Modification de Political Behaviour: Historical and methodological benchmarks

{{Infobox Lecture
 | image = 
 | image_caption = 
 | cours = [[Political behaviour]]
 | faculté = 
 | département = 
 | professeurs = [[Marco Giugni]]<ref>[https://www.unige.ch/sciences-societe/speri/membres/professeures-et-professeurs/marco-giugni/ Marco Giugni] - [https://www.unige.ch/ UNIGE]</ref><ref>[https://scholar.google.ch/citations?user=2NF_elUAAAAJ&hl=it Marco Giugni] - [https://scholar.google.ch/schhp?hl=it Google Scholar]</ref><ref>[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marco_Giugni Marco Giugni] - [https://www.researchgate.net/ Researchgate.net]</ref><ref>[https://www.cairn.info/publications-de-Marco-Giugni--8184.htm Marco Giugni] - [https://www.cairn.info/ Cairn.info]</ref><ref>[http://www.protestsurvey.eu/index.php?page=network&id=9 Marco Giugni] - [http://www.protestsurvey.eu/ Protest Survey]</ref><ref>[https://www.epflpress.org/auteur/1775/marco-giugni Marco Giugni] - [https://www.epflpress.org/ EPFL Press]</ref><ref>[https://data.bnf.fr/fr/14501654/marco_giugni/ Marco Giugni] - [https://www.bnf.fr/fr Bibliothèque Nationale de France]</ref>
 | enregistrement = 
 | lectures = 
* [[Political Behaviour: introductory course]]
* [[Political Behaviour: Historical and methodological benchmarks]]
* [[The structural foundations of political behaviour]]
* [[The Cultural Basis of Political Behaviour]]
* [[Political socialization]]
* [[The rational actor]]
* [[Political participation]]
* [[Theoretical models of voting behaviour]]
* [[Theories of social movements]]
}}

We will situate the study of political behaviour in history and discuss some methodological elements. Ideally, a distinction should be made between the historical constitution of the study of electoral behaviour and that of non-electoral behaviour, since these two fields have historically spoken very little to each other. How has the study of electoral behaviour developed and constituted?

The emergence of the subject raises questions about how the subject emerged in European thought. The emergence of the behaviourist approach is the starting point for the empirical study of political behaviour. We will deal with the emergence of the autonomous citizen, i.e. the "intentional" citizen who introduces the theories of rational choice with, in particular, the economic theories of the vote. Finally, we will discuss the development of analytical techniques that have contributed to making the study of political behaviour one of the most important disciplines of political science with main instruments such as polling.{{Translations
| fr = Repères historiques et méthodologiques
| es = 
}}

=Emergence of the study of political behaviour=
The study of political behaviour must be seen in a long history where the subject is the individual, going back to the Renaissance when the subject began to be put at the centre of the universe. In a long-term perspective, it is thanks to this first step that it was possible centuries later to develop the science of behaviour and more particularly the study of political behaviour. We must bear in mind the historical roots in the Renaissance and later in the Age of Enlightenment which worked to put the subject at the centre of reflection. In a more political and institutional perspective, we must consider how the constitution of the nation-state contributed to the centralization of the individual, of putting the individual at the centre and of reflection around the individual. With the democratic revolutions in Europe, this has contributed to placing the individual at the centre, particularly with the emergence and constitution of the idea of citizenship. For the study of electoral behaviour, the idea that there is a citizen is fundamental. 

The development of a scientific discipline also stems from and inherits broader transformations in the history of mentalities and even in the culture of a given continent or country. All these elements that have placed the individual at the centre have been translated into the emergence in the 20th century of an approach that was dominant and born in the United States from the 1920s and 1930s and which saw its rise in the 1940s, namely behaviourism. It is a term used in several different disciplines, particularly in psychology, and is not necessarily very close to behaviorism as known in political science.

==Characteristics of old institutionalism==
To understand behaviorism, we need to understand what the starting point and the state of political science was when behaviorism emerged. Political science was a political science that can be traced back to the old institutionalism. In particular, it was a political science that had a number of characteristics at the beginning of the 20th century:

*legalism: it was a political science close to law and constitutional law. There is relatively little distinction between the study of law and political science as we know it today. The emphasis was on the law and the central role of the legal framework for governments.
*structuralism: this is a term that has been used across several disciplines with different connotations. The idea here is that structures very largely determine individual behaviour. Structures are seen as characteristics of the political institutional system. This is why we also speak of institutionalist science. If we were ever interested in behaviour, this or these behaviours were highly structured, even over-determined by institutions. No attention was paid to behaviour.
*holism: this is a notion that was invented by Émile Durkheim, which consists of considering the whole of things and staying at the level of this whole. Holism is understood more as a tendency to compare political systems as a whole rather than individual institutions taken singularly.
*historicism: the historical foundation of the analysis of old institutionalism proposes a developmentalist conception of institutions, that is to say, institutions that succeed one another. The development of these institutions must be considered in their historical development.  normative analysis: what interested the former institutionalists at the beginning of the 20th century was to pose normative notions with notions of right, good or desirable that would be values that could judge what a good institution is.

It was in reaction to this political science that behaviourists launched this movement, which has had an enormous influence, particularly on the analysis of political behaviour.

==Behaviourism==
Behaviourism is a science that studies behaviour, so we are not only interested in institutions and how they function, we are no longer interested in the normative legal framework given by institutions, we are no longer interested in structures, but we are interested in the study of individual behaviour. We can only speak of behaviour if we attribute it to individuals. 

The characteristics of behaviourism are still found today in the analysis of political behaviour. It is a matter of explaining behaviour on the basis of causal hypotheses with the idea of explaining something by describing the behaviour meaning that one wants to test these hypotheses by testing them empirically. This is a crucial point because the old institutionalism was not interested in the empirical dimension, it did not rely on empirical evidence. For behaviourists, it is a matter of explaining the behaviour of individuals through causal hypotheses and testing them empirically. From this, certain methodological instruments are derived, including the survey instrument.

At the same time, behaviourists had the ambition to try to develop general models and theories. These were not obviously laws as in 19th century sociology, which wanted to establish universal laws. From now on, we are trying to understand why a population behaves in such a way or to develop theories that can be adapted to different contexts.

{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="20" border="1" align="center"
!Merits
!Criticisms and Limitations
|-
| - to place the individual and his behaviour at the centre of scientific reflection and research in political science ;<div>- to enable the development of scientific and systematic analytical techniques for the study of political behaviour. 
| - imperialism of methodology: the risk is to put the method not at the service of the theory, but before the theory ;<div>- concealment of values: the concern to move away from the old institutionalism has sometimes led to a complete neglect of the fact that values also play a role, not only as values that could influence behaviour, but also according to the values of the researcher ;<div>- theoretical deficit.
|}

==Rational Choice Theory==
Some theories of the explanatory model of voting are largely based on rational choice theory. It is a theory that applies to different areas in a cross-cutting manner. 

Among the characteristics of rational choice theory, we must first distinguish methodological individualism, which in some sociological debates is opposed to sociological holism. In this sense, the explanation of social phenomena has to be made in terms of rational calculations made by self-centred individuals thinking according to their own interests. The second element derives from the first is that interactions are made on the basis of social exchange modelled on economic action, i.e. exchanges are made on the cost-benefit model that actors make. Rational choice theory has influenced not only the study of voting, but also the theory of social movements. In rational choice theories, rationality is seen as the result of psychological conditioning or individuals acting as if they were completely rational.

{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="20" border="1" align="center"
!Merits
!Criticisms and Limitations
|-
| - placed the individual at the centre of the analysis ;<div>- gave autonomy and decision-making power to the individual. 
| - problem of collective action: it is difficult to explain by purely rational theories why there are collective actions ;<div>- problem of social norms: it is difficult to explain the emergence of social norms by a purely rationalist theory ;<div>- problem of social structure.
|}

==Characteristics of behaviourist and rationalist approaches==
What brings these two approaches together is a strong preoccupation with theory and methodology, at least in terms of ambition, with a desire to eliminate any normative element from the reflection and study of any political behaviour. The aim is not to judge good behaviour, but to observe and explain it. Methodological individualism is that the basic unit must be the individual shared by these two approaches, which also emphasize inputs by analyzing behaviours and the inputs that result from them. 

From the 1980s and 1990s, there was a return of institutions in the analysis of behaviours through a new institutionalism that distanced itself from the old institutionalism in particular by evacuating the normative dimension, by an emphasis that is placed not only on the legal framework, but also on informal procedures that constitute a context that can determine or channel political behaviour.

=="Reasoning voter"==
The rationalist rather than behaviourist revolution has given rise to the idea that the citizen has a decision-making power that also gives rise to the figure of the rational voter, to the point where any decision to behave politically is the result of a rational choice, i.e. an evolution of the costs and benefits that the actor himself would have in one case rather than another. The idea of the rational voter, which has taken the assumptions of rational choice theory to the extreme, has been criticized both from within and without. From the inside, since there are rationalist writers who have set certain limits to rationality, and from the outside, since there have been a lot of criticisms that are the usual criticisms of rational choice theory, and if you go in that direction, you neglect the impact of structures, contexts, or cultural dimensions. 

The internal criticism is interesting because it led to the concept of limited rationality, which was created to show the fact that the actor can act rationally, but within a certain context that sets limits within which rationality can function. The concept of limited rationality has been taken up by authors who have proposed the concept of reasoning vote which is a voter who thinks within a given context. It also presupposes that the voter assesses the costs and benefits in a situation where information is not completely transparent and available.

The idea of reasoning voting is a concept that tries to bridge the gap between political psychology and rational choice theory by taking into account psychological factors that may make the voter not rational but still reasonable. The voter is led to take shortcuts that are heuristic processes.

=Methodological developments=
If we go back to the old institutionalism, in the end we were not interested in empirical concerns. The first beginnings of empirical analysis, and therefore of methodological reflection understood as an instrument and a set of tools that allow us to make a link between theoretical thought and empirical reality, took place at the beginning of the 20th century, shortly before the development of behaviorism in the United States, and in France with electoral geography, which worked on aggregate data that are data that characterize a given political-administrative unit. Behaviourists immediately saw that with this type of approach and this type of data, we cannot study individual behaviour, since the data are at the level of a unit and not at the level of the individual. For behaviourists, it is necessary to find a way to study individual behaviour by collecting individual data, which is why they developed the sample survey, which is still an instrument used today. The survey is based on random sampling that can be generalised and is representative. Paul Lazarsfeld, in the 1940s, first applied the sampling instrument to study electoral behaviour. We're going to talk about the Michigan approach, and it was precisely at the University of Michigan that the first systematic national surveys were developed beginning in the 1950s. Starting in 1978, they established national electoral studies that were institutionalized and developed in other countries. It is a valuable tool to study political behaviour from a perspective that was once called micropolitics. From the 1980s onwards, it is possible to point out important innovations with the systematic use of computers, which increased the possibilities of analysis, but also with the social organization of access to data. The idea is that, at certain times, it is possible to ensure that all researchers have access to the data. This responds to a concern for science as a collective effort, but it also responds to a methodological concern for the replicability of research results. Finally, the increasing sophistication of analytical techniques has led to the possibility of multi-level analyses, which have existed since the late 1970s and early 1980s, but in political science this is a relatively recent development. These are analyses that can integrate both individual and contextual data.

=Niveaux d’analyse=
Plusieurs niveaux rentrent en ligne de compte dans l’analyse des comportements politiques avec les analyses « micro » donc individuelles qui sera pour une grande partie du cours notre variable dépendante et les analyses « macro » comme, par exemple, le fait que la participation électorale dépende du contexte institutionnel et intervenant dans l’explication qui sont des facteurs qui ne relèvent pas de l’individu, mais qui sont soit l’agrégation de comportements individuels que l’on regarde de façon agrégée soit de propriétés qui dépendent directement du contexte. 

{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="20" border="1" align="center"
!Micro
!Macro
|-
| - acteur ;<div>Individus ;<div>choix individuels ;<div>préférences individuelles.
| - système ;<div>- institutions ;<div>- changement structurel ;<div>- changement culturel.
|}

La grande question est de savoir comment les lier au-delà du fait qu’aujourd’hui il y a des outils méthodologiques statistiques qui permettent de lier des mesures individuelles et contextuelles dans une seule analyse. Cette réflexion est au cœur de la réflexion en science sociale et en tout cas en sociologie et en science politique. Les théoriciens de la sociologie se sont souvent préoccupés de comment faire le lien entre le niveau individuel et le niveau macro institutionnel dans d’autres cas. 

==Lien micro-macro : Coleman==
James Coleman a élaboré un modèle très simple qui consiste à donner une image de comment le macro et le micro sont liés. Dans le modèle du lien micro – macro, ce qu’on veut expliquer est le changement politique et social. La tâche du sociologue est d’expliquer les grands changements sociaux et politiques. Ces changements découlent à leur tour de grandes transformations structurelles et culturelles. Il y a l’idée d’un lien entre ce qu’on veut expliquer, à savoir les changements politiques et sociaux aujourd’hui, et les grandes transformations qui ont eu lieu dans l’histoire de l’Europe ou d’un pays.

[[Fichier:comportement politique lien micro macro Coleman 1.png|center|vignette|]]

Pour Coleman, qui était un grand institutionnalisme méthodologique, le lien de grandes transformations sociales, structurelles et culturelles et le changement politique et social ne peut pas être fait directement, mais il peut être seulement fait en passant par des choix et des comportements individuels. C’est une approche qui vient de Max Weber. L’idée est que ces transformations culturelles expliquent ensuite des changements au niveau des positions et des attitudes individuelles. Ces préférences individuelles expliquent ensuite la mobilisation individuelle et c’est par l’agrégation des différents comportements individuels que l’on peut expliquer in fine les changements culturels et sociaux. Toute la tradition behavioriste est restée au niveau micro, mais pour Coleman, il faut faire un lien avec le niveau macro politique. Pour Coleman, ce lien ne peut être fait directement, mais par un détour. On ne peut pas expliquer le changement social et politique en restant au niveau du contexte, agrégé et des variables globales. L’idée wébérienne est que pour expliquer les transformations sociales, il faut passer par des variables individuelles qui offrent des mécanismes.

==Lien micro-macro : Rokkan==
Rokkan a également postulé des liens micro et macro. Pour Rokkan, il est possible de concevoir un lien direct micro et macro :
-	micro – micro : étude de la relation entre les caractéristiques individuelles, les rôles, les cognitions et les motivations, d’un côté, et les dispositions politiques et décisions, de l’autre ;
-	macro – micro : étude des effets des variations et des changements dans les contextes structurels sur les décisions politiques ainsi que sur la force et la direction des relations micro-micro ;
-	micro – macro : étude des effets des attitudes et décisions des citoyens sur les politiques, stratégies et tactiques des partis ainsi que sur l’opération des systèmes de contrainte structurelle sur le processus décisionnel ;
-	macro – macro : étude des fonctions des contraintes structurelles dans le maintien, la légitimation et la stabilisation du système politique en général.

Il faut garder en tête qu’il y a le niveau micro et macro qu’il faut distinguer et qu’il faut essayer de faire un lien entre ces niveaux.

=Ecological Error=
Ecological error is a mistake that is made when drawing conclusions that concern the individual level from aggregate data that concern the macro level. It is a mistake that one makes when one wants to explain individual behaviour when one has only aggregate data. An example of an ecological error would be to say that if we observe a correlation, if there is an association between a proportion of Catholics in a Swiss canton and the proportion of votes for DCP, then from there we cannot conclude that religious values drive people to vote for DCP. There may very well be Catholic voters who do not vote for the CDP. You simply conclude by a correlation, you don't see it. 

In this example, there are three cities. The hypothesis is that income pushes people to vote more to the right.[[Fichier:comportement politique erreur écologique 1.png|center|vignette|]]

If we look at the individual levels, the correlation could be -.33, it's a weak and negative correlation. This result is arrived at by looking within each city for which individuals voted.

[[Fichier:comportement politique erreur écologique 2.png|center|vignette|]]

Let's see who the voters voted for.

[[Fichier:comportement politique erreur écologique 3.png|center|vignette|]]

=Annexes=

=References=
<references />

[[Category:science-politique]]
[[Category:Marco Giugni]]
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[[Category:2012]]  
[[Category:2013]] 
[[Category:2014]]
[[Category:2015]]