Competing motives in the partisan mind how loyalty and responsiveness shape party identification and democracy - Groenendyk, Eric W. (Oxford University Press, 2013)
Includes bibliographical references
Introduction -- A dual motivations theory -- Identity justification : identifying with the "lesser of two evils" -- Identity justification : issue reprioritization -- Cognitive resources and resistance to identity change -- Motivation and measurement error -- The paradox of partisan responsiveness -- Motivation and democracy -- References
Party identification is generally considered the most powerful predictor of voting behaviour. Yet, after 50 years of research, scholars continue to disagree over the implications of this well-known finding. Some argue that party identification constitutes a stable affective attachment that voters are motivated to defend, whereas others argue that party identification constitutes a running tally of voters' objective evaluations. This book seeks to advance the literature beyond this impasse by relaxing the motivational assumptions underlying the literature's two dominant models