High turnout in the Low Countries: Partisan effects of the abolition of compulsory voting in the Netherlands

We use a quasi-experimental framework to test the conventional wisdom that left-of-center parties benefit from higher turnout by analyzing the partisan effects of the abolition of compulsory voting in the Netherlands. Fixed effects, multilevel, and matching models of party family vote shares in the Netherlands before and after the reform–and in reference to a control group of Belgian party families–show consistent evidence the voting reform led to an increase in the vote share of Dutch social democratic parties and a decrease in the vote share won by minor and extreme parties. We find some evidence that Christian democratic and liberal parties also benefited from the voting reform, but argue this finding is not causally related to the reform itself.     

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.     

Liberalism, Democracy and the Ethics of Voting

This article summarises objections to compulsory voting developed in my previous work. It shows that compulsory turnout is harder to justify than compulsory voting and that considerations of democratic legitimacy do not usually justify it either. When abstention is morally wrong, it is unlikely to be because it is unfair to those who voted. So concerns for fairness will not justify compulsory voting. The article shows that democracy is a competitive as well as a co-operative business, and this means that political ethics are more complex than proponents of compulsory voting suppose.     

Compulsory Voting and Parties’ Vote‐Seeking Strategies

I advance a theory about how compulsory voting affects the behavior of political parties. The theory suggests that parties will pivot toward programmatic vote‐seeking strategies and away from clientelistic tactics, such as vote buying, where voting is compulsory. I test my expectations in three separate studies, using several data sources and empirical approaches. In Study 1, cross‐national analyses show that parties behave more programmatically under compulsory voting and that vote buying is less common where voting is mandatory. In Study 2, synthetic control and difference‐in‐differences analyses show that a switch to compulsory voting in Thailand produced an increase in programmatic vote seeking. In Study 3, a list experiment conducted in tandem with a natural experiment shows that compulsory voting leads parties to rely less on vote‐buying tactics in Argentina. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings, which together are broadly supportive of my theoretical expectations.     

Does Compulsory Voting Increase Support for Leftist Policy?

Citizens unequally participate in referendums, and this may systematically bias policy in favor of those who vote. Some view compulsory voting as an important tool to alleviate this problem, whereas others worry about its detrimental effects on the legitimacy and quality of democratic decision making. So far, however, we lack systematic knowledge about the causal effect of compulsory voting on public policy. We argue that sanctioned compulsory voting mobilizes citizens at the bottom of the income distribution and that this translates into an increase in support for leftist policies. We empirically explore the effects of a sanctioned compulsory voting law on direct‐democratic decision making in Switzerland. We find that compulsory voting significantly increases electoral support for leftist policy positions in referendums by up to 20 percentage points. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of the policy consequences of electoral institutions.     

The Distinctive Value of Elections and the Case for Compulsory Voting

In this article, I defend compulsory voting on the grounds that it reinforces the distinctive and valuable role that elections play in contemporary democracy. Some scholars have suggested that mandatory voting laws can improve government responsiveness to members of poor and marginalized groups who are less likely to vote. Critics of compulsory voting object that citizens can participate in a wide variety of ways; voting is not important enough to justify forcing people to do it. These critics neglect the importance of voting's particular role in contemporary democratic practice, though. The case for compulsory voting rests on an implicit, but widely shared, understanding of elections as special moments of mass participation that manifest the equal political authority of all citizens. The most prominent objections to mandatory voting fail to appreciate this distinctive role for voting and the way it is embedded within a broader democratic framework.     

Compulsory voting and political engagement (beyond the ballot box): A multilevel analysis

Proponents of compulsory voting argue that this institution leads to higher levels of political engagement. Opponents of mandatory voting instead argue that forcing people to vote can increase feelings of political alienation and generate lower levels of political engagement. The empirical record on this issue is scarce and inconclusive. This paper revisits this question with a series of multilevel models that evaluate the impact of compulsory voting on different forms of political engagement, using data from all the waves of the Americas Barometer Survey (2004–2014). The results suggest that compulsory voting has a negligible effect on political engagement. However, the results also reveal an interesting interaction. Citizens with low levels of education are more likely to be cognitively engaged with the political process when voting is mandatory.     

On the Reasonableness of Compelling Citizens to 'Vote': the Australian Case

The legitimacy of compelling citizens to vote is rarely explored beyond claims about partisan benefit or infractions of liberty and democratic freedom of choice. Using the Australian model as a particularly successful and well administered case, I explore more deeply the issue of whether the state imposed obligation to vote is a legitimate one. The problem is approached via a number of questions, among them: Does compulsion have any properties that make it superior to a voluntary system? Does compulsion place an undue burden on voters? Is voting in the interests of individuals? Does voting do any good? Is there an obligation to vote? And, if so, to whom is the obligation owed?
I conclude that compulsion is reasonable because it yields collective (and ultimately individual) goods and protects a number of democratic, liberal and moral values. It is suggested that although there may be an obligation (but not a duty) to vote, this obligation is not owed to the state but rather to other citizens. An important effect of compulsory voting is its capacity to make voting a more 'rational' activity because it limits informational uncertainty and reduces opportunity costs. Compulsion removes most, if not all, the barriers to voting normally experienced by abstainers in voluntary systems. In doing so it releases or generates a variety of positive values, utilities and capabilities.     

The impact of compulsory voting on inequality and the quality of the vote

Abstract

Democratic elections imply that the electorate holds incumbents accountable for past performance, and that voters select the party that is closest to their own political preferences. Previous research shows that both elements require political sophistication. A number of countries throughout the world have a system of compulsory voting, and this legal obligation boosts levels of voter turnout. Under such rules, citizens with low levels of sophistication in particular are thought to turn out to vote in higher numbers. Is it the case that the quality of the vote is reduced when these less sophisticated voters are compelled to vote? This article investigates this claim by examining the effect of compulsory voting on accountability and proximity voting. The results show that compulsory voting reduces stratification based on knowledge and level of education, and proximity voting, but it does not have an effect on economic accountability. The article concludes with some suggestions on how systems of compulsory voting might mitigate the strength of political sophistication in determining the quality of the vote decision process.     

Elections as poorer reflections of preferences under compulsory voting

Compulsory voting is known to increase electoral participation, but its second-order effects are not well established. In this paper, I argue that vote choices are a relatively poor reflection of individuals' preferences under compulsory voting, as it boosts participation among those who are unlikely to cast well-reasoned ballots—the politically disinterested and unknowledgeable and those who see elections as flawed or pointless. I test this expectation with cross-national survey data, and I conduct supplementary tests with regional survey data from Switzerland, which employs compulsory voting in select cantons. Results from both sets of analyses support my expectations, suggesting that elections conducted under compulsory rules are relatively unlikely to signal the preferences of the voting population.     

Random votes under compulsory voting: Evidence from Brazil

Compulsory voting is known for boosting electoral turnout, even when sanctions for abstaining are small or loosely enforced. Much less is known, however, about the consequences of compulsory voting on vote choice, and, in particular, about the quality of electoral decisions. In this paper, we explore the extent to which voters meaningfully engage in the electoral process or simply vote randomly because voting is required by law. We conducted a large online survey in Brazil during the 2018 national elections to assess if voters engage in random voting. We evaluate random voting for low-profile, low-information elected offices (state and federal legislators) and others that receive greater media coverage (governor and president) and evaluate the determinants of random voting for each of them. We find that: 1) random voting does not appear to be affected by social desirability bias; 2) there is substantial random voting under compulsory voting; 3) more voters tend to engage in random voting in low-profile, low-information elections, as compared to elections that receive greater media coverage; and, 4) interest in politics, education, and disposition to vote if voting were to be voluntary reduce random voting. Our findings carry important implications for the study of citizen participation and civic competence under compulsory voting and for democratic representation, more broadly.     

Compulsory voting and the dynamics of partisan identification

Compulsory rules are known to have far‐reaching effects beyond boosting electoral participation rates. This article examines the relationship between compulsory voting and partisan attachments. A theory of attachment formation and strength is engaged that argues that compulsory voting boosts the likelihood that one will identify with a party and, in turn, the strength of party attachments among identifiers. The statistical model accounts for both the hierarchical structure of the data (individuals in elections) and the dual nature of the dependent variable (individuals report a strength of attachment only for the party with which they identify). Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, it is demonstrated that compulsory voting does indeed increase both the incidence and the strength of partisanship.     

Compulsory voting,turnout, and support for left-wing parties: The case of Australia

Does compulsory voting and the higher voter turnout that it produces increase support for left-wing parties? An influential and highly cited study provides strong evidence for such an effect in Australia. However, several quasi-experimental studies find little support for it in Europe. Given these conflicting findings, this study reanalyzes the crucial Australian case. It uses a unique, more fine-grained district-level dataset (N=4,219) and difference-in-differences designs to more directly test the assumed causal mechanism between compulsory voting and left-wing party support. Overall, it finds little evidence for the commonly assumed positive direct effect of turnout on Labor’s vote share. Further analyses identify an indirect effect of turnout – Labor’s decision to run candidates in more districts under compulsory voting – as an alternative mechanism and electoral system change and the Great Depression as potential confounding factors. These findings have important implications for our understanding of the political consequences of compulsory voting.     

Isolating the effect of compulsory voting laws on political sophistication: Leveraging intra-national variation in mandatory voting laws between the Austrian Provinces

Compulsory voting laws introduce a legal requirement to vote that substantially increases in voter turnout. Additionally, this study provides evidence that a legal requirement to vote also generates a more politically informed population. A comparative case study leverages intra-national variation in mandatory voting regulations across the Austrian Provinces over time. The analysis constructs novel measures intended to quantify recent and accumulated exposure to compulsory voting laws. The results suggest that exposure to mandatory voting laws caused Austrian citizens to increase their political interest and attention to political news, as well as their level of information about party platforms on whether or not to expand EU integration. As a whole, the study suggests that compulsory voting not only increases voter turnout; it also leads to an increase in political information.     

Is compulsory voting more democratic?

Lijphart (1997) endorses compulsory voting as a means to increase voter turnout. Considering the likely effects of the role of information (including its costs) on the decision to vote and taking an expressive view of voting, however, compels us to investigate two unexamined claims by such advocates: (i) that individuals are transformed by forcing them to vote, and (ii) that a compulsory electoral outcome is a more accurate reflection of community preferences.We argue that compelling those who are not particularly interested in, or informed about, the political process to vote increases the proportion of random votes and we show that under simple majority rule, compulsory voting may violate the Pareto principle; the less popular candidate is more likely to be elected. Our results cast doubt on the ”miracle of aggregation“ argument, which optimistically concludes that as long as uninformed votes are not systematically biased, they will have no effect on voting outcomes. We also briefly consider how information cascades can exacerbate this problem.     

The impact of motivational and contextual factors on turnout in first- and second-order elections

Based on voter survey from European election study 2009, we examine the impact of one individual-level motivational factor, i.e. interest in politics, and its interactions with institutional and contextual factors such as compulsory voting, electoral competition and the number of parties on participation in 2009 EP elections and previous national elections. The results show that political interest is more closely connected to turnout in second-order elections which are usually considered less salient. Correspondingly, also the contingent effect of compulsory voting and competition is more evident in EP elections. While compulsory voting substantially decreases the turnout gap between the most and least politically attentive voters in both types of elections, the moderating effect of competitiveness is found only in EP elections.     

Expressive voting and identity: evidence from a case study of a group of U.S. voters

The source of evidence on expressive voting has been experiments, in general conducted with students. In Why are Jews Liberals? Norman Podhoretz describes behavior that substantiates the hypothesis that people vote expressively to confirm identity. He does not use the terminology of expressive voting but his study is readily interpretable in an expressive-behavior context. Podhoretz describes liberal Jews in the U.S. as expressively voting contrary to self-interest to confirm allegiance to liberalism, which he terms a ??new religion??. Traditional Jews do not require the identity of the new religion and vote in accord with their self-interest. I propose another interpretation of voting by liberal Jews in which expressive utility is not contrary to self-interest.     

The Calculus of Voting in Compulsory Voting Systems

Compulsory voting laws have consistently been demonstrated to boost electoral participation. Despite the widespread presence of compulsory voting and the significant impact these laws appear to have on voting behavior, surprisingly little effort has been devoted to analyzing how mandatory voting alters the decision-making calculus of individual voters in these systems. Moreover, studies that investigate the influence of compulsory voting laws on electoral participation generally treat these policies monolithically, with scant attention to the nuances that differentiate mandatory voting laws across systems and to their consequences for voting rates. Analyses that explicitly and empirically examine the effects of penalties and enforcement are surprisingly rare. This study aims to fill that void by adapting rational choice models of participation in elections for compulsory voting systems. I find that the level of penalties countries impose for non-compliance and the degree of penalty enforcement impact turnout rates. Voters in mandatory voting systems abstain least when both the penalties and the likelihood of enforcement are high, and abstain most when both meaningless.

Voter Engagement,Electoral Inequality and First‐Time Compulsory Voting

This paper reviews the problem of declining turnout and proposes as a solution a system whereby each elector would be legally obliged to vote in the first election for which they were eligible. Popular attitudes toward first‐time compulsory voting are measured and probed by means of UK data. The main findings of the paper are that first‐time compulsory voting is a politically and administratively feasible proposal that appears tentatively to command popular support and has the potential to help address a number of the problems associated with declining turnout, and in particular low rates of electoral participation among younger citizens.     

Explanations of protectionism in international trade votes

In this study, we analyze the voting records of U.S. senators on three recent international trade bills. Our objective is to assess the importance of ideology and constituent interest as forces that influence protectionist vs. free trade voting behavior. The methodology uses discriminant analysis supplemented with expert judgement. The first conclusion is that ideology is the more important force in generic protectionism issues, and local constituent interests are more important for commodity-specific issues. Second, we find that protectionism is especially associated with liberal ideology, high import impact, and low export dependence. Although the discriminant analysis outperforms expert judgement in classifying protectionist vs. free trade votes in two of the three bills studied, the best explanation is obtained by using both methods together.We are indebted to Dennis Quinn, Tom Brewer, Michael Czinkota, Karen Gaertner, Annette Shelby, and Melanie Hayes. Errors remain our responsibility.