Rational choice models characterize partisanship as the current evaluation of the parties
based on the sum of received information. Popkin et al. (1976) developed this view with explicit
reliance on Downs (1957) and in direct contrast to the earlier presumed stability of party. They
emphasized the rational voter’s use of party identification to reduce the cost of information.
Fiorina’s (1977, 1981) influential formulation incorporates early socialization and later
responsiveness to political events into a single model of party identification. People begin with
biases towards and against the parties based upon parental influence and other pre-adult
experience. Their subsequent political experiences (specifically, in Fiorina, retrospective
evaluations of party performance) constitute information that modifies the initial preference.
Fiorina assumes that some experiences carry more weight because they are perceived as more
important than others are. More universally, experiences are presumed to affect partisanship
more if they are more recent; they are discounted as they recede into the past. Franklin (1984,
1992) and Franklin and Jackson (1983) operationalize new information by policy preferences
and find a similar dynamic responsiveness of party identification, for both young and old.
Franklin does agree (1984:473-474) that socialization provides a starting point for the partisan
identity of the young, and that past party preference carries more weight for the old (that is, for
those who have accumulated more experience). Niemi and Jennings (1991) emphasize that both
of the following processes occur: parental preference strongly influences party choice, but
partisanship then shifts in response to later information. Sears and Valentino (1997:61) argue,
based on a study of adolescents and their parents, that “periodic leaps in crystallization of party
identification through the first half of the life cycle and . . . considerable stability thereafter”
reflect the cumulative effects of political experience (especially when both affect and cognition
are engaged). They explicitly argue that experience, not maturation, produces this result. They
claim that the periodic leaps in partisanship begin early (during adolescence) and lead to
5
Convention