Expressive vs. Instrumental Motivation of Turnout, Partisanship and Political Learning

Abstract

This article examines if intrinsic rewards of expected political benefits have a greater motivational force for turnout, political learning and the development of political preferences. Using comparative survey data from several dozen contemporary democracies, the article demonstrates that the intrinsic rewards (or consumption value) of party choice dominates the expected political benefits in the determination of political preferences and turnout, while political learning – exactly because it is an even more costly acivity for the individual citizen – has a fundamentally instrumental motivation. The theoretical discussion explains that the roots of this phenomenon lay in the most general characteristics of electoral democracy, and the empirical evidene shows that the relevant findings do indeed fail to vary by types of democratic institutional settings.