Voting May Be Habit-Forming: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Habit is a frequently mentioned but understudied cause of political action. This article provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that casting a ballot in one election increases one's propensity to go to the polls in the future. A field experiment involving 25,200 registered voters was conducted prior to the November general election of 1998. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions in which they were urged to vote through direct mail or face-to-face canvassing. Compared to a control group that received no contact, the treatment groups were significantly more likely to vote in 1998. The treatment groups were also significantly more likely to vote in local elections held in November of 1999. After deriving a statistical estimator to isolate the effect of habit, we find that, ceteris paribus, voting in one election substantially increases the likelihood of voting in the future. Indeed, the influence of past voting exceeds the effects of age and education reported in previous studies.     

The National Integrity System: assessing corruption and reform

This article builds on a Transparency International (TI)‐sponsored research study funded by the Dutch Government into the National Integrity System (NIS) in practice. The NIS is a framework approach developed by TI that proposes assessing corruption and reform holistically. The NIS not only looks at separate institutions or separate areas of activity or separate rules and practices, but also bases its perspective on institutional and other inter‐relationships, inter‐dependence and combined effectiveness. The study involved 18 countries, using in‐country researchers and an overview report. This article assesses the findings of the study to consider how the approach can work in practice, and what the approach can reveal about the causes and nature of corruption as well as the implications for reform. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

'Building a Better World'

Garran Oration Royal Institute of Public Administration Australia National Conference, 29 November -1 December 2003