Review of "Computer Simulations of Voting Behavior, by Paul R. Shaffer", Oxford University Press, 1972
Investigators should submit papers describing actual experiences with computer use in a specific course. Papers must report concrete results only, and be submitted in final form. Papers which will be presented are to be refereed and selected by a panel drawn from each field. The conference will be held on the campuses of the Claremont Colleges. Deadline date for the submission of papers is January 15, 1973. This work is difficult to assess due to the misleading prominent reference to computer simulation in its title. The reader anticipating a sophisticated application of computer simulation is unlikely to find much of interest in Shaffer's anai~rsis. However, Shaffer's treatment of different models of voting behavior should prove useful to those familiar with the literature on voting behavior. Shaffer discusses four models of voting. His review of the simulative efforts of Pool, Abelson, Popkin and McPhee, Ferguson, and Smith is good. Both the theory and the methodology of these two pioneering computer simulations are reviewed intelligently and extensively. The two other models selected by Shaffer are the rational-man model of Anthony Downs (An Economic Theory of Democracy) and the components model of an~ysts affiiiated with t~ University of Michigan's Survey Rsearch Center (Stokes, Campbell, and Miller). Neither of the two latter models are computer simulations. Although he discusses four theories of voting, Shaffer applies only two to electrical phenomena. The bulk of his work consists of the empirical application of the Downsian and SRC models. Curiously, after discussing in some detail the simulations of Pool, et al. and McPee, et al., Shaffer virtually ignores them in the last four of the book's seven chapters. The models of Downs and the SRC are both based at the individual psychological level. In each the citizen decides whether to vote and for whom to vote. (Although the former decision is not considered by the original SRC model, Shaffer modifies it to account for abstention.) The emphasis of Downs is on the rational cost-benefit calculus of the citizen. The citizen makes a number of calculations (e.g., information costs, expected utility flows from candidates, etc.) which govern his electoral decision.