Micro-rationalization encompasses individual cost-benefit analyses derived from social exchange.
Social Labeling captures the internalized societal perception of transactional voters.
Cognitive Dissonance reflects the psychological mechanisms that rationalize inconsistent behavior.
Alienation denotes estrangement from political processes and civic identity.
Symbolic Domination represents the cultural and normative structures that legitimize transactional behavior.
TDD thus provides a holistic explanatory framework linking individual, social, and systemic factors, while simultaneously establishing a foundation for formal mathematical modeling of democratic degradation dynamics. By integrating multi-level interactions, TDD moves beyond descriptive accounts of vote buying or clientelism, offering both predictive and normative insights into the trajectory of democratic stability under pervasive transactional conditions.
B. Multi-Level Causal Structure: Micro (Individual), Meso (Community), Macro (Systemic)
The Transactional Degradation of Democracy (TDD) framework operates across three interconnected levels of analysis, each capturing distinct but interrelated processes that collectively drive democratic erosion:
1. Micro-Level (Individual)
At the micro-level, TDD examines the psychological and behavioral rationalizations of individual actors---both voters and politicians. Key mechanisms include:
Social Exchange: Individuals evaluate political interactions in terms of costs and benefits, treating votes and influence as commodities to be exchanged for material gain.
