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A growing literature in political science has pointed to the importance of heuristics in explaining citizens' political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. At the same time, the multidisciplinary research on heuristics in general has revealed that individuals seem to use heuristics sensibly—applying them (perhaps subconsciously) when they are likely to be helpful but not otherwise. We extend this multidisciplinary work to political behavior and present a general theory of contextual variation in political heuristic use applied to discover under what conditions (i.e., what political contexts) voters will use a partisanship heuristic to infer the legislative votes of their legislators in imperfectly disciplined voting contexts. More specifically, we predict that US constituents of loyal partisan senators will use the partisanship heuristic more often than constituents of less loyal senators. Our empirical analysis reveals strong support for our theory, contributing to our understanding of political heuristics in general and adding nuance to our understanding of the partisanship heuristic in particular.

"Fast and Frugal Heuristics" published on by Oxford University Press.

The process of formation of electoral expectations in proportional representation systems is analysed in this article. Contrary to Duvergerian or electoral coordination theories, by using survey and in-depth elite interview data from Spain in the 1970s and 1980s, it is shown that strategic voting depends on heuristics (i.e. extrapolations from the previous election) rather than on rational expectations. The main implication is that strategic voting is possible in large districts.