ECPR Press Coping with Complexity: How Voters Adapt to Unstable Parties

When parties undergo abrupt organisational changes between elections - such as when they fuse, split, join or abandon party lists - they alter profoundly the organisation and supply of electoral information to voters. The alternatives on the ballot are no longer fixed but need to be actively sought out instead. This book examines how voters cope with the complexity triggered by party instability. Breaking with previous literature, it suggests that voters are versatile and ingenious decision-makers. They adapt to informational complexity with a set of cognitively less costly heuristics uniquely suited to the challenges they face. A closer look at the impact of party instability on the vote advances and qualifies quintessential theories of vote choice, including proximity voting, direction-intensity appeals, economic voting and the use of cognitive heuristics. The rich and nuanced findings illustrate that political parties hold a key to understanding voter behaviour and representation in modern democracy. About the Author Dani Marinova is Juan de la Cierva Fellow at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She completed a PhD in Political Science at Indiana University in 2012. She studies how political and economic contexts condition citizens' electoral behaviour and in turn shape democratic representation. Her research has appeared in Acta Politica, Democratization, Perspectives on Politics, Political Behavior and Political Science Research and Methods.