Votes and Participation: The Effect of Election Frequency on Voter Turnout

• In Event: Voter Turnout

Abstract

In recent decades, liberal democracies have considerably expanded the scope for citizen participation. Because of processes such as decentralisation, regional integration (e.g., European Union), frequent use of referenda and other, more idiosyncratic, institutional change, citizens are required to participate in an increasingly large number of votes. This research investigates the effect of these institutional reforms and practices on electoral participation. Building on the existing literature, we hypothesize that the unprecedented proliferation of electoral contests exerts negative effects on voting rates and, importantly, that these effects have long-term (i.e., generational) implications contributing to the global decline in voter turnout. We test these hypotheses using an original and freshly collected dataset covering an exhaustive list of national, subnational, and supranational elections and referenda held in 22 democracies since 1945. To study the generational effects, we complement the macro-level dataset with survey data from four waves of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Our hierarchical analyses pay particular attention to the question of causal inference. The findings have implications for a better understanding of the current participation trends, the on-going transformation of democratic citizenship, and the consequences of democratic institutional engineering.

Authors

• Filip Kostelka, University of Essex

• Nicolas Sauger, Sciences-Po - Centre d'études européennes

• Eva Krejcova, Sciences Po Paris