Propensity to Political Risk and Voting Behavior in Independence Referendum

• In Event: Emotions, Political Attitudes and Referendum

Abstract

While 106 independence referendum occurred since 1945, scholarly knowledge is rather scarce on the topic. Among the various types of referendums, independence referendum have very peculiar features. They are not characterized by the low information or low salient contexts associated to many other referendums (Clarke, Kornberg, and Stewart, 2004 ; Nadeau, Martin and Bias, 1999). However choosing independence is in many ways a jump into unknown territories. Scholars underscore that how uncertain voters perceive an independent future has a key effect on electoral behavior (Morisi 2016, Liñeira & al. 2017). Beyond the perceived level of uncertainty studies also display evidence that general attitude towards risk also affects voting behavior (Nadeau & al. 1999). Nevertheless as risk-taking attitudes has been demonstrated to be domain-specific (Weber & Miliman 1997) the paper compares a specific measure of political risk with traditional measures of risk to account for electoral behavior in the 2018 independence referendum in New Caledonia.

Authors

• Richard Nadeau, University of Montreal

• Martial Foucault, Sciences Po Paris

• Sylvain Brouard, Sciences Po