Voting and Human Rights in Democratic Societies

The majority of research on human rights focuses on the consequences of regime-type for human rights violations, and overwhelming evidence suggests that democracies are less likely to violate human rights of their citizens as compared to non-democracies. However, a regime-type perspective is unable to account for disparities in human rights violations within democratic and non-democratic regimes. This paper disaggregates regime-type and analyzes the relationship between citizens’ participation and human rights violations. I argue that a participative citizenry, as captured by high voter turnout, is indicative of an active and vigilant populace who are more likely to hold governments accountable and ensure better human rights protections. The paper tests the relationship between human rights and voter turnout among 89 democratic countries from 1976 to 2008. The findings demonstrate that a participative citizenry enhances governmental respect for human rights.     

Turnout in electoral democracies

Abstract. 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 socioeconomic environment, which has been downplayed in previous studies, has a substantial impact on turnout.     

The Portability of Electoral Procedural Fairness: Evidence from Experimental Studies in China and the United States

Elections are now a common feature of countries across regime types, yet we know little about what leads people to perceive an election as fair, or how the democratic context shapes the ingredients of fairness judgments. While the conduct of a process is most important for perceptions of fairness in established democracies, “procedural fairness” may not travel to non-democracies, where economic outcomes occasionally take precedence over procedure. Additionally, individual level characteristics, such as political engagement, may also shape how people view the fairness of elections. Using original experiments conducted in the United States and China, I find procedural considerations are most important for fairness judgments, across democratic contexts and largely independent of political engagement.     

Valence politics and electoral choice in a new democracy: The case of Taiwan

After two peaceful alternations of political power in a single decade, Taiwan is a democratic success story, demonstrating levels of party competition, turnout rates and patterns of civic engagement similar to those in mature Western democracies. What factors drive electoral choice in Taiwan's new democracy? This paper addresses this question by testing rival models of voting behavior using the Taiwan Elections and Democratization Study (TEDS) 2008 presidential election survey data and the 2010 mayoral election survey data. Analyses show that, similar to their counterparts in mature democracies, Taiwanese voters place more emphasis on the performance of political parties and their leaders in delivering policies designed to address valence issues concerning broadly shared policy goals than on position issues or more general ideological stances that divide the electorate. Findings demonstrating the strength of the valence politics model of electoral choice in Taiwan closely resemble the results of analyses of competing models of voting behavior in Western countries such as Great Britain and the United States.     

Rawls on agreeing to disagree: How democracies differ from non-democracies in justifying war

We use Rawls’s account of public reason and the Law of Peoples to test two hypotheses: democracies are more likely to invoke self-defense in justifications than non-democracies, and democracies are more likely to invoke human rights in justifications than non-democracies. Through an analysis of war justifications since 1875, we find that although democracies and non-democracies are similarly likely to use self-defense as a justification, democracies are more likely to justify war through human rights. Institutions and values centering on rights that promote domestic public justification also promote justifications compatible with those values and institutions at the international level.     

Identifying Irregularities in Mexican Local Elections

A generalized distrust in Mexican local elections raises the question of whether electoral corruption has vanished or remains a prevalent practice in the country. To answer this question, I analyze the 2010 gubernatorial elections, exploiting a feature of the country's electoral system: within each electoral precinct, voters are assigned to polling stations according to their childhood surname. Consequently, the only difference between voters in contiguous polling stations should be their last names. Given that political preferences are seldom correlated with voters' names, I use suspicious differences in turnout levels across contiguous polling stations to identify fraudulent practices. The findings of this article indicate that nondemocratic enclaves that actively obstruct the completion of Mexico's democratic transition still remain today.     

Increasingly unequal turnout in Eastern European new democracies: Communist and transitional legacies versus new institutions

Unequal turnout, namely that educated citizens are more likely to vote, has been a long-standing pre-occupation of scholars of political participation and has been shown to exist across established democracies in varying degrees. Using pooled cross-sectional individual level data covering the period from 1990 to 2007 across 12 post-communist new democracies, this paper examines the applicability of existing explanations for unequal turnout in the Eastern European context. The paper shows that while voting procedures explain some cross-national variation in unequal turnout, turnout inequality is likewise shaped over time by processes related to the transition from communism, primarily the fading of initial excitement with democratic elections. The mechanism of learning among mature voters rather than generational replacement dominates the latter process.     

Interests, Institutions, and the Reliability of International Commitments

One feature associated with democratic governance is frequent leadership turnover. While the ease of replacing leaders improves accountability, it may impede the ability of democracies to make credible long-term international commitments. Using newly collected data that identify cases in which leaders who derive their support from different domestic interests come to power, we evaluate the effects of changes in domestic political leadership on one important aspect of foreign policy—decisions to maintain military alliances. An analysis covering bilateral alliances between 1919 and 2001 reveals that changes in societal supporting coalitions in nondemocratic states are associated with decisions to abrogate alliances prior to their scheduled end dates, but changes in societal supporting coalitions in democracies have no effect on the probability of premature alliance termination. We conclude that international cooperation is sensitive to changes in core supporting coalitions, but that this effect is moderated by democratic political institutions.     

Differential Responsiveness in Europe: The Effects of Preference Difference and Electoral Participation

As a core principle of contemporary democracy, political representation has been the subject of numerous studies. In particular, responsiveness has been thoroughly examined and research suggests that policies tend to reflect citizens’ preferences. However, it has also been argued that, in some instances, responsiveness systematically reflects the preferences of the rich better than those of the poor, hence violating a second democratic principle, that of political equality. While much research has focused on the United States, this study tests whether differential responsiveness also occurs in European democracies and enquires about the structural factors that may cause such inequality. The article examines to what extent the preference gap between the rich and the poor as well as the level of electoral participation can account for variation in differential responsiveness. To do this, a dataset including information on 25 European countries from 2002 to 2010 is constructed and analysed using time-series cross-sectional methods. The findings suggest that European democracies experience differential responsiveness and that the preference gap and level of turnout partly account for this.     

Between Christian and multicultural democracy: religious legacies and minority politics

The article presents a comparative analysis of the religious underpinnings of 19 liberal democracies in the West and their relevance for contemporary minority politics. The democratic relevance of religion is conceptualised as stemming from actors (churches, religious parties) and from historical and structural factors such as confessional patterns, relationships between state and church and degrees of secularisation in 19 democracies with a Christian background. The article’s historical mapping demonstrates that democratic development has occurred in distinct patterns rooted in the Catholic?Protestant divide. It then demonstrates that there are distinct effects of this divide on minority politics. It is hypothesised that in line with the confessional patterning of democratisation, Catholic countries and actors seem to be more resistant to the pressures arising from religious pluralisation than Protestant ones and that, even after 9/11, there is no cross-national or cross-confessional convergence in these responses.     

Who is responsible? The effect of clarity of responsibility on voter turnout

Does voters’ ability to discern who is responsible for policy outcomes affect voter turnout? Although particular institutional arrangements which influence this ability – known as clarity of responsibility – appear to affect how voters form retrospective judgements, existing literature is less informed about its role on voter turnout. This article argues that voters tend to turn out less if they cannot discern who is responsible for policy outcomes. This lack of clarity hinders the process of retrospective evaluations, makes the electoral stakes less profound, and dampens the voters’ political efficacy. Using 396 elections in 34 established democracies between 1960 and 2015, it is found that lower clarity of responsibility is associated with lower voter turnout. This study highlights the importance of clarity of responsibility, as it enhances democratic accountability, not only by encouraging retrospective voting, but also by increasing political participation.     

What's past is prologue,or is it? Generational effects on voter turnout in post-communist countries, 1990–2013

A common theme in studies of voter turnout in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is that the legacy of communism attenuates electoral participation. It is argued that socialization and the political habits that emerged under communism impeded democratic development by not motivating citizen activism. This paper examines this claim for voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland for all general elections since 1990 using cohort analysis on pooled crosssectional post-election surveys from given countries. This paper shows that socialization and political habit formation under communism have had no discernible effect on voter turnout in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary between 1990 and 2013. Generational effects are evident in Poland suggesting that this country's political history is qualitatively different from that of its neighbours. This research is important in highlighting that citizens' political development within non-liberal democratic regimes does not always lead to lower levels of voter turnout. Consequently, the decline in turnout in CEE is likely to have attitudinal rather than generational origins where contemporary rather than historical political developments are most important.     

From ballots to bullets: an empirical assessment of how national elections influence state uses of political repression

This paper explores the complex relationship between national elections and repression (specifically instances of censorship and political restrictions). I do this while controlling for different contextual effects (various system types), different units of analysis (yearly as well as monthly data), and different types of relationships (lagged as well as immediate). Results indicate that within the yearly aggregated data (N = 1715), elections are only statistically significant in non-democracies, where they effect repressive behavior immediately as well as negatively. Monthly aggregated data (N = 5460), investigating only full democracies, did not reveal any significant relationships between national elections and repression. The degree/level of suffrage restrictions does have an effect however. I conclude with numerous suggestions for future research.     

A Comparative Analysis of Political Communication Systems and Voter Turnout

This article explores how political communication institutions affect cross-national differences in voter turnout in democratic elections. It demonstrates how the structure and means of conveying political messages—gauged by media systems, access to paid political television advertising, and campaign finance laws—explain variations in turnout across 74 countries. Relying on a "mobilization" perspective, I argue that institutional settings that reduce information costs for voters will increase turnout. The major empirical findings are twofold. First, campaign finance systems that allow more money (and electioneering communication) to enter election campaigns are associated with higher levels of voter turnout. Second, broadcasting systems and access to paid political television advertising explain cross-national variation in turnout, but their effects are more complex than initially expected. While public broadcasting clearly promotes higher levels of turnout, it also modifies the effect of paid advertising access on turnout.     

Differential Turnout Decline in Norway and Sweden: A Generation of Apathy or Alienation?

Voter turnout has been in a trend of gradual decline in most established democracies in recent decades and the reasons for this are by no means fully understood. While most studies agree that the trend is largely driven by younger generations voting less than older cohorts, the individual‐level mechanisms of their declining propensity to vote are still disputed. A major distinction in the literature on democratic developments is that between theories of political apathy and political alienation: whether citizens are less interested in politics or still interested but instead estranged from their political systems. An interesting test for these different explanations can be found in Scandinavia: While Norway and Sweden have intimate historical, political and cultural similarities, Norway has been experiencing gradual turnout decline, while there has been no clear overall trend in Sweden. This study uses a combined dataset of over 50.000 respondents from 31 national election studies in these two countries from 1956–2013 to test the relative roles of apathy, alienation and generational dynamics in explaining these different trends in turnout. The results indicate that apathy has been declining while alienation has been rising in both countries. However, in Norway, those who are more apathetic today are much less likely to vote than apathetic citizens were in the past. The youngest generations are also significantly more apathetic and less likely to vote in Norway than in Sweden. These dynamics appear to account for the larger trend of turnout decline in Norway.     

Modeling ideological polarization in democratic party systems

There are mounting claims that increasing ideological polarization is reshaping democratic party systems with important effects on the functioning of electoral politics, the correlates of voting choice, turnout, and even the representativeness of government. Yet, our knowledge of what causes party system polarization is still developing. The primary research goal is to systematically combine and test existing theories predicting levels of party system polarization across 21 established democracies. Polarization levels have generally risen since the mid-1990s. A pooled model finds that characteristics of the electoral system and the party system largely determine the continuity of party system polarization. Polarization levels also appear linked to short-term factors such as citizens’ declining confidence in the economy and increasing concerns about immigration. The conclusion discusses the implications for party systems and politics in affluent democracies.     

Income inequality,development and electoral turnout – New evidence on a burgeoning debate

In this article, we comprehensively analyze the macro-level link between income inequality and electoral turnout. First, we re-examine prior studies which affirm that higher inequality puts a drain on electoral turnout in wealthy industrialized Western countries. Second, we evaluate whether there is an association between the two concepts in a larger, more representative sample of democratic elections around the world. Third, we analyze if income inequality has a different influence on participation in the Western and non-Western countries. Controlling for nine theoretically informed covariates, we assess these claims in a multilevel framework with evidence from more than 550 democratic elections between 1970 and 2010. We find little evidence that electoral turnout is affected by income inequality. Our results also indicate that this “null” effect does not differ between the Western- and the non-Western world. However, we do find evidence that mandatory voting laws and more decisive elections boost turnout considerably.     

Outspoken Insiders: Political Connections and Citizen Participation in Authoritarian China

Few political systems are completely closed to citizen participation, but in nondemocratic systems and developing democracies, such participation may come with risks. In these contexts where fear and uncertainty may be high, why do some citizens still take action and make complaints to authorities? The resource mobilization model identifies the importance of time, money, and civic skills as resources that are necessary for participation. In this paper, we build on this model and argue that political connections—close personal ties to someone working in government—can also constitute a critical resource, especially in contexts with weak democratic institutions. Using data from both urban and rural China, we find that individuals with political connections are more likely to contact authorities with complaints about government public services, despite the fact that they do not have higher levels of dissatisfaction with public service provision. We conduct various robustness checks, including a sensitivity analysis, and show that this relationship is unlikely to be driven by an incorrect model specification or unobserved confounding variables.     

The Bipolar Voter: On the Effects of Actual and Perceived Party Polarization on Voter Turnout in European Multiparty Democracies

Despite the growing literature on polarization, students of comparative politics have not yet been able to reach much assured understanding of how party polarization influences voter turnout in multiparty settings, which often put on offer both centrist, and divergent mainstream and niche party policies. I evaluate how politically sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens with different ideological preferences respond to high and increasing party polarization by employing individual- and party system-level data from 17 European multiparty democracies. I hypothesize that high levels of actual and perceived party polarization increase voter turnout, and policy seeking, sophisticated citizens are more likely to turn out when polarization in party policy offerings in the short run increases their utility from voting. The empirical analyses show that high party polarization increases both politically sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens’ propensities to turn out. However, such positive effect for the most part comes from the between- and within-party systems differences in actual party polarization, rather than how individual citizens perceive that. The implications of these findings with respect to strategic position taking incentives of political parties and the effects of the knowledge gap between sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens on political participation and democratic representation are discussed in the concluding section.     

Is compulsory voting habit-forming? Regression discontinuity evidence from Brazil

Voting in one election increases one's propensity to vote in the future. It remains unclear, however, whether this pattern holds when voting is compulsory – as is the case in a quarter of all democracies. Is compulsory voting habit-forming? I address this question using a regression discontinuity design and administrative turnout data from Brazil, where voting is voluntary at age 16 and compulsory at age 18. I find no evidence that compulsory voting instils voting habits. Instead, the evidence points to a first-time compulsory voting boost, which gradually dissipates as voters grow older. I show that targeted mobilisation of first-time compulsory voters is a plausible mechanism behind the turnout boost. Alternative explanations find less support in the data. The results clarify the scope conditions of prior research on voting habits, and have important implications for the debate over the second-order effects of compulsory voting.