Rational Turnout
The Neglected Role of Groups
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6232186 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carole J Uhlaner (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1989 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 390 |
| Publication date | 1989-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2111153 |
| OpenAlex | W2032040598 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 163 |
| References cited | 20 |
Rational choice theories have difficulty accounting for individual participation in collective action. Voting is among the acts hardest to explain; consumption benefits have been proposed to account for nonzero turnout. The model presented here establishes a political investment basis for these benefits. I argue that voters often act not in isolation but as part of groups with shared interests. While individuals still vote because of consumption benefits arising from the act of voting, some of these consumption benefits are provided by group leaders out of collective benefits received by the group in return for its votes. The collective benefit comes from a candidate adopting policy positions closer to those of the group. In passing, I show that the widespread availability of public opinion polling increases the candidate's incentive to shift position. Finally, some data from recent off-year elections are shown to be consistent with the model
Collective action · Consumption (sociology · Economics · Incentive · Microeconomics · Political science · Politics · Polling · Position (finance · Public economics · Sociology · Turnout · Voting · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Finance · Game Theory and Voting Systems · Law
Electoral Institutions and the Evolution of Partisan Conventions, 1880-1940
Building Better Comparative Social Theory through Alternative Conceptions of Rationality
Do Political Protests Matter? Evidence from the Tea Party Movement
A Group Rule—Utilitarian Approach to Voter Turnout
A Theory of Participation in Elections
Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945
The Political Consequences of Suffrage Exclusion
Money and Pathways to Participation
Does social capital contribute to prevention and control of the Covid-19 pandemic? Empirical evidence from China
Comparative politics with intraparty candidate selection
Social Capital and Individual Ethics
Cultural Diversity and Corporate Tax Avoidance
How Does Information About Elite Tax Evasion Affect Political Participation
Anut Grubyuk in the Voting Process
Competing Interest Groups and Union Members' Voting
Effort and Comparison Income
Between Anger and Engagement
Making a case for the rational, self‐regarding, ‘ethical’ voter… and solving the ‘Paradox of not voting’ in the process
Rational’ Theories of Voter Turnout
The Political Consequences of Suffrage Exclusion
Competition in fragmentation among political coalitions
A Review Essay
The effect of party mobilization, group identity, and racial context on Asian Americans’ turnout
The role of coethnic political mobilization in electoral incorporation
Ties that bind
What is populism good for? An experimental test of mobilization effects
The Quality of Social Capital and Political Participation in South Korea
The politics of the sharing economy
Biased Policy and Political Behavior
English Proficiency and Latino Participation in U.S. Elections
None of the Above?” Casting Blank Ballots in Ontario Provincial Elections
Electoral participation in African democracies
Is it Rational to Vote? Five Types of Answer and a Suggestion
Women, Policy, and Party, 1920–1970
The inconvenience of convenience voting
Polls and Elections
Citizen Participation and Citizen Evaluation in Disaster Recovery
Nomination rules and the calculus of mobilization
Residential Segregation and the Electoral Participation of Immigrants in Australia
Why people vote
Political Activism as Part of a Broader Civic Engagement
Does Union Canvassing Affect Voter Turnout Under Conditions of Political Constraint? Empirical Evidence from Illinois
Why do people vote? An experiment in rationality
Social identity and voting behavior
A recursive treatment of the hurdles to voting
Corrupt political jurisdictions and voter participation
Incorporating groups into rational choice explanations of turnout
Rewarding political supporters
Explaining voter turnout patterns
Relational goods” and participation
How a firm can induce legislators to adopt a bad policy
Attitude-dependent altruism, turnout and voting
Voter participation and the redistributive state
Labor Unions and Minority Group Members’ Voter Turnout
Economic Determinants of Voting in an Era of Union Decline
Language Choice, Residential Stability, and Voting Among Latino Americans
Endogenous Enfranchisement When Groups’ Preferences Conflict
Turnout and Power Sharing
Where Else Does Turnout Decline Come From? Education, Age, Generation and Period Effects in Three European Countries
Exit to the right? Comparing far right voters and abstainers in Western Europe
Door-to-door canvassing in the European elections
Understanding unequal turnout
Field Experiments and the Study of Voter Turnout
Sacred and Secular
Religion and Partisan Loyalty
The Dynamics of Informational Cascades
Mobilization, Social Networks, and Turnout
Race, Casualties, and Opinion in the Vietnam War
Group-Based Voting in Multicandidate Elections
The Effects of Identities, Incentives, and Information on Voting
A Possible Solution to the Paradox of Voter Turnout
The Contraction Effect
Party Identification and Participation in Collective Political Action
Beyond the Self
Closeness Counts in Canada
From Political Mobilization to Electoral Participation
Redistricting and the Causal Impact of Race on Voter Turnout
Diferencias Generacionales en La Participación Electoral en Chile, 1988-2010
Regions as Primary Political Communities
Reducing Racial Asymmetries in the Survey Overestimation of Voter Turnout
Potentiality and Representation
Turnout and social fractionalisation
Voting, Rationality and Reputation
Attitudes, Opportunities and Incentives
Rational Choice and Political Participation — Evaluating the Debate
Choosing the Less Convenient Way to Vote
Rationality as Conditional Expected Utility Maximization
Beyond Altruism
The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues
The Heritability of Duty and Voter Turnout
Geo-Ethnicity” and Neighborhood Engagement
Assessments of group influence, subjective political competence, and interest group membership
Get Out on Behalf of Your Group
How to vote, whether to vote
Who Cares If You Vote? Partisan Pressure and Social Norms of Voting
Ties That Bind
Ethnicity and political participation
Turnout in recent American presidential elections
Mobilizing Collective Identity
Political participation of ethnic minorities in the 1980s
Modern Political Economy
Political Leadership and Collective Goods
Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations
Sociologists, economists and democracy
An economic theory of democracy
Social identification and psychological group formation
The Logic of Collective Action
Models of voter turnout
Your vote counts on account of the way it is counted
The pure theory of large two-candidate elections
A Calculus of Group Membership
The Multicandidate Calculus of Voting
Soft Incentives and Collective Action
A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence
Is Minimax Regret Applicable to Voting Decisions
The Ethical Voter
The Performance of Rational Voter Models in Recent Presidential Elections
Voter Participation and Strategic Uncertainty
On the Apparent Paradox of Participation
Closeness Counts Only in Horseshoes and Dancing
| Unique citing works | 163 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,41 |
| Citation span | 1989 - 2026 (38) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 161 |