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ABSTRACT
Political parties that compete in elections often promote themselves through affirmative political concepts for development of the society. Expectedly, in their functioning, through the ideological determination and the institutional foundation, political parties express serious mutual differences, especially in terms of the values on which they base their public policies, the perspectives for development of the society and the separate social areas. Taking this into consideration, political parties also differ according to the credibility that they enjoy in the public. However, when making the decision for which party to give their vote in the elections, citizens are guided by different motives. Few viewpoints dominate in the theories of voting which try to explain the electoral behavior of voters. This text aims to synthetize the cognitions offered in the theories of voting and to answer the following questions: Why is some citizen voting? Why is he voting for one party and not for another political party? Why most citizens vote for certain political party and not for another one? Do they do this because they belong to a certain social group, social layer, religious community or another factor for shaping the collective affiliations? Does the voting behavior determine the feeling of loyalty to a particular social group and to what extent? Is it a matter of personal interest? In an attempt to answer these questions in the work, once again we return to the dominant theories of voting (the sociological or Columbia approach to voting, the psychological or Michigan approach and the economic one). Also the work contains short representation of the latest and insufficiently formed model of voting called model of the dominant ideology.
Keywords: Voting, Politics, Columbia school, psychological theory, Michigan school, model of dominant ideology.
INTRODUCTION:
The elections as an important agent in the development of democratic political systems, where political subjects actively participate in the creation of decisions for regulation of social relations and in this manner they gain legitimacy, are one of the central topics of the sociology of politics. Hence, the sociology of politics, in a relatively long period, monitors, observes and analyzes the electoral behavior of voters, which inter alia includes the turnout in the elections and the manner of voting. The obtained cognitions, over time, enabled...