The Importance of Empirical Election Research for Understanding the Role of the Citizen in a Modern Democracy (original) (raw)
Related papers
The future of election studies
2002
It has been virtually 50 years since the first election study was conducted in the United States. Since that time we have extensively studied voting behavior and election outcomes in a large and growing number of countries. Studying elections and electoral behavior has required us to learn, first and foremost, how to conduct election studies; and it is certainly true that we have learned a lot about how to do this. But there is always more to learn. What problems still remain? Perhaps most importantly, what changes in the design and conduct of election studies show promise of opening up new avenues of research or of improving the way in which research opportunities are grasped?
The future of election studies: Introduction
2002
It has been virtually 50 years since the first election study was conducted in the United States. Since that time we have extensively studied voting behavior and election outcomes in a large and growing number of countries. Studying elections and electoral behavior has required us to learn, first and foremost, how to conduct election studies; and it is certainly true that we have learned a lot about how to do this. But there is always more to learn. What problems still remain? Perhaps most importantly, what changes in the design and conduct of election studies show promise of opening up new avenues of research or of improving the way in which research opportunities are grasped?
In this article, we summarize some of the main findings and implications of the papers included in this Special Issue, and draw our own conclusions about the likely future of election studies.
A compendium of academic survey studies of elections around the world, update 1
Electoral Studies, 1991
The number of survey studies of elections has grown so rapidly over the past 20 years that it is diRicult simply to keep track of them, even with the growth of national archives and international organizations of archives. To assist researchers in monitoring and accessing this enormous set of resources, we gathered a list of such studies and published it in 'A Compendium of Academic Survey Studies of Elections Around the World', Electoral Studies, August 1985, pp. 159-74. After six years of increasing numbers of elections and election studies, it is time for an update. The scope of the compendium was explained in the first compilation. The only change is that we have included surveys from Hungary and the Soviet Union in the hope that they provide coverage of the first of a long series of regularly contested elections. For a number of countries, we have included studies prior to 1985 because they were not available to us at the time of the first listing. Accessibility of the data was also discussed previously. Readers should consult the original compendium for details. Information contained in the Compendium is nearly self-explanatory. Details are in the original. *We would like to thank the numerous individuals who provided us with information needed to prepare this update.
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.
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.
The End of Voters in Europe? Electoral Turnout in Europe since WWII
2013
Over the past twenty years, the scientific community and politicians in consolidated democracies have been regularly alarmed by political and electoral participation, portrayed as undergoing a brutal and linear decline. Each election is now scrutinized in terms not only of its results but also of its level of electoral turnout. This paper deals with two important issues—the reality of changes in electoral turnout in Europe and the impact of the institutional constraint of compulsory voting in voter turnout levels—through an analysis of 402 elections held in thirty-five States from 1944 until December, the 31st 2009. We do ob- serve a contemporary erosion of voter turnout but at this stage voters are not so impossible to find as some claim they are. Furthermore, the assumption that interest in, and the importance of, compulsory voting as an institutional constraint encouraging voter turnout is confirmed.