Voter turnout and public sector employment policy

The Review of International Organizations - Economic theory suggests that high voter turnout is not necessarily welfare maximizing. Low turnout elections, however, might be captured by interest...     

Political-economic determinants of electoral participation in India

ABSTRACT

Elections bestow popular legitimacy to the democracies and, accordingly, electoral participation is an important indicator of the quality of democracy and civic engagement. Understanding what factors drive citizens’ decision to vote is central to the theory and practice of democracy and has implications for voter mobilization efforts of political parties and government agencies. We study the individual level determinants of electoral turnout in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections exploiting a nationally representative India Human Development Survey-2005 (IHDS-2005). We find convincing yet mixed evidence in support of political-institutional factors, and some variables of the psychological, mobilization, socialization, and resource models in explaining voter turnout. Public confidence in state government, newspapers, and judiciary, television watching, participation in civic body meetings, local conflict, caste conflict in neighborhood, local political connections, and caste association membership significantly increase the predicted probability of turnout. Factors like time family lived in the place, age, holding of below-poverty-line (BPL) cards, and receipt of public benefits increase voter turnout; whereas, business association membership, being female, metro-city resident, business being the main income source, urban residence, and the age quadratic reduce voter turnout. Separate analyses of the rural and urban, male and female contexts largely obtain the same line of results.     

SYRIZA's Electoral Victory in Greek Thrace: Impact of Muslim Minority Vote in the Changing Political System

This article, based on the link between institutional changes and voter behavior, focusing mainly on the 2015 parliamentary elections in Greece and the SYRIZA party's success in Greek Thrace, aims to understand why the Muslim minority voted significantly for SYRIZA and how they managed to send four Muslim representatives to the Greek Parliament, three of them from the same party. The article argues that, although there is massive support for radical-left SYRIZA due to its electoral promises to improve social services in addition to the party's rational candidate nomination, this support reflects a mixture of sociological and issue-voting behavior of the Muslim minority related to their motivation for political representation rather than an ideological shift. The changing political system in Greece since 2012, from a two-party to a multiparty system with decreasing voter turnout, increased the impact of the Muslim vote on electoral results in the September and January 2015 elections; however, it also increased social tension between the majority and the minority.     

Institutional stepping stones for democracy: how and why multipartyism enhances democratic change

Scholars of electoral authoritarianism and comparative institutions have emphasized how authoritarian regimes implement multiparty elections to stabilize authoritarian rule and diffuse political opposition. Consequently, the literature has advised against the notion that multiparty elections constitute a general lever for democratization. This article presents evidence in support of a more positive understanding of multipartyism and democracy. We argue that multiparty elections create an institutional space for oppositional parties, instrumentally motivated to promote further positive democratic change. We hypothesize that multiparty regimes are (1) generally more likely to experience positive democratic change, and (2) more importantly, more likely to do so when faced by internal or external regime threats. We test these hypotheses using cross-section time-series data on 166 countries in the period 1973–2010. Our results show a general positive effect of multipartyism for democratic change, and that multiparty regimes are more likely to improve their levels of democracy when faced with demonstrations and economic crisis.     

Voting void? Young South Africans,elections and the media

In May 2014, many of South Africa’s young citizens had the opportunity to vote in national elections for the first time. Youths who were born post-1994 (often referred to as the ‘Born Frees’) are the first generation of South Africans who live in a democratic country and hold no individual memory of life under apartheid. These young South Africans were born during a period of democracy, a time of transition and of great hope for the future. As a result of having been born outside the confines of apartheid racial segregation, they are expected to be racially integrated with their peers. The expectation which comes with the freedoms fought for by previous generations is that the youth will take up formal democratic practices, such as voting and engaging with parliament. However, during the recent national elections, the youth turnout revealed surprising differences amongst the 18–29-year age group. Young people aged 18–19 opted not to take up the right to vote – in fact, only 31 per cent of them had registered. This article interrogates the attitudes and actions of young South Africans within the political sphere, specifically by examining a group of young South Africans who are eligible to vote, as well as the role of the media in aiding or deterring voting engagement and perceptions. The central argument is that the local media fail to engage young people with content which advances their political identities. Despite high levels of media consumption, youths are engaging with formal politics as a result of pressure from family or due to socio-economic limitations, rather than a desire to add value to their citizenship.     

Election law violations as campaign effort: turnout in Japan's House of Councillors elections

Electoral fraud is a form of corrupt behaviour but it is also a form of electoral behaviour. Once the grosser forms of stuffing the ballot box have been eliminated, illegal campaigning often involves precisely the same activities as does legal campaigning. What makes it electoral fraud is ‘stepping over the line’, spending X?+?Y when the legal limit is X for example. In this study we analyse the determinants of legal and illegal campaign efforts as well as the impact of such efforts on voter turnout. We use the aggregate number of election law violations per district as a measure of Y, which is normally unobserved because it is illegal and thus unreported. We further distinguish between various types of election fraud such as vote-buying and canvassing and determine their effects on turnout. We find that electoral fraud is more common in close races and when there is intraparty competition. Similarly, illegal campaign effort in general mirrors legal efforts in increasing turnout although its effects depend on the type of violation in question.     

Nonviolent revolutions: civil resistance in the late 20th century

Why do young Africans participate less in elections than their older counterparts? Given Africa's growing youth bulge, this constituency represents a numerically important voting bloc, and their lower participation in elections could undermine the legitimacy of the region's democratic trajectory. We address this question through a multi-level model that relies on individual-level data from the Afrobarometer surveys and country-level data for 19 of the region's more democratic countries. We classify Africa's youth as belonging to two categories, those aged 18–24 and those aged 25–35. We find that key determinants of the youth's voting behaviour include their access to political knowledge and information as well as their perceptions of the electoral context and party system. In the latter regard, the efficacy and fairness of elections and the degree of partisanship increase the youth's decision to vote, while the length of party incumbency is a deterrent to turnout. These findings hold important implications by highlighting that Africa's youth not only need to be exposed to greater fora for learning about the political process and party options but also that political parties in the region need to become more relevant to this constituency.     

The Limits of Electoral Democracy in Ukraine

In the past two years Ukraine has held new elections for both its parliament and president. Some might claim that these elections are evidence of democratic progress. However, elections are only a necessary, not sufficient component of democracy, and to make judgements about democratic consolidation solely on the basis of elections is to fall victim to the fallacy of 'electoralism'. While it is true that Ukraine does possess an electoral democracy, democratic consolidation remains elusive and is susceptible to a variety of problems. These include a weak civil society and weak political parties, regional divisions, unstable political institutions and a lack of the rule of law. By some measures Ukraine may even have regressed from 1994, as an oligarchy has consolidated itself and authoritarian trends are readily discernible.     

Infrastructural state capacity for democratization? Voter registration and identification in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana compared

A large portion of electoral irregularities in developing countries stem from administrative deficiencies, rather than deliberate fraud. This is particularly evident when it comes to voter registration and identification: the quality of a voter list depends on the existence of effective mechanisms to register and identify citizens and electors, which might not be easily at hand in many developing countries. Democratization in these countries has been accompanied by intense polemics about the quality of the voter rolls and the identification of electors, which have threatened democratic consolidation. Biometric technology has been recently heralded as a possible solution, but its effective potential is disputable. In order to understand how problems with registering and identifying voters have affected democratization, this article reviews the contrasting experiences of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. In Côte d'Ivoire, the problem of the reliability of the voter register has been entangled since the 1990s with the politicization of the citizenship question. As a consequence, compiling an acceptable voter register has proven extremely difficult and cumbersome. In Ghana, an effective electoral administration has been key to overcoming the mistrust of the political parties about the fairness of the voter process.     

The National Press and Voting Turnout: British General Elections of 1992 and 1997

Britain is a good place to test hypotheses about the impact of the mass media on political attitudes and behavior, and this article uses the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the impact of the national daily press on turnout in the general elections of 1992 and 1997. The evidence does not support the hypothesis that reading a newspaper regularly helps to mobilize people on election day, but it also does not support the claim that the daily press--even the notorious British tabloid press--helps to induces political apathy. On the other hand, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that those whose political attitudes and party identification are reinforced by the paper they read regularly are significantly more likely to vote than those whose attitudes and ID are cross pressured by the paper they read. As predicted, this newspaper effect is statistically significant but not large. The newspaper effect is larger in the close-fought election of 1992 than in the landslide Labour victory in 1997. And it is larger for the "Labour reinforced" than the "Conservative reinforced." The article concludes that the British national press has a statistically significant effect on political behavior in the form of turnout in British elections, especially when election results are close. This, in turn, suggests that the extent to which the Conservative press dominated daily circulation in Britain during 1945-1992, may have helped the Conservative party win elections.     

Exploring the impact of mass cultural changes on the patterns of democratic reform

In this article, a typology of reforms most suitable for Western democracies is built using two dimensions. These are the aggregative–integrative dimension and the indirect–direct dimension. Using a data set of reforms, consisting of 21 democracies, reforms in the last two decades are categorized as either pendulum, consensus, voter or participatory reforms. In the second part of this article, it is explored whether patterns of reforms follow mass-level cultural changes in four egalitarian societies. Following grid-group cultural typologies some of the patterns of democratic change anticipated are: that pendulum reforms are accompanied by changes towards a more atomistic culture, consensus reforms are associated with hierarchical societies, voter reforms are guided by accelerated individualism, and finally, that participatory reforms match increasingly egalitarian societies. This article concludes that these expectations have not been met. Elites are trying to restore the slump of the hierarchical culture and with it the consensus democratic model despite the resulting mismatch with mass cultures.     

A Spiral of Cynicism for Some: The Contingent Effects of Campaign News Frames on Participation and Confidence in Government

This article explores the impact of strategy-based campaign coverage on turnout and confidence in government. Recent theoretical advances suggest that variables such as sophistication and involvement frequently moderate media exposure effects. We hypothesize that the impact of strategy frames will be moderated by political involvement and sophistication. In an experiment, we precisely isolate and manipulate particular story elements that have been said to foster public cynicism: the strategic interpretation of candidate motives, the presence of polling results, and the use of war or game metaphors to describe the campaign. Relative to the issue-oriented coverage, strategy frames boost the number of strategy-based comments people offer when describing the campaign and depress issue-based commentary. As expected, framing effects on turnout, trust in government, civic duty, and the perceived meaningfulness of elections are moderated by involvement and sophistication. Nonpartisans and those with less than a college degree are significantly demobilized and alienated by strategy-based coverage, while partisans and the highly educated are mostly unaffected.     

Inclusive institutions and stability of transition toward democracy in post-civil war states

This article attempts to bring together research on democratization and democratic consolidation with research on civil war termination. The post-civil war environment is contentious and the transition toward democracy achieved after a civil war is susceptible to failure. The side that wins the democratic elections in a post-war state may use its democratically won power to dismantle the institutions of democracy and repress the opposition. The fear of constant marginalization in the political processes as well as the fear of being repressed might create incentives for the defeated party to return to civil war. By utilizing the expected utility framework, this article suggests that former rivals would support democratic transition if they were confident that inclusive institutions ensured that they could achieve their political interests through the democratic processes. After analysing the data on post-civil war transitions toward democracy (TTD) from 1946–2005, I found that the proportional representation system and the parliamentary system are the most important institutions that help sustain the post-civil war TTD.     

Recrafting the national imaginary and the new “vanguardism”

An opportunity exists to assess the limitations in building long-term peace in post-conflict states, particularly given the extent to which negotiated settlements incorporate demands for democratic mechanisms. By assessing how post-conflict governments construct new majorities through policy tools as well as assessing how they are constrained by the structural realities of negotiated settlements, we gain some purchase on the reasons why some post-conflict state projects succeed while others fail. This has potentially transformative implications for our understanding of how social contracts, and their attendant issues of consent, dissent, and legitimacy, operate in the modern world and the ways they impact such critical discussions as democratic transition, post-conflict reconciliation, and nation-building. We use the case of post-apartheid South Africa to analyse how post-conflict states are limited in terms of forging social contracts among citizens and between citizens and governments. Of specific interest is the way that post-conflict social contracting compels nation-builders to eschew the uncertainties of viable electoral democracy in favour of dominant party regimes or electoral authoritarianism. We suggest that this tension is less a result of pecuniary interest on the part of nation-builders and more a consequence of the imperfections of the modern social contracting process.     

Can Outsiders Bring Democracy to Post-Conflict States?

Most interventions by outside forces to promote democracy in post-conflict states since WWII have failed. The most successful were in societies, such as Germany and Japan, featuring relatively high per capita GNP and diversified middle class economies. Among societies in general, prospects for democracy tend to diminish as per capita GNP decreases. The effects of conflict make democracy promotion considerably more difficult, particularly when poorer societies are plagued by weak institutions, corruption, religious extremism and ethnic, religious or factional animosities. Even if outsiders are able to control violence and actively promote democracy, success will depend on the underlying political culture and willingness of key political actors to play by democratic rules once the outsiders have gone. Hence, outsiders need to develop the best possible understanding of their prospects for success before committing to intervention, particularly when the resource demands are likely to be high.     

Horizontal accountability and the challenges for democratic consolidation in Africa: evidence from Liberia

Why are most African emerging democracies failing to consolidate and reach the two-turnover test? Most scholars attribute this to the poor quality of elections and limited institutionalization of vertical accountability, overlooking some important variables. This article challenges this conception both theoretically and empirically by focusing on the quality of horizontal accountability illustrated by observations of comparative interest in Liberia's emerging democracy. Since the end of Liberia's bloody civil war in 2003, two successive and successful democratic elections (2005 and 2011) have been organized, putting Liberia on the path towards democratic consolidation. When analysing the electoral mechanism of vertical2016 accountability, many scholars have been enthusiastic about the prospects of democratic consolidation in Liberia, most of them neglecting the horizontal accountability processes that are also crucial for the quality and durability of democracy. This article analyses the processes and challenges of democratic consolidation in Liberia by focusing on key institutions of horizontal accountability. It argues that although the country has made some progress towards democratization since 2005, the domination and centralization of executive power, weak and dependent institutions of horizontal accountability (legislature, judiciary, national elections commission, general auditing commission, and anti-corruption commission) are major challenges to the consolidation of democracy. These findings have important implications for our understanding of horizontal accountability and democratic consolidation in African emerging democracies.     

Elite coordination and popular protest: the joint effect on democratic change

Authoritarian elections offer a window of contestation where a democratic opposition may increase the pressure on authoritarian regimes to implement democratic change. Pressure may come either from popular protest (vertical threats), or from a coordinated counter-elite (lateral threats). Previous research on electoral authoritarianism has emphasized the importance of both lateral and vertical threats for democratization, but have not theorized how these two threats interact to promote higher levels of democracy. We argue that the effect of vertical threats is contingent on the existence of lateral threats. Popular mobilization is more likely to promote democratic change if a unified opposition translates popular grievances to democratic demands. Conversely, a mobilized population increases the probability that a unified opposition will enhance democratic change by increasing the reputational and organizational costs of repression and electoral manipulation. Our theoretical claims are corroborated by statistical analysis of 169 elections, held in 74 electoral autocracies around the globe 1991–2014.     

Political party formation by former armed opposition groups after civil war

ABSTRACT

Under what conditions are rebel groups successfully incorporated into democratic politics when civil war ends? Using an original cross-national, longitudinal dataset, we examine political party formation by armed opposition groups over a 20-year period, from 1990 to 2009. We find that former armed opposition groups form parties in more than half of our observations. A rebel group’s pre-war political experience, characteristics of the war and how it ended outweigh factors such as the country’s political and economic traits and history. We advance a theoretical framework based on rebel leaders’ expectations of success in post-war politics, and we argue that high rates of party formation by former armed opposition groups are likely a reflection of democratic weakness rather than democratic robustness in countries emerging from conflict.     

Elections,Election Outcomes,and Democracy in Southern Africa

Elections and election outcomes are widely used as a convenient short cut to measuring democracy. If this were correct, information on elections and election outcomes would be a time- and cost-saving means of identifying regime type. However, this article shows that the influential democracy measures of Beck et al., Ferree and Singh, Przeworski et al., and Vanhanen fail to adequately identify regime type when applied to ten countries in Southern Africa. For most countries, it is not possible to distinguish democracies from non-democracies on the basis of elections and election outcomes. Multi-party elections are not always free, fair, and democratic; dominant parties and dominant party systems are not necessarily undemocratic; large election victories are not by themselves proof of foul play; and not all authoritarian regimes maintain their rule through overwhelming parliamentary or electoral majorities.     

The role of infrastructural and coercive state capacity in explaining different types of electoral fraud

While effective state capacity can reasonably be considered a necessary condition for democratization, strong states do not automatically produce democratic regimes, nor do they guarantee their survival. Far from being sufficient conditions for democracy, strong or capable states are also thought to be indispensable for the maintenance of autocratic rule. The present article puts to the test the hypothesis that a certain level of state capacity is needed to engage in effective electoral malpractice, using general and more specific indicators of electoral fraud. This article proposes two opposing mechanisms through which state capacity can influence the quality of elections: through infrastructural state capacity and coercive state capacity. The article demonstrates that electoral fraud is more likely in countries where infrastructural state capacity is weak and that coercive state capacity plays a more ambiguous role than previously thought. The analyses also reveal that different factors are at work when looking at precise types of electoral malpractice rather than general measures: voter and candidate intimidation, fraudulent tabulation of votes, unfair media coverage of campaigns and vote buying seem to engage different sets of facilitating structures.