Book Reviews : Computer Simulations of Voting Behavior. By WILLIAM R. SHAFFER. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Pp. 164. $7.50.)

• Author: G. Wayne Peak
• Published date: 01 March 1975
• Date: 01 March 1975
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591297502800119
• Subject Matter: Articles

208
Findings which to some extent negate widely held generalizations are evident
in the following areas: The sense of political efficacy, often said to be a factor in
high voter turnout, is relatively strong in the United States, but voter turnout is
relatively low. In some European countries the sense of efficacy is low but voter
turnout is high because of social pressures, or legal sanctions for non-voting. In
Italy reduced travel fares encourage emigrant workers to return home to vote.
Rose’s chapter on Britain explores the hypothesis that working-class persons
vote more often for conservatives than do working-class voters elsewhere because
of deference for upper-class leadership. The hypothesis was not confirmed by a
1970 survey which found that working-class Britons rated Labour Leader Harold
Wilson more competent than Conservative Leader Edward Heath.
Following work by S. M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, Party Systems and Voter
Alignments, the authors explore the question of center-periphery differences in
Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the U.S.A. The difficulty of applying the
concepts cross-nationally is a continuing problem, noted by Rose.
In spite of enormous progress in the development of survey research in all
of the countries included in this volume, gaps remain in the data. At times the
comparability of findings from country to country, or even their validity, may be
more apparent than real, as the critical literature on The Civic Culture now sug-
gests. In spite of careful attention to the historical development of parties and to
the evolution of socioeconomic and demographical indicators in each country
treated, the nature of the study inevitably neglects the importance of leadership,
which is after all, an important factor in many voting decisions.
The reviewer gropes for adjectives to describe the amount of information con-
tained and the number of relationships probed and the number of comparisons
achieved cross-nationally in this book;...