partisanship that underlies those vote choices are based on assessments of
outcomes, looking at past performance by partisan oYce holders to understand
choices between partisan leaders for oYces in the current election. The cognitive
component to partisanship assesses how well or poorly politically induced
outcomes—especially over economic and foreign aVairs—have been under the
management of one party compared to the other(s). Thus, unlike the aVective
account, partisanship is responsive to political events.
One might expect that these two contrasting views would be relatively easily
distinguishable. Fiorina ( 1981 ) and Achen ( 1992 ) demonstrate, however, that both
produce very similar empirical predictions. As a result, debate over these two
understandings remains an active part of the contemporaneous research agenda
within American politics (see especially Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson 2002 ;
Green, Palmquist, and Schickler 2002 ).
And, while the above two theories are often characterized as social-psychological
vs. economic-rational views of politics, there is a third stream of research that looks
at one large class of the uses to which partisanship (of whichever stripe) is put.
While implicit in Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes’ ( 1960 ) account, it was
Key ( 1966 ) again whoWrst developed the notion of partisanship as a ‘‘standing
decision.’’ More recently, drawing from the ‘‘cognitive miser’’ approach in social
psychology, scholars argued for the ability of extant partisanship to function as an
aid in decision-making, reducing the costs of information processing and making
of assessments in a complex world, and thus to serve variously as a schema,
heuristic, or other decision-making short-cut. In the more economic and rational
choice camps, scholars argued for, well, what is essentially the same thing. Popkin
( 1994 ) popularized this view for rationally negotiating the political world in general
in what he called ‘‘gut-level rationality’’ (see Lupia and McCubbins 1998 , for more
formal development). Hinich and Munger ( 1994 ) put the idea of partisanship on
ideological grounds, especially by looking at ideology as an informational short-
cut, and developing scaling and related technologies to measure how partisan
stances on ideology can operate much like the heuristics of the social-cognitive
psychologist. In this, they were developing the ideas presented by Downs ( 1957 )in
which he argued that the political party was important by virtue of being consistent
over time and therefore in aiding voters who are motivated to acquire information
only incidentally. As a result, parties had incentives induced by voters to be
consistent and moderately divergent on major dimensions of choice. Hinich and
Munger ( 1994 ) developed the technology to make all of that estimable and to
incorporate ideology into the account as the dimensions of divisions between
parties and as the basis of choice by voters.
The important characteristic of all three of these conceptions is that partisanship
is a property of the voters. That is, all view the political parties as they are perceived
and employed by the voters, seeing parties as external objects to the electorate and
as helping them negotiate the political process, especially the electoral system.
political parties in and out of legislatures 563