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Self Interest, Social Justice Principles, and Voting Behavior. An exploratory study on the microfoundations of the political economy of advanced welfare states under economic globalization
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Self Interest, Social Justice Principles, and Voting Behavior
An exploratory study on the microfoundations of the political economy of
advanced welfare states under economic globalization
Diana C. Draghici
Ph D Candidate, Göteborg University, Department of Political Science
and Quality of Government Institute
P.O. Box 711, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden
Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley
Email:
diana.## email not listed ##
or
## email not listed ##
Abstract:
Albeit widely employed as a standard assumption in macroeconomic theories, the preeminence of self interest in individuals’ behavior has been repeatedly questioned and disproved in an array of microlevel studies. This study restores the rationality assumption, but inserts amendments to it by means of exploring conflicting values arising at the intersection of social justice and self interest, against the backdrop of sharpened economic inequalities stemming from economic globalization. Specifically, it is investigated how voters prioritize among normative and pragmatic values in casting their votes on political parties of different ideological affiliations, and thereby generate value hierarchies. Methodologically, in order to take into account the cross-country variability in terms of different normative values embedded in political culture, hierarchical random-effects models (with voters nested within countries) are estimated on random probability samples of voters in advanced welfare states using two datasets (ISSP 1996 and CID joint ESS-US dataset 2002(2005), respectively). Findings lend support to the notion that individuals are neither irrational ideologues nor strictly utility maximizers, exhibiting a higher propensity to act upon their self interest the weaker their normative beliefs and the higher the stakes involved. Consequently, the voting decision process is not deterministic, but stochastic. The results bear the expectation of significant between-country countries differences, self interest being to varying extents overridden by fairness considerations, and different types of normative beliefs in turn being to varying degrees dominant over self interest. One across-country commonality is that self interest is more sensitive to egalitarian concerns than to individualist values, the threshold levels at which self interest is overridden by social justice considerations being lower.
Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Chicago, IL, August 30 - September 2, 2007
The author would like to hereby express her gratitude to Professor Jack Citrin at the University of California, Berkeley, for valuable comments and improvement suggestions at different stages of completion of this paper. The indications provided by Professor Henry Brady (University of California, Berkeley), in the incipient phase of the paper, as well as the advice given by Professor Douglas Baer (University of Victoria, Canada) on methodological issues are also gratefully acknowledged.
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| | Authors: Draghici, Diana. |
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Self Interest, Social Justice Principles, and Voting Behavior
An exploratory study on the microfoundations of the political economy of
advanced welfare states under economic globalization
Diana C. Draghici
Ph D Candidate, Göteborg University, Department of Political Science
and Quality of Government Institute
P.O. Box 711, SE-405 30 Göteborg, Sweden
Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley
Email:
diana.## email not listed ##
or
Abstract:
Albeit widely employed as a standard assumption in macroeconomic theories, the preeminence of
self interest in individuals’ behavior has been repeatedly questioned and disproved in an array of
microlevel studies. This study restores the rationality assumption, but inserts amendments to it by
means of exploring conflicting values arising at the intersection of social justice and self interest,
against the backdrop of sharpened economic inequalities stemming from economic globalization.
Specifically, it is investigated how voters prioritize among normative and pragmatic values in casting
their votes on political parties of different ideological affiliations, and thereby generate value
hierarchies. Methodologically, in order to take into account the cross-country variability in terms of
different normative values embedded in political culture, hierarchical random-effects models (with
voters nested within countries) are estimated on random probability samples of voters in advanced
welfare states using two datasets (ISSP 1996 and CID joint ESS-US dataset 2002(2005),
respectively). Findings lend support to the notion that individuals are neither irrational ideologues
nor strictly utility maximizers, exhibiting a higher propensity to act upon their self interest the
weaker their normative beliefs and the higher the stakes involved. Consequently, the voting decision
process is not deterministic, but stochastic. The results bear the expectation of significant between-
country countries differences, self interest being to varying extents overridden by fairness
considerations, and different types of normative beliefs in turn being to varying degrees dominant
over self interest. One across-country commonality is that self interest is more sensitive to egalitarian
concerns than to individualist values, the threshold levels at which self interest is overridden by
social justice considerations being lower.
Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Chicago, IL, August 30 - September 2, 2007
The author would like to hereby express her gratitude to Professor Jack Citrin at the University of
California, Berkeley, for valuable comments and improvement suggestions at different stages of
completion of this paper. The indications provided by Professor Henry Brady (University of
California, Berkeley), in the incipient phase of the paper, as well as the advice given by Professor
Douglas Baer (University of Victoria, Canada) on methodological issues are also gratefully
acknowledged.
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