Identifying Political Habits Beyond Voting

Abstract

Voting is repetitive and persistent, but these ideas have received scarce attention when it comes to other political behaviors. Do repetition and persistence characterize political acts beyond voting? Drawing together existing theories of participation with the idea of habit, we present an integrated model of repeated behavior. We then analyze the characteristics of 17 different political acts using two methodological approaches including a “conditions on observables” approach using the 2010-2014 Cooperative Election Study Panel and a “direct measurement” approach using a new survey instrument called the Self-Report Habit Index on two Qualtrics surveys and the 2020 Cooperative Election Study Panel. From these results, we identify political acts along a spectrum of habit, discuss the implications, and provide suggestions for future work on political habits.

Keywords

political participation voting habit

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