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.     

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.     

Families,divorce and voter turnout in the US

How large a role does the family play in civic development? This paper examines an important aspect of family influence by tracing the impact of divorce on voter turnout during adolescence. We show that the effect of divorce among white families is large, depressing turnout by nearly 10 percentage points. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, we demonstrate that the impact of divorce varies by racial group and can rival the impact of parents’ educational attainment, which is generally regarded as the most important non-political characteristic of one’s family of origin. We attempt to explain the divorce effect by examining the mediating impacts of parental voter turnout, active social learning, income loss, child–parent interaction, residential mobility, and educational attainment.     

The effect of the secret ballot on voter turnout rates

Secrecy in the voting process eliminated an important motivation for voting. No longer able to verify the voters' choices, political parties stopped offering payments in return for votes. Within the rational voter framework, it will be shown that these payments were a prime impetus for people to vote. Without a vote market to cover their voting costs, many voters were rational to stay away from the polls. This hypothesis is supported through a series of empirical tests culminating in a multivariate legislative regression. When other electoral laws are controlled for, the secret ballot accounts for 7 percentage points lower Gubernatorial turnout.     

Turnout in Germany in the course of time: Life cycle and cohort effects on electoral turnout from 1953 to 2049

The steadily rising share of older voters could lead to them gaining an ever increasing level of political representation compared to younger voters not only because of the imbalance of numbers between the young and the old, but also because turnout rates among the old have always been above-average. The latter argument only applies if the so-called life cycle effect is assumed to be dominant. However, diverse socialisation backgrounds, captured by the cohort effect, also have to be taken into account. It is also unclear what the interplay of these two effects of time implies for future aggregate turnout. Focusing on the German case, we base our analyses on the Repräsentative Wahlstatistik (Representative Electoral Statistic, RES) and population forecasts to estimate consequences of the demographic shifts for all federal elections from 1953 until today, as well as for future elections. First, we calculate life cycle, cohort and period effects on turnout for previous elections by using cohort analysis; second, we apply these net effects to the future age distribution under certain assumptions concerning life cycle and cohort effects. Our results show that the recent decline in turnout is in particular due to negative period effects and (in West Germany) to a minor extent also due to consequences of cohort replacement, whereas changes in the age structure have had a positive effect on turnout since 1990 in both parts of Germany. Additionally, our forecasts suggest that turnout rates will decline and that the over-representation of the old will continue until around 2030 and diminish afterwards in a 'greying' population.     

A comparative analysis of voter turnout in regional elections

Elections to regional assemblies have become increasingly important as the power and responsibilities of regional governments have increased. Yet, few studies have attempted to explain the considerable variation in turnout in regional elections from one region to another. This article conducts a cross-sectional examination of voter participation in regional elections across nine multi-level OECD states between 2003 and 2006. It contends that standard models of voter turnout in national elections are insufficient to explain variation in turnout in regional elections and argues for the use of independent variables tailored to capture variation across regional communities and regional political institutions. Our findings suggest that variations in the strength of political autonomy and the strength of attachment to the region among the electorate have a strong and positive impact on the level of turnout in regional elections.     

Healthy voting: The effect of self-reported health on turnout in 30 countries

Based on five rounds of European social survey (ESS), we examine both the direct and indirect effect of health, channelled by social connectedness, on turnout in 30 countries. Our analysis is the first attempt to make a comprehensive account of the magnitude of health in electoral participation. The results show that health has an effect on turnout and that it is notably larger among older people. The impact of health is partly mediated by social connectedness, which suggests that attenuated health may weaken an individual's social network which in turn depresses voting.     

Constraints on the turnout gap between high and low knowledge (or income) voters: Combining the Duncan-Davis method of bounds with the Taagepera method of bounds

Countries differ quite substantially in mean turnout levels, and it is equally well known that there may be substantial within-country variation as well, for example, between high income and low-income groupings or between high political knowledge and low political knowledge groupings. It has been hypothesized that the size of such between-group gaps will fall as turnout rises, and conversely (Franklin, 2004. Blais, 2000). However, as Franklin (2004) also noted, there are mathematical constraints on the size of the turnout gap that are related to the level of turnout. For example, in the limit, if turnout is 100%, then all groups must have identical turnout. Here we build on this insight by adapting the classic work on boundary conditions done by two sociologists (Duncan and Davis, 1953) to show precisely what the boundary constraints look like over the entire range of turnout values. Then we show how these constraints can help make sense of the strong relationship found between overall turnout and the size of the gap between voters above and below the median in political knowledge in the Fisher et al. (2008) cross-national study. To do so we draw on ideas in Rein (Taagepera, 2007) and (Taagepera, 2008) about how to use boundary condition information to develop better theoretical models.     

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.     

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.     

An experimental test of the pivotal voter model under plurality and PR elections

This paper examines the decision to vote or not vote in experimental elections. We replicate the important findings of Duffy and Tavits (2008), though with a different design. Our results support their finding, that is, turnout is affected by the belief that one's vote counts and that overestimation in the perception that one's vote counts does not disappear completely over time. Going beyond previous research, we also find that turnout is not higher under a proportional system than under a plurality system, as well as that beliefs about being in a pivotal position have a greater impact on turnout among the risk averse.     

The impact of legal constraints on voter registration,turnout, and the composition of the American electorate

Research on the effects of restrictive voter registration laws has been largely passé for nearly a decade, apparently due to the widespread acceptance of Wolfinger and Rosenstone's (1980) study of voter turnout. Wolfinger and Rosenstone's research indicates that fully liberalized registration laws would produce a larger voting population, which would differ only marginally in its composition from the existing electorate. But their analysis only addresses turnout, not registration itself, and is based on a single sample of the American electorate, 1972. This paper focuses on the impact of restrictive laws on registration and turnout in presidential and nonpresidential election years during the period 1972–1982, relying on data from both the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Surveys and the National Election Studies. The results of the analyses do mark important points of difference from Wolfinger and Rosenstone's findings. Ultimately, however, there is no escaping their conclusion that the implications of liberalized voter registration laws on the composition of the electorate would be relatively minor.     

District magnitude and voter turnout a multi-level analysis of self-reported voting in the 32 Dominican Republic districts

Although studies of electoral participation in established democracies are abundant, little attention has been devoted to Latin American democracies and few studies combine individual-level and contextual-level variables. We focus on electoral participation in 32 districts of a Latin American democracy, the Dominican Republic. Our research question is: how to explain the different impact of district magnitude in Latin America? Most importantly, we find that it has a negative effect on electoral participation whereas theories based on established democracies would predict the opposite. We argue that the negative effect is caused by the stronger influence of clientelism in smaller districts, which surfaces at less salient elections. This argument accounts for previously unexplained findings in studies of Latin America.     

The effect of socioeconomic factors on voter turnout in Finland: A register-based study of 2.9 million voters

Abstract.  We examine the association of four socioeconomic factors with turnout in Finland in three age groups. The analyses are based on individual-level register data from electoral wards from the parliamentary elections of 1999 linked to population registration data on personal characteristics covering the whole 25 to 69 year-old Finnish electorate. The results show that income and housing tenure are more important determinants of turnout among older voters than among younger voters, whereas education has a dominant role in determining young people's turnout. Moreover, class has maintained its discriminatory power in determining turnout in all age groups even though working-class under-representation in participation can be partly attributable to previously obtained educational attainment. Furthermore, the lower turnout of younger voters remains unexplained even if socioeconomic factors are held constant. Lower turnout among lower social classes and among the young will affect the legitimacy of the prevalent model of party democracy.     

城市中学生消费中的性别社会化研究——以广州市某中学60名学生的个案研究为例

本文运用民族志观察和个案研究方法,从消费视角探索了城市中学生的性别社会化过程。研究发现,城市中学生消费具有显著的男女性别差异和性别成熟程度方面的特征;其性别社会化的形成机制是从媒体学习到消费体验继而在群体中相互传递,并以20-30岁单身同性的行为模式为学习目标,继而可能引发代际冲突与群体分隔。对于这一现象的研究,不但有助于克服中学生性别社会化研究的薄弱性,而且能够矫正国内中学生消费研究中的部分误导性解释。     

大学生性别因素与互联网互动服务使用行为的关系研究

本文具体针对Email、BBS论坛、即时通讯工具三种互联网互动服务使用行为,对368名大学生上网调查的数据进行了分析,结果表明性别与使用互联网对外联络功能、使用Email联系现实中同学和朋友、使用BBS的获取资源等部分互动服务使用行为有相关关系,这为细化互联网使用行为,进一步探讨媒介使用者特征做了铺垫。     

Inter-country differences in voter satisfaction with the democratic process: a study of world elections

Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this paper examines differences between West and East European countries in their levels of satisfaction with the way democracy works. Compared to East European countries, satisfaction levels were considerably higher in Western countries (West Europe, North America, and Oceania). Moreover, there was considerably greater inequality in the distribution of satisfaction in East European, compared to Western, countries. When these facts were combined to construct “equity-sensitive” satisfaction averages, the gap between Western countries and East European countries was even greater than suggested by a comparison of average satisfaction levels. This raised the question of why satisfaction levels varied so markedly between these two sets of countries. A logit model suggested that a number of factors were important for determining whether people were satisfied with the way democracy worked in their countries. While there was a difference between Western countries and East European countries in their endowments of these satisfaction-inducing factors (income, gender, participation, education, among others), when the equations were estimated separately for the Western countries and East European countries, the coefficient responses associated with several of these factors also differed markedly between the two groups.     

全面二孩视域下我国推进就业性别平等的立法构建

男女两性就业机会、获取报酬、晋升等平权是男女平等原则在经济领域的具体体现。一直以来,女性在孕、产、哺乳期阶段的就业、酬劳、晋升仍面临不同程度的困难。虽然我国立法对女性就业保障有系列规定,尤其是2018年针对女性在孕、产、哺乳期的就业歧视,有关部门颁布了具体细致的“禁令”,其核心要义是让全面二孩政策付诸落实。但专门立法的缺失、现行立法的零散及层级低下无法有效应对当下生育意愿低迷,进而影响人口出生率低下的现象。应当以人口红利衍生的性别红利理论为导向,结合我国港台地区推进就业平等的立法经验,以此构建推进性别平等、追求性别红利,最终提升人口数量的法律制度。     

Moving the campaign from the front door to the front pocket: field experimental evidence on the effect of phrasing and timing of text messages on voter turnout

Despite the widespread scholarly attention given to get-out-the-vote tactics the recent one and a half decade, few have studied the effect of short text messages (SMS) on voter turnout, and no previous such study has been conducted outside the US. We analyze four SMS experiments with more than 300,000 voters conducted in relation to two elections in Denmark and find intention-to-treat (ITT) effects between 0.33 and 1.82 percentage points with a pooled effect of 0.74 percentage points. Furthermore, we vary the timing and the content of the messages to test existing theories of text messages as mobilization tools. In one experiment, we find messages delivered before Election Day to have a higher effect than those delivered on Election Day, while we find no additional effect of delivering multiple messages. We also vary message content and in general find no significant differences from sending different messages.