Social Justification and Political Legitimacy

How Voters Rationalize Direct Democratic Economic Policy in America

Luis Antonio Vila-Henninger

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030517151
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030517168
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume explores voters' political rationalizations. The author analyzes semi-structured interview data from 120 American voters collected from 2013-2015 about their positions on three economic referenda—or "direct democratic economic policies" (DDEPs) on the Arizona state ballot from 2008-2012. Building on the literature on voter reasoning and rationalization, the author firstly probes how the intersection of economic position and partisan affiliation shape partisan voters' rationalizations of their DDEP positions. Secondly, he investigates the political and economic discourses that voters use to justify their DDEP positions. This book extends classic sociological theories of individual-level and collective legitimacy, along with contemporary theories of voter rationalization. The findings also help to build theories of American political ideology and values, neoliberalism, moral economy, and norms of self-interest.

© The Author(s) 2020

L. A. Vila-HenningerSocial Justification and Political Legitimacyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51716-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Luis Antonio Vila-Henninger¹

(1)

UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Luis Antonio Vila-Henninger

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Empirical Issue: Direct Democratic Economic Policy (DDEP) Legitimation

The narrative around American politics in popular culture is that citizens have rejected economic voting and are instead engaged in a culture war (e.g., Frank 2004; Kirk 2020). In social scientific terms, the picture is much more complex but in some ways analogous: rather than responding out of self-interest to economic policy incentives (Downs 1957), Americans’ voting decisions are largely driven by group allegiances—such as partisanship (for summaries see Young 2013; Achen and Bartels 2016; Bailey 2019).

However, historically, the American voter has tended to vote for the political party that passed economic policy that benefited those in his/her economic position—thus making it appear as if voters were acting out of self-interest in response to economic policy incentives (Stonecash 2000; Brewer and Stonecash 2001; Bartels 2006; McCarty et al. 2006; Volscho and Kelly 2012; Franko et al. 2013; Widestrom et al. 2018). In other words, for decades, self-interest and partisanship have appeared to align to predict—on average—Americans’ vote choices for presidential candidates (for summaries see Bartels 2006; Gelman 2008). These findings have then been confirmed by recent work (Geus 2019; Ladewig 2020).

Thus, the empirical findings suggest an interaction between the economic model of voter self-interested response to economic policy incentives (Downs 1957) and the model of voter partisan bias (Achen and Bartels 2016). This is supported by work in direct democracy, which demonstrates that policy positions and partisanship can align (Colombo and Kriesi 2017) and that conservative political identification often aligns with pragmatic justifications (Colombo 2019). However, this flies in this face of theory from neuroscience in which scholars posit that self-interest and partisanship compete (Jenke and Huettel 2016).

This interaction seems not to apply to voting in the 2016 American presidential election, which raises the question of if partisan bias and self-interest indeed interact to affect voter reasoning. While scholars study this question in terms of vote choice (Sears and Funk 1991; Bartels 2005; Franko et al. 2013; Hersh and Nall 2016; Widestrom et al. 2018) and political attitudes (Weeden and Grusky 2012; Dodson 2017), they have yet to study if or how self-interest and partisanship interact to structure voters’ political rationalizations.

Such rationalizations are important to understand because they are a form of political legitimation—which is theorized to affect actors’ compliance or cooperation with political power and personal belief in the legitimacy of policy and the American political system more broadly (Weber 1978 [1922]: 212–6 (esp. 213), 953–5; Lipset 1959, 1963, 1990; Beetham 1991; Beetham and Lord 1998; for qualitative analysis see Van Ingelgom 2014: 5–6). However, despite being recognized as a key element of the political legitimacy in liberal democracies (Lipset 1994: 10), voter legitimation has largely been overlooked.

In order to help tease out the role of economic incentives and self-interest in voter legitimation, I use data from semi-structured interviews with American voters about their positions on different economic policies that contain both economic policy incentives and indicators of partisan affiliation. To collect data on voter legitimations of their stances on real economic policy for which they could have voted, I interviewed respondents about actual economic referenda—which I refer to as direct democratic economic policy (DDEP).

Direct democracy was first implemented in Switzerland in 1844 and first adopted in America in 1898 as part of the Populist political agenda. South Dakota, the first state to implement direct democracy, did so in response to growing frustration over the control of key parts of the economy by monopolies and the failure of the Republican controlled state legislature to respond to the needs of farmers. While the first initiatives passed in South Dakota dealt with a variety of issues, the most prominent concerned political reform and economic policy—including the regulation of cars, banks, and alcohol (Piott 2003). Thus, since its inception in American politics, DDEPs has been a key political tool for bypassing the control of political and market elites in order to give citizens the opportunity to shape important elements of state economic policy.

Over the past 40 years, voter say in the economy via DDEPs has had serious consequences. In 1978, California residents voted for Proposition 13—which severely limited the ability of the state to collect real estate taxes. This vote subsequently underfunded key municipalities, increased tuition in Californian schools, and spurred the contemporary tax revolt in American politics (Martin 2008).

Furthermore, as states wrestle with budget deficits, they give citizens the choice to enact political reform via economic policy. For example, in 2012 Colorado residents voted for Amendment 64, legalizing recreational sales of marijuana in the state and increasing funding for public education. Finally, the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum—or “Brexit”—forever changed European Union and British politics.

Empirical Puzzles

Investigating voters’ legitimations of their positions on DDEPs allows us to investigate two important corresponding empirical puzzles. First, while voter reasoning and rationalization are seen as primarily driven by partisanship (e.g., Achen and Bartles 2016), American citizens appear to vote for parties that they are economically incentivized to support (e.g., McCarty et al. 2006). This raises the question: How do partisanship and self-interest interact to shape partisan voters’ rationalizations of their position on direct democratic economic policy (DDEP)?

Second, the voter reasoning literature sees actors’ rationalization of their policy positions as based on discourses supplied by political parties (for a summary see Achen and Bartels 2016). Such a perspective overlooks the role that non-partisan discourses play (Taylor-Gooby et al. 2019), as well as how party-transmitted discourses extend beyond any given party (Vila-Henninger 2019b). This raises a subsequent question: What are the discourses that voters draw upon to rationalize their direct democratic economic policy (DDEP) positions?

Empirical Agenda

Thus, this book empirically addresses two research questions. First, I investigate how partisanship and self-interest interact to shape partisan voters’ legitimations of their position on DDEPs. Answering this question is important because it helps us to understand political legitimation. Political legitimation is theorized to affect actors’ compliance or cooperation with political power and personal belief in the legitimacy of policy and the American political system more broadly (Weber 1978 [1922]: 212–6 (esp. 213), 953–5; Lipset 1959, 1963, 1990; Beetham 1991; Beetham and Lord 1998; fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Back Matter