The term "Election" originates with the Latin verb "eligere", which translates as "to pick out". Etymologically, this verb is very close to another Latin verb, namely "seligere", which translates as "to select, to choose". The term "elite" also derives from "eligere", and then a democracy is an "elective polyarchy" in a descriptive sense and a "selective polyarchy" in a normative sense.

On the vertical axis, we canfind the continuum which goes from the individual voter to the community of voters, defined as citizen and people. On the horizontal axis, there are party and leadership, namely the collective and the individual actor which play relevant roles in the structuring process of the competition and of the voters' choice in a democratic political system.

The matrix aims at typologizing the four dominant categories of voting of democratic systems. It derives from a comparative diachronic analysis of electoral behaviours. Three of these four types have been mainstream reference in the literature, namely the ideological vote, the issue vote and the exchange vote. The fourth category - the populist/charismatic vote - could be seen as the recent feature of electoral behaviours in many Western - and non-Western - countries. The ULQ describes mass-party (Weber, Duverger) or integration party (Neumann), which yields a sense of identification and loyalty towards the party through ideological socialization. In LLQ, the concept of policy is used as a synonym of 'issue', namely all the public policies that a given party wants to implement, after winning the election. The type of vote which arises from this quadrant is 'opinion voting' or 'issue voting', based on a rational evaluation of policy alternatives. The LRQ refers to 'exchange vote' (give-and-take vote). Party leaders, as well as individual candidates, stipulate informal agreements to provide benefits in exchange of votes, often through clientelistic networks. Last, URQ rfers to populist or charismatic vote. The personalization of politics, favoured by widespread use of television and new media, has been mainly a consequence of the �end of ideologies� and the crisis of the mass-party, often leading to the rise of 'personal parties'. The new type of voting is, then, a new kind of 'attachment voting', no longer towards the party but to the leaders. [Luigi Di Gregorio]