The Character of Elections and the Individual Citizen

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.

2004

Political Studies, 2012

A number of authors, including Lijphart, Hill and Engelen, have recently advocated compulsory voting. While numerous justifications can be given for such measures, it is often said that they are necessary to realise democracy fully, for instance ensuring that everyone casts one vote (no more and no less). This argument rests on the commonly held assumption that low turnout is a problem for democracies -a claim that the present article resists. I argue that democracy as it should be understood requires only that citizens have the opportunity to exercise power. I show that the right to vote can be valuable, even if it is not actually exercised. Leaving people to decide for themselves whether or not to vote is not only more liberal but democratic in so far as it respects their choices and makes it more likely that decisions are made by the relevant constituency. Although voluntary voting makes it likely that different groups will be unequally represented, this is not necessarily a problem; where some are more affected by a given decision there may be good democratic reasons to allow them more influence. Disproportionality can be bad where it exacerbates existing social disadvantage, but here the problem is the social disadvantage, rather than that people do not vote. Moreover, while universal turnout ensures proportionality, the problem of disproportionality is conceptually distinct from low turnout. There may be other reasons to favour higher turnout, including a concern to promote social justice, but it is not necessarily better on democratic grounds.

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.

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.

Political Studies, 2023

One strategy in defence of compulsory voting is based on what I call the non-instrumental value of high turnout: the idea that almost-universal participation in elections is valuable per se. This article argues that we do not have democratic reasons to value compelled turnout. First, thanks to an original analysis of the practice of voting, I identify three constitutive rules that make the physical acts of marking and casting a ballot count as proper voting. This preliminary analysis serves to illuminate the fact that the act of voting has democratic value if it is performed in a free and reason-responsive way. Second, I identify political equality and popular control as democratic values that high turnout expresses. Finally, the article rejects the non-instrumental case for compulsory voting because it cannot ensure that people vote in a reason-responsive way and, if they do not, high turnout lacks democratic value.

Politics, 2010

Recently several thinkers have endorsed compulsion or other measures to increase turnout and revitalise democracy. This article argues that such measures are misguided, because lower turnout (even if unequal across social groups) is not necessarily undemocratic -indeed, it may serve democratic values by, for example, making it more likely that decisions really are made by the relevant constituency, with those most affected getting more say. Encouraging others to vote, or even to turn out, runs the risk of distorting electoral outcomes. If there is no clear democratic case for compulsion, then we should not risk even small limits on individual liberty.

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.

Electoral Studies, 2008

Democratic theory suggests that a nation's electoral system should influence the level of voter turnout. However, the empirical evidence for this relationship is mixed. These weak findings are partially due to insufficient attention to measurement and sampling issues. Concerning measurement, many studies examine the percent of registered citizens that turn out to vote, a measure that unnecessarily distorts the effect of electoral system. Concerning samples, electoral systems will have a larger impact on turnout in more fully democratic countries, given that the vote itself is more meaningful in a full democracy. Taking into account these distinctions, electoral systems in fact have a strongly significant effect on turnout in fully democratic countries, while having relatively little effect in partially democratic countries.