The dark side of disagreement? Revisiting the effect of disagreement on political participation

Thriving democracy requires an open exchange of disagreeing viewpoints. Yet disagreement may have a dark side. Recent research claims that people who experience disagreement in their informal political discussions are less likely to vote. This paper adds to a growing group of challenges to the notion of a ‘dark side’. It addresses the conventional wisdom from both a theoretical and practical viewpoint. I argue that disagreement in itself should not depress participation. Only those atypical respondents who encounter entirely disagreeing viewpoints are less likely to vote than those who encounter completely agreeing perspectives. People with mixed networks are equally likely to vote as those who face complete agreement. This paper tests the alternative theory against the conventional wisdom by returning to the dataset that first found evidence of the ‘dark side’. The evidence overwhelmingly supports the alternative theory. As a result, this study helps to mitigate concerns about the negative effects of disagreement and supports a network-centric approach to political science.     

Lifecycle changes and the activation of habitual voting: The case of Costa Rica

Under circumstances of substantial turnout reductions, the development of electoral habits may constitute a key factor to attenuate or even revert such tendency in the long term. Using a unique dataset I examine the extent to which age and lifecycle changes mediate the effects of prior turnout (habituation) on future electoral behavior. Three findings are highlighted. First, age and turnout_t-1 reinforce each other and boost turnout to higher rates. Second, even under favorable circumstances, residential mobility still can disrupt individuals' voting patterns, regardless of whether their behavior was already habituated. Finally, habitual voting is activated by the time individuals participate in their fourth election, and the sooner they cast their first vote.     

Voting at 16: Turnout and the quality of vote choice

Critics of giving citizens under 18 the right to vote argue that such teenagers lack the ability and motivation to participate effectively in elections. If this argument is true, lowering the voting age would have negative consequences for the quality of democracy. We test the argument using survey data from Austria, the only European country with a voting age of 16 in nation-wide elections. While the turnout levels of young people under 18 are relatively low, their failure to vote cannot be explained by a lower ability or motivation to participate. In addition, the quality of these citizens' choices is similar to that of older voters, so they do cast votes in ways that enable their interests to be represented equally well. These results are encouraging for supporters of a lower voting age.     

The legacy of lethargy: How elections to the European Parliament depress turnout

Why has turnout in European Parliament (EP) elections remained so low, despite attempts to expand the Parliament’s powers? One possible answer is that because little is at stake in these second-order elections only those with an established habit of voting, acquired in previous national elections, can be counted on to vote. Others argue that low turnout is an indication of apathy or even scepticism towards Europe. This article conducts a critical test of the “little at stake” hypothesis by focusing on a testable implication: that turnout at these elections will be particularly low on the part of voters not yet socialized into habitual voting. This proposition is examined using both time-series cross-section analyses and a regression discontinuity design. Our findings show that EP elections depress turnout as they inculcate habits of non-voting, with long-term implications for political participation in EU member states.     

Economic globalization and voter turnout in established democracies

This paper asks whether international economic integration negatively affects electoral turnout. The theoretical model builds on the premise that economic integration constrains the ability of national governments to shape outcomes. Citizens are conscious of such constraints and take them into account when considering the costs and benefits of casting a vote in national elections. The result is a lower inclination to vote under conditions of high economic integration. Consequently, aggregate turnout is lower the more internationally integrated a national economy is. Analysis of aggregate data for parliamentary elections in 23 OECD democracies over the period 1965–2006 robustly supports this hypothesis. The empirical estimates suggest economic globalization as a central cause of the general decline in turnout within established democracies.     

Explaining Turnout Decline in Britain, 1964–2005: Party Identification and the Political Context

Turnout decline in Britain is greater than it first appears since changes in the social composition of the electorate have had a positive impact on turnout. This paper finds that whereas a weakening in the strength of party identification is associated with the long-term decline, the political context influences short-term variation. Partisan dealignment is also changing the dynamics of the determinants of turnout. Since non-identifiers are more strongly influenced by the political context than strong identifiers, and there are now more non-identifiers than previously, the political context is becoming a more important factor in determining whether people vote or not.

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.     

Elements of Negativity: Volume and Proportion in Exposure to Negative Advertising

Recent studies contend that negative advertising benefits voters. However, these studies only measure the volume of negativity in campaigns, often relying on survey data on voter behavior coupled with estimates of negative ad exposure. Theories of information processing indicate that the proportion of negativity may yield influences spanning a range of judgments related to candidate construction and voting behavior, yielding effects that are different from the influence of sheer volume. Thus, I argue that the proportion of negativity also has an influence, and that it is likely more often to be detrimental. I examine this claim using survey data and conclude that prevailing accounts of the effects of negative advertising campaigns are underspecified and, as a result, potentially overly optimistic. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Contrasting attitudinal bases to Euroscepticism amongst the French electorate

This article examines the different attitudinal bases which potentially contribute to Euroscepticism amongst the electorates of Extreme Left-wing and Right-wing parties in France, and in particular of the Communist Party and the Front National. Controlling for other explanations of anti-European sentiment, Left–Right economic and ethnocentric attitudes are found to be strong predictors of pro-, anti- and indifferent stances on the European issue. Moreover, despite the existence of an important electoral pool on the Extreme Right, which possesses both Left-wing economic and Right-wing ethnocentric attitudinal bases to its Eurosceptic position, the nature of the economic issues on which these voters hold a Left-wing position reveals a perspective in many ways more compatible with the Extreme Right than with any Left-wing conceptualisation of economic policy. Electorally, this divergence in mass ideological demand would seem to rule out any future long-term partisan realignment around the European issue.     

The First Time is the Hardest? A Cross-National and Cross-Issue Comparison of First-Time Protest Participants

The study aims to extend the existing knowledge about the dynamics of first-time participation in protest events. To tackle that puzzle we rely on extensive and innovative protest survey evidence covering 18 separate demonstrations in eight countries across nine different issues. On the individual level, age, motivation, and non-organizational mobilization appear to be consistent and robust predictors of first-timership. On the aggregate level, demonstrations staged just after or during a protest wave, large demonstrations, and demonstrations of old or new emotional movements are attended by a relatively larger share of first-timers. We conclude that it is thus the interplay of individual- and aggregate-level determinants that produces first-time participation.

Conversation,Disagreement and Political Participation

One of the more striking findings in recent work on political discussion among citizens has been that exposure to disagreement in discussion networks demobilises people, making political participation less likely. This runs counter to the expectations of theories of social capital and deliberative democracy, and also to the finding that exposure to cross-cutting views leads to greater tolerance of the opinions of others. This result is of great significance if it proves to be a general finding, holding in a variety of contexts and for a range of forms of political activism. This paper therefore provides a test, analysing a wide range of forms of political activism. The results suggest that it is premature to blame disagreement for demobilisation: in some circumstances, and for some forms of activism, exposure to countervailing views may actually motivate participation.     

The dark side of proportionality: Conditional effects of proportional features on turnout

Past research analysing the positive effects of proportional systems on electoral participation has focused on dimensions such as quality of representation, mobilisation, competitiveness, and efficacy. However, the potential consequences of higher complexity and difficulties for accountability on proportional systems are not well known. We show that proportional features capturing complexity and dispersion of power can increase the participatory gap between citizens with high and low education and interest in politics, usually by depressing turnout among the less educated and interested. The implications of adopting proportional rules that result in complex and divided forms of government in an era of increasingly disengaged citizens are discussed.     

Political Disagreement in Context: The Conditional Effect of Neighborhood Context, Disagreement and Political Talk on Electoral Participation

Despite scholarly interest in determining how exposure to disagreeable political ideas influences political participation, existing research supports few firm conclusions. This paper argues that these varied findings stem from an implicit model of contextual influence that fails to account for the indirect effect of aggregate social contexts. A model of contextual influence is outlined which implies that the neighborhood partisan context moderates the effect of political disagreement in social networks on campaign participation. The evidence shows that network disagreement demobilizes people who are the political minority in their neighborhood, but has no influence on people in the majority. When viewed together, these findings indicate that a person’s relationship to the broader political environment sets distinctive network processes in motion.

Does the Content of Political Appeals Matter in Motivating Participation? A Field Experiment on Self-disclosure in Political Appeals

Although robust citizen participation is fundamental to a healthy democracy, we still lack a clear sense of how to motivate participation. This paper presents the results of an experimental study designed to see if the content of political appeals matters in motivating participation. Previous research in this area has had mixed results. This paper finds that political appeals that include some self-disclosure about the person making the request triggers a liking heuristic that causes subjects to be more likely to comply with a request for action. Subjects receiving the treatment appeal are significantly more likely to donate money to support a political cause.