Strategic Extremism - Human Psychology - Lecture Slides, Slides of Psychology

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Strategic Extremism:

Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on

Religious Value

Social Science Motivation

• Psychology and Markets– If people are so

strongly shaped by framing, situation and social influence, then the supply of these things is critical.

• This means that embedding psychology into

markets is critical– a long term agenda.

• Politics is a natural place for this (after all

voting itself is pretty “irrational”).

What we mean by extremism

• We say that parties are extreme when their stated policies diverge from those favored by the median voter
• If the two parties differ on something, then at least one of them must be “extreme”
• Extremism does not mean passing a value judgment on their policies
• Extremism also is not about polarization of the electorate (we agree with Fiorina on this)

A Starting Point: Extremism Exists

• “We stand proudly for the right of every woman to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay.” (DNC platform, 2004)
• “...The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” (RNC Platform, 2004)
• • Controlling for constituents’ tastes, Republicans implement different policies than Democrats (Lee, Moretti and Butler, 2004).

As a result, religion predicts voting habits

as much as income

• 40 percent of people who never attend religious services vote Republican; more than 70 percent of people who attend daily vote republican.
• The impact of income is also large, but mostly at the extremes. Within the middle of the distribution, there is little link between income and Republicanism.
• Across states, there is a remarkable negative connection between per capita income and voting Republican in 2004.

Religious attendance and voting habits are

becoming more correlated

• Using probits to predict voting Republican in the last election, and excluding independents, the impact of attending once per month or more has risen from almost nothing in 1976 to 17 percent today.
• The impact of log of income is relatively flat over the same time period, rising slightly between 1968 and 1980 and declining slightly between 1980 and today.

Breaking the Median Voter Theorem

• Median voter result (Hotelling, 1929): politicians move to the center to maximize votes
• In multi-party systems with proportional representation, this result does not hold (Cox,
  1990. so extremism outside the U.S. is less of a puzzle.
• The median voter result does not need to hold with multiple issues, but most of these models suggest a multiplicity of equilibria.

Breaking the Median Voter Result in

Majoritarian Systems with One Issue

• The preferences of politicians (Calvert, Alesina)
• The preferences of elites (Fiorina)
• The primary system which provides a two-stage process where the first stage favors insiders
• There is clearly much truth to all of these theories– but we saw extremism before primaries were important and history supports the view that differentiation was strategic.

Rhetoric vs. Reality

• In economy policy, reality is more extreme than rhetoric - Little difference in platform language - But income taxes are 11.2 % of GDP under Democratic president, and 10.0% under Republican president (t- statistic>4)
• In abortion, rhetoric is more extreme than reality
  • Massive differences in stated (platform) positions
  • But 313 abortions per 1000 live births under Democrats vs. 294 under Republicans (t-statistic<1)

And another problem with

preference based theories

• Even if these theories are right, they give us

little ability to explain changes in extremism over time and space

• After all, where do those preferences come

from?

• One virtue of the strategic extremism view is

that it will provide predictions about when we should see extremism and on what topic.

Past Literature on this Question

• Hinich and Ordeshook (1969) evaluate a model with abstention, and find that “if abstentions are permitted, if they are assumed to be caused by alienation, and if the density of preferences is symmetric and unimodal, the mean remains the dominant strategy.”
• Or put another way (Riker, 1973) “if the sensitivity of turnout is sufficiently high, if [the preference distribution] is bimodal, if citizens abstain because of alienation and if utility functions are symmetric, then the candidates adopt divergent strategies.”

Voter Turnout and Extremism

• Voters don’t show up if the parties are too similar and as such, differentiation induces the party faithful to show up.
• Karl Rove is alleged to know this.
• “But with the prospect of low turnouts, it is the most motivated–and militant–elements at the edges of the ideological spectrum who will receive the most attention.” (David Broder, 1997; cited in Fiorina, 1999).

Information Asymmetry and Extremism:

The Model

• Voters have different preferences for a single

policy– right to left.

• Voters also have costs of voting which differ in

the population.

• The benefit from voting is a function of the

policies stated by the politicians.

• Most simply, it is a function of the difference

of policies between politicians.

Politicians and Policies

• Politicians try to maximize their votes minus

their opponents votes.

• The only thing that politicians do is choose

policies.

• These policies are heard by both political

affiliates and non-affiliates

• But political affiliates hear them more often.