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.