Populism and the rational choice model: The case of the French National Front

This article proposes a general model of partisan political dealignment based on the theory of expressive voting. It is based on the Riker and Odershook equation. Voters cast a ballot for a political party if the utility associated with expressing their support for it is more than their expressive costs. Expressive utility is modeled here as a certain utility model. Then, the model is applied to the rise of voting support in favor of French right-wing populists, the National Front (FN). We show that the fall of justification costs of FN ideology along with the decline in stigmatization costs of voting in favor of the extreme right has fostered the popularity of this party. Political dealignment here is only a particular case of a general process of political norms transgression inherited by each voter.

Expressive Voting in Autocracies: A Theory of Non-Economic Participation with Evidence from Cameroon

Why do people vote in autocratic elections? Until now, most answers to this question have argued that people vote because they expect a material reward, such as patronage or a direct transfer via vote-buying, or as a way of rewarding the regime for its economic performance. I argue that citizens also vote for different non-economic, expressive reasons, such as a sense of civic duty or a desire to improve the democratic process. I present data from an original quasi-national public-opinion survey conducted in Cameroon, which shows that expressive reasons for voting can explain more variation in voting behavior than economic reasons. These different motivations challenge the implications of existing models of democratization by explaining how some of the poorest electoral autocracies have withstood decades of economic stagnation.

Experimental Evidence on Expressive Voting

Standard economic reasoning assumes that people vote instrumentally—i.e., that the sole motivation to vote is to influence the outcome of an election. In contrast, voting is expressive if voters derive utility from the very act of expressing support for one of the options by voting for it, and this utility is independent of whether the vote affects the outcome. This chapter surveys experimental tests of expressive voting with a particular focus on the low-cost theory of expressive voting. The evidence for the low-cost theory of expressive voting is mixed.

Expressive Voting

Just as voting occupies a central role in democratic politics, so a rational choice–theoretic account of voting occupies a central role in public choice theory. Such an account must initially address two questions: under what circumstances is it rational for an individual to vote, and in those circumstances, how will a rational individual cast his or her vote? After reviewing the basic logic of expressive choice, this chapter addresses salient theoretical and empirical themes relating to expressive voting. The theoretical section addresses the debate regarding the probability of causal effect when voting, strategic voting, and institutional design. The empirical section discusses expressiveness as related to identity and moral choice, and the extent to which expressive choice can be distinguished from social pressure and illusion.