Life-cycle effects on social pressure to vote

Recent scholarship reveals social pressure can compel citizens to conform to social norms like voting in elections. In this study, we investigate heterogeneity in the impact of social pressure to vote. We find that age, a key demographic characteristic, moderates the impact of social pressure. Using evidence from a large-scale randomized field experiment conducted in August 2006, we show that older voters are significantly more responsive to social pressure compared to younger voters. Given the emerging consensus that social pressure can be marshaled effectively to stimulate voting in elections, such investigations yield critical insights of both practical and theoretical significance.     

A mixed blessing for the left? Early voting,turnout and election outcomes in Norway

Is there a relationship between turnout and election outcomes? Although this is a classic topic in political science, most studies on multiparty systems have important theoretical and empirical shortcomings. First, we argue that the proper implication of the theoretical argument that underpins research on the turnout-vote nexus is that high levels of turnout should typically benefit both traditional social democratic parties and parties of the radical right relative to other types of parties, including not only those of the traditional right, but also ‘left-libertarian’ parties. Second, few have studied the relationship between turnout and election outcomes with a research design that is appropriate for causal inference. In our empirical study, our identification strategy is to exploit a Norwegian reform of early voting rules as an exogenous source of variation in turnout. Our theoretical expectations are largely borne out in our empirical results.     

中日韩三国“风水”文化比较研究

"风水"是中国的传统文化,日本和韩国深受其影响,形成了迥异于中国"风水"的日韩风水文化。三国的"风水",皆植根于传统周易文化的土壤之上,蕴含有强烈的自然崇拜精神和朴素的农耕文化思想。三国的"风水"均暗含了现代建筑生态学和建筑美学的思想,具有丰富的生态内涵和人文意蕴。三国的"风水"具有功利性、生态性以及系统性等共同特点。无论是在"风水说"层面,还是在"风水术"层面,三国"风水"均各具特点,其迥异性具体体现在"空间风水术"和"时间风水术"两大方面。地理影响和宗教濡染,是三国"风水"特点迥异的主要原因。三国"风水说"和"风水术"的比较研究,有助于加深人们对东北亚汉文化传统的理解。     

What's at stake? A veto-player theory of voter turnout

Turnout is theorized to reflect elections' policy stakes. All else equal, a highly constrained policymaking context is expected to lower the potential policy stakes of a given election. This study tests if such contexts, which are characterized by multiple veto players, reduce electoral participation. According to time-series cross-sectional autoregressive dynamic lag models of turnout in 311 elections in 21 advanced industrialized democracies, additional veto players decrease turnout in both the short and long run. Moreover, the results suggest veto players conceptually fine-tune and empirically contribute to existing models of cross-national turnout. Hence this study has crucial implications for the students of electoral participation and scholars interested in the democratic outcomes of institutional design.     

America's first voter identification laws: The effects of personal registration and declining political party competition on presidential election turnout, 1880–1916

Engaging a persistent puzzle on the decline in U.S turnout after 1896 from which the nation never recovered, this paper tests the impact of strict registration laws and declining electoral competition on turnout. This study uses an original dataset on nineteenth century voter registration laws for 1880–1916. I estimate a panel model with state and year fixed effects to test the hypothesis that the shift in electoral behavior was a function of registration reforms and competition. Findings show that turnout dropped by as much as 6 points because of personal registration laws, whereas competition increased turnout by up to 10 points. I also analyzed two case studies at the county level. The results indicate that when registration laws became increasingly stringent with stricter identification requirements, turnout dropped by as much as 19 points. Findings suggest that electoral competition could mitigate the suppressive effects of strict voting laws on turnout.     

What is the cost of voting?

Despite a wealth of literature on the determinants of electoral turnout, little is known about the cost of voting. Some studies suggest that facilitating voting slightly increases turnout, but what ultimately matters is people's subjective perceptions of how costly voting is. This paper offers a first comprehensive analysis of the subjective cost of voting and its impact on voter turnout. We use data from an original survey conducted in Canada and data from the Making Electoral Democracy Work project which covers 23 elections among 5 different countries. We distinguish direct and information/decision voting costs. That is, the direct costs that are related to the act of voting and the costs that are related to the efforts to make (an informed) choice. We find that the cost of voting is generally perceived to be very small but that those who find voting more difficult are indeed less prone to vote, controlling for a host of other considerations. That impact, however, is relatively small, and the direct cost matters more than the information/decision cost.     

Uncovering the micro-foundations of turnout and electoral systems

This paper tackles the micro-foundations of voting and addresses why proportional representation systems (PR) are associated with higher turnout than majoritarian systems (SMD). I argue that individual evaluations of the differential benefit in the calculus of voting are affected by spatial party competition framed by electoral institutions. Unlike PR, SMD constrains the number of parties and creates large centripetal forces for party competition, which reduces the perceived benefits of voting. A citizen’s voting propensity is related to the distance between her preferred policy position and those of her most- and least-favored parties. I use multilevel modeling to analyze individual voting decisions structured by aggregate variables across 64 elections. The empirical findings confirm the argument and the mechanism holds both in established and non-established democracies.     

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.     

政府整体绩效评价:理论假说及其实证检验——以2008年度广东省为例

政府绩效评价是公共管理及政府管理创新的前沿课题。作为一个全新的范畴,政府整体绩效评价具有典型的本土特色。社会主义历史条件下,我国地方政府整体绩效评价构成了民意表达的基本路径,具有民主导向与技术完善的双重功能。本文提出了政府整体绩效评价结果导向的理论假设,并依据既定的技术方案,基于独立第三方立场和公众满意度导向,利用2008年度针对广东省地方政府整体绩效评价及公众满意度调查的系统数据,检验理论假设的科学性与合理性。研究表明,我国地方政府整体绩效评价是公民对政府表现的综合评价,其过程承担民意表达的功能,其结果将成为民主政治发展和行政体制改革的内在动力。