Turnout around the globe: The influence of electoral institutions on national voter participation, 1972–2000 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Turnout in Electoral Democracies
European Journal of Political Research, 1998
We examine turnout in 324 democratic national lower house elections held in 91 countries, between 1972 and 1995. We rely on Freedom House ratings of political rights to determine whether an election is democratic or not. We distinguish three blocs of factors that affect turnout: the socio-economic environment, institutions, and party systems. We show that turnout is influenced by a great number of factors and that the patterns that have been shown to prevail in studies dealing with more limited samples of countries generally hold when we look at a larger set of democracies. But we also show that the socio-economic environment, which has been downplayed in previous studies, has a substantial impact on turnout.
Turnout determinants in democracies and in non-democracies1
Electoral Studies, 2015
Elections are celebrated in democracies as well as in non-democracies. Studies on the factors explaining turnout normally focus, however, only on democracies. Are turnout patterns different in non-democracies? If so, how different are those? In this paper I address this issue with a unique dataset covering 942 elections in 92 democracies and 477 in 94 nondemocracies for the period 1961-2008. I find that, contrary to expectations, the turnout determinants in both regimes do diverge on the institutional and, to a lesser degree, on the socioeconomic factors. In both regimes, the decision of the incumbent to run positively affects turnout.
Electoral Turnout in West-European Democracies
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science …, 2002
This paper investigates voting participation in three countries in Western Europe -Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway -from the 1960s to the late 1990s. Results show that there is no general trend of decline in turnout. However, aggregate turnout figures show somewhat lower levels in more recent elections. Turning to the individual level, the influence of demographic and attitudinal factors is investigated. Political interest show the strongest impact on electoral participation, generation the second largest. Education has effects in the expected direction. These results point to a ""puzzle of electoral participation"": from turnout statistics one would conclude that political interest should have gone down. However, this is not true. This ""puzzle"" points to the fact that context has to be taken into account. This is done here by relating the judgments about political supply of political parties to turnout. Using the classical rational choice notion of alienation and indifference reveals that for example judgments about political offers are related to turnout, also when controlling for educational level. That this relationship is not just subjective but is related to what parties offer in election campaigns is demonstrated by relating programmatic polarization and differentiation to alienation and indifference. The main conclusion to be drawn from our analyses is, that many variables are related to turnout. However, even if they show to have effects consistently over time and across countries it is obvious that their explanatory power altogether is rather weak. This probably has to do with the fact that electoral participation has a low-cost, low benefit nature. Under such circumstances neither an approach concentrating on resources like the SES model nor rational choice considerations can contribute considerably to the explanation of turnout. On the other hand, these variables obviously matter considerably for turnout, given the differences between different socioeconomic groups, or between those being alienated or not. Since the strength of these effects appears to be shaped by the context of an election, it is worthwhile to investigate to which degree the effects of different variables are shaped by the specific context in a given election, be it the closeness of the race, the campaign strategies, the strategic placement of parties and the like.
Why is turnout higher in some countries and/or in some elections than in others? Why does it increase or decrease over time? To address these questions, I start with the pioneer studies of Powell and Jackman and then review more recent research. This essay seeks to establish which propositions about the causes of variations in turnout are consistently supported by empirical evidence and which ones remain ambiguous. I point out some enigmas and gaps in the field and suggest directions for future research. Most of the research pertains to established democracies, but analyses of nonestablished democracies are also included here.
The dynamics of electoral participation
Comparing democracies, 2002
Participation is the lifeblood of democracy, involving different numbers of people in different activities at different times. Maintaining viable party organizations requires the commitment of a few people over a considerable period. Campaigning, lobbying, or protesting require a greater commitment by more people, but over a shorter period. Voting requires a minimum commitment for a brief period, but involves by far the greatest number of people. In a book primarily about elections it seems natural to focus on voting. Indeed, the health of a democracy is often seen in terms of its level of turnout.
Introduction: Consequences of low turnout
2006
Low electoral turnout has become common in many countries. Whether this is a problem for a democracy depends ondamong other thingsdwhether higher turnout would have made other parties more relevant. This introductory article discusses the findings and approaches of previous work on this question and summarizes the findings of the work published in this issue. The various articles, despite using different approaches, looking at different countries and different types of election, all show that any bias in election outcomes is typically rather small and is not in a specific direction: sometimes the left would benefit from higher turnout, sometimes other parties. Therefore the concerns about potential bias consequent on low turnout are generally misplaced.