Modes of Extraterritorial Enfranchisement

• In Event: Immigrant Political Participation and Incorporation

Abstract

In the last four decades, the majority of the world’s states have extended voting rights to citizens living abroad. We build on prior work coding extraterritorial voting rights and restrictions by presenting new systematic data on the process by which extraterritorial voting rights were extended in more than 100 countries around the world. We identify both the process of which these rights are extended (e.g. legislation, public referendum, judicial ruling) as well as the key institutional actor. Analysis of this new data suggests that not only is there substantial variation in the process by which extraterritorial voting rights are adopted, but the process of legal enfranchisement provides critical insights into subsequent patterns of implementation and restrictions. With a wider range of actors involved in extending (and in some cases, actively limiting) migrants’ right to vote comes a wider range of factors that matter in understanding this important global trend.

Authors

• Benjamin Nyblade, UCLA School of Law

• Elizabeth Iams Wellman, Williams College

• Nathan Wallace Allen, St. Francis Xavier University