Hostname: page-component-5db58dd55d-m58mf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-06-14T07:52:31.937Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Policy-Balancing and Ticket-Splitting: Problems with ‘Preference for Checks and Balances’ in Taiwanese Electoral Studies*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2014

TED HSUAN YUN CHEN ,
TZU-PING LIU  and
CHUNG-LI WU
TED HSUAN YUN CHEN
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University, USAthc126@psu.edu
TZU-PING LIU
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California at Santa Barbara, CA, USAtzupingliu@umail.ucsb.edu
CHUNG-LI WU
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwanpolclw@gate.sinica.edu.tw
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In order to better understand the individual-level motives for ticket-splitting, Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study has since 2001 included a question aimed at measuring respondents’ preferences for checks and balances. We argue that this set of questions, designed to measure a combination of Fiorina's policy-balancing hypothesis and Ladd's cognitive Madisonianism, is inconsistent with principles of survey methodology and thus produces data that are suboptimal. Following a method developed by Carsey and Layman, we propose an alternative concept, the policy-balancing index derived from the perceived ideological distance between respondent and political parties, which both avoids methodological violations and provides us with a more precise concept to work with. We test the index and find it to be a significant determinant of ticket-splitting behavior.

Information

Type
Research Notes
Information
Japanese Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 2: Quality of Life and Environmentalism in ASEAN , June 2014 , pp. 317 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

Data analyzed in this article were collected as part of the research project entitled ‘Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study, 2012: Presidential and Legislative Elections’ (TEDS2012) (NSC 100-2420-H002-030). The coordinator of the multi-year TEDS project is Chi Huang of the Department of Political Science at National Chengchi University. The principal investigator is Professor Yun-han Chu of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica. More information can be found on the TEDS website (http://www.tedsnet.org). The Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University; the Department of Political Science, Soochow University; the Graduate Institute of Political Science, National Sun Yat-Sen University; the Department of Political Science and Graduate Institute of Political Economy, National Cheng Kung University; the Department of Political Science, Tunghai University; and the Election Study Center, National Chengchi University, were responsible for distributing the data. The authors appreciate the assistance of the institutes and individuals aforementioned in providing data. This research is partially supported by National Chengchi University's Top University Project. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors alone.

References

Alberto, Alesina and Rosenthal, Howard (1995), Partisan Politics, Divided Government and the Economy, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Alvarez, Alberto and Schousen, Matthew M. (1993), ‘Policy Moderation or Conflicting Expectation? Testing the Intentional Models of Split-Ticket Voting’, American Politics Quarterly, 21 (4): 410–38.Google Scholar
Bakken, David G. (2008), ‘The Weakest link: A Cognitive Approach to Improving Survey Data Quality’, in Orme, Bryan K. (ed.) Proceedings of the Sawtooth Software Conference October 2007, Sequim, WA: Sawtooth Software, pp. 11–22.Google Scholar
Bassili, John N. and Scott, B. Stacey (1996), ‘Response Latency as a Signal to Question Problems in Survey Research’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 60 (3): 390–9.Google Scholar
Beck, Paul Allen, Baum, Lawrence, Clausen, Aage R., and Smith, Charles E. Jr. (1992), ‘Patterns and Sources of Ticket Splitting in Subpresidential Voting’, American Political Science Review, 86 (4): 916–28.Google Scholar
Born, Richard (1994), ‘Split-Ticket Voters, Divided Government, and Fiorina's Policy-Balancing Model’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 19 (1): 95–115.Google Scholar
Burden, Barry C. and Kimball, David C. (1998), ‘A New Approach to the Study of Ticket Splitting’, American Political Science Review, 92 (3): 533–44.Google Scholar
Carsey, Thomas M. and Layman, Geoffrey C. (2004), ‘Policy Balancing and Preferences for Party Control of Government’, Political Research Quarterly, 57 (4): 541–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Lu-huei and Yu, Ching-hsin (2001), ‘The People's View on Divided Government: Interaction among Parties and Governmental Approval Rates’, Theory and Policy, 15 (3): 61–78 (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W. and Kernell, Samuel (1991), ‘Introduction: Governing a Divided Era’, in Cox, Gary W. and Kernell, Samuel (eds.), The Politics of Divided Government, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 1–10.Google Scholar
Cutler, Lloyd N. (1988), ‘Some Reflections about Divided Government’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, 18 (3): 485–92.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. (1991), ‘Divided Government in the States’, in Cox, Gary W. and Kernell, Samuel (eds.), The Politics of Divided Government, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 179–202.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. (1992), ‘An Era of Divided Government’, Political Science Quarterly, 107 (3): 387–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. (1996), Divided Government, 2nd edn, New York: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Garand, James C. and Lichtl, Marci Glascock (2000), ‘Explaining Divided Government in the United States: Testing an Intentional Model of Split-Ticket Voting’, British Journal of Political Science, 30 (1): 173–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geer, John G., Carter, Amy, McHenry, James, Teten, Ryan, and Hoef, Jennifer (2004), ‘Experimenting with the Balancing Hypothesis’, Political Psychology, 25 (1): 49–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerring, John (1999), ‘What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences’, Polity, 31 (3): 357–93.Google Scholar
Gideon, Lior (2012), ‘The Art of Question Phrasing’, in Gideon, Lior (ed.), Handbook of Survey Methodology for the Social Sciences, New York: Springer, pp. 91–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsieh, John F. (2005), ‘Ethnicity, National Identity, and Domestic Politics in Taiwan’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 40 (1/2): 13–28.Google Scholar
Huang, Chi and Wu, Chung-li (2000), ‘The Effects of Divided Government on Public Evaluations of City/County Government Performance in Taiwan: A Pilot Study’, Taiwanese Political Science Review, 4: 106–47 (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Jacobson, Gary C. (1990), The Electoral Origins of Divided Government: Competition in the US House Elections, 1946–1988, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Gary C. (1991), ‘Explaining Divided Government: Why Can't Republicans Win the House’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 24 (4): 640–3.Google Scholar
Keith, Bruce E., Magleby, David B., Nelson, Candice J., Orr, Elizabeth, Westlyr, Mark C., and Wolfinger, Raymond E. (1992), The Myth of the Independent Voter, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Sean Q. (1993), ‘Divided We Govern? A Reassessment’, Polity, 25 (3): 475–84.Google Scholar
Lacy, Dean and Paolino, Philip (1998), ‘Downsian Voting and the Separation of Powers’, American Journal of Political Science, 42 (4): 1180–99.Google Scholar
Ladd, Everett C. (1989), ‘The 1988 Elections: Continuation of the Post-New Deal System’, Political Science Quarterly, 104 (1): 1–18.Google Scholar
Ladd, Everett C. (1990), ‘Public Opinion and the “Congress Problem”’, The National Affair, 100: 57–67.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S. and Nadeau, Richard (2004), ‘Split-Ticket Voting: The Effects of Cognitive Madisonianism’, Journal of Politics, 66 (1): 97–112.Google Scholar
Lupia, Arthur (2011), ‘How Do Political Scientists Know What Citizens Want? An Essay on Theory and Measurement’, in Sniderman, Paul M. and Highton, Benjamin (eds.), Facing the Challenge of Democracy: Explorations in the Analysis of Public Opinion and Political Participation, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 23–46.Google Scholar
Mayhew, David R. (1991), Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946–1990, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Moody, Peter R. Jr. (1992), Political Change in Taiwan, New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Rosenstone, Steven J. and Hansen, John Mark (1993), Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America, New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Shyu, Huo-yan (1998), ‘The Political Psychology of Lee Teng-hui Complex and Its Effects on Voting Behavior’, Journal of Electoral Studies, 5 (2): 35–71 (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Sigelman, Lee, Wahlbeck, Paul J., and Buell, Emmett H. Jr. (1997), ‘Vote Choice and the Preference for Divided Government: Lessons of 1992’, American Journal of Political Science, 41 (3): 879–94.Google Scholar
Smith, Charles E. Jr., Brown, Robert D., Bruce, John M., and Overby, L. Marvin (1999), ‘Party Balancing and Voting for Congress in the 1996 National Election’, American Journal of Political Science, 43 (3): 737–64.Google Scholar
Thurber, James A. (1991a), ‘Representation, Accountability, and Efficiency in Divided Party Control of Government’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 24 (4): 653–7.Google Scholar
Thurber, James A. (ed.) (1991b), Divided Democracy: Cooperation and Conflict between the President and Congress, Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.Google Scholar
Watchman, Alan M. (1994), Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Wu, Chung-li and Wang, Hung-chung (2003), ‘The Psychological Cognition for Divided Government and Electoral Stability in Taiwan: The Cases of the 2000 Presidential and 2001 Legislative Yuan Elections’, Journal of Electoral Studies, 10 (1): 81–114 (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Wu, Chung-li (2008), ‘Party Preference, Cognitive Madisonianism, and Split-Ticket Voting: The 2006 Taipei and Kaohsiung Mayoral and City Council Elections’, Taiwan Democracy Quarterly, 5 (2): 27–58 (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Yu, Ching-hsin (2004), ‘Explanations for Split-Ticket Voting and Their Applications to Taiwan's Election: A Case Study of the 2002 Elections for City Mayor and Councilors of Kaohsiung’, Taiwanese Political Science Review, 8 (1): 47–98 (in Chinese).Google Scholar
Yu, Eric Chen-hua, Huang, Chi, and Hsiao, Yi-ching (2010), ‘Who Wants Checks and Balances? Endogeneity of the Balancing Perspective’, Paper presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 2–5 September.Google Scholar