Elite behaviour and citizen mobilisation

This article studies the relation between self-serving elite behaviour and citizen political participation. It uses a fixed effects approach to analyse the association between portfolio investment in tax havens and voter turnout, using data from 213 parliamentary elections in 65 countries for the period 1998–2014. For well-functioning democracies a positive relation between the use of tax havens and voter turnout is found, suggesting that self-serving elite behaviour is associated with citizen political mobilisation rather than voter apathy. The estimated relationship is stronger in the period after the 2008 economic crisis, when elite behaviour was a particularly salient issue.