CSES Module 3: 2006-2011

About the Release

CSES Module 3 focused on voters' perceptions of, assessments of, and responses to the variety and quality of political choices in an election. The module addresses important policy questions about electoral system design. For established democracies, Module 3 asks how popular satisfaction with politics varies with the choices offered to voters, and how and why new parties are formed and attract electoral support when the choices on offer are viewed as inadequate. For newly democratizing countries, the module helps us think about electoral system design, and about identifying the system that will best suit voters' concerns and provide long-term political stability in governance.

Drawing on Dahl's (1971) distinction between inclusiveness and contestation, the module asks to what degree political systems provide contestation between meaningful alternatives and how integrative is the structure of electoral competition. Voters' understanding of the set of electoral choices they face is a central concern. The module enables scholars to ask how voters distinguish the parties, how contextual conditions enhance the degree to and ease with which they can make these distinctions, and the relative weights of different kinds of distinctions in shaping voting behavior in those varying contexts.