognitive Shortcuts of Italian Voters

by Delia Baldassarri

Overview

In The Simple Art of Voting, Delia Baldassarri provides a new understanding of how voting works by focusing on how choices are made rather than on what their outcomes are. Drawing on recent advances in cognitive psychology, political cognition, and behavioral economics, Baldassarri distinguishes voters based on the cognitive shortcuts, or heuristics, they use to reduce the complexity of political choice. In doing so, she reveals which factors-parties, leaders, ideology, the media-are most important to different types of voters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199339747
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/03/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Delia Baldassarri is Associate Professor of Sociology at New York University.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition
Introduction

PART ONE: CHOOSING AND VOTING
1. Voting: an Individual and Reasoned Choice
2. Human Decision Making and Heuristics of Judgment
3. Political Cognition, Sophistication, and Heuristics

PART II: THE COGNITIVE SHORTCUTS OF ITALIAN VOTERS
4. An Empirical Classification of Italian Voters
5. Who are Utilius, Amicus, Aliens and Medians?
6. Systematic and Effective Voting Heuristics
7. Heterogeneity of the decision making processes
8. Conclusions

References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is a field-advancing study - the first to investigate systematically the use of simplifying heuristics to cope with the complexities of choice in a multi-party system. It is a rare example of creativity that enlarges rather than rejects the insights of previous research."
—Paul M. Sniderman, Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy, Stanford University

"This important and original study speaks to important questions in understanding voting behavior in Italy and beyond. For political sociologists, it provides a powerful source of rethinking conventional understandings grounded narrowly in demographic impacts on voters. For comparative politics scholars and Italian specialists, it brings state-of-the-art theories about voter decision-making to a context where such research has been lacking. A wonderful book."
—Jeff Manza, Professor of Sociology, New York University

"The 'reboot' of the Italian political system in the early 1990s reconfigured the political landscape, and in doing so confronted Italian voters with unfamiliar political actors and new political alliances. Drawing on two election surveys conducted after this transition, Baldassarri shows us how citizens were able to meet the informational challenges posed by the new political order using different and discrete choice-making strategies. Her analysis importantly extends the research on political heuristics beyond the usual setting of American politics as she insightfully demonstrates that one size does not fit all when it comes to models of voter decision-making."
—Wendy Rahn, Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota

From the Publisher