Question

What societal factors develop and influence a person's political opinion? Which factor is the most influential?

Answer 1

There are several factors which can affect a person's political sense , ideology or opinion. When we start our analysis we assume bounded rationality is holding. That means people are rational but at the same time they have some cognitive constraints. It is often seen by behavioural economics that people are myopic when they cast their votes they only think for their short term benefits and thud the party which gives them short term benefits gets most percentage of votes.

Apart from that political opinion also highly depends on educational attributes of the person. If a person is highly intelligent and educated then he will become more rational thus short term benefits can't misguide them to cast their votes for a wrong political party.

Third factor could be societal infrastructure, in economics there are two ways a societal development can happen .one by empowering the population politically and the other way out is to empower them economically. Most political party for their vote maximisation choose the first alternative and thus neglects the economic development and which gives them the power (even in a fully democratic society) to rule the country for a long time. Because without economic development people will remain uneducated,poor and deprived but they can be easily misguided by short term benefits.

Forth factor is religion. There are some political parties which uses religion as a weapon to win elections. This can be terrific for a contrycou development but still they do it.

I think that the third factor aforesaid is the most important factor.