Unifying Instrumental and Expressive Motivations for Political Support

• In Event: Experiments on Political Behavior in Advanced Democracies

Abstract

Voter competence, or the ability of voters to elect politicians into office who can effectively bring about desired or positive outcomes, is continually debated in Political Science. One camp argues that voters are largely ignorant of policy outcomes, and are mostly driven by their desire to express their identity, which is often rooted in an emotional attachment to a social group. A competing view posits a more “rational” or instrumental view of democratic accountability, showcasing evidence that policy issues and other objective outcomes can drive voter behavior. This project posits that both sources of motivation exist within voters, but that context plays the key role in determining which source ultimately influences a voter’s decision-making. That is, in contexts where there is greater attribution of policy outcomes that voter’s care about to incumbent actions, the policy outcome component is “weighed” more heavily in the voter’s decision-making. In contexts where policy outcomes are “noisier,” or when attribution of outcomes to incumbent actions is less clear, the identity component is “weighed” more and will more heavily influence their decision-making. I design and run a novel lab experimental procedure to test this claim, where I directly manipulate attribution of an outcome to an incumbent. The results illustrate an intricate interplay between expressive and instrumental factors on voter competence.

Author

• Chano Arreguin-Abarca, Rice University