Engineering Democracy: Electoral Rules and Turnout Inequality

In political science literature, it is often argued that compulsory voting can serve as a remedy against turnout inequality and thereby contribute to more egalitarian societies. However, the literature neglects differences between compulsory voting systems, and most studies consider the obligation to vote as a dichotomous variable. As a result, relatively little is known about the causal effects of particular stimuli and features of compulsory voting. By exploiting quasi-experimental conditions from direct-democratic decision-making in Switzerland, this research assesses the degree to which abstention fines account for a citizen’s willingness to vote under a compulsory voting context. The findings reveal that a marginal increase in monetary sanctions for voter-abstention leads temporally to a sizeable increase in turnout. However, it does not necessarily contribute to the expression of preferences by those traditionally underrepresented in direct-democratic decision-making since a third of those motivated to vote by the threat of a heavier fine will cast an empty or invalid ballot. The effect on turnout is further found to be moderated by income.

ABSTRACTWhy has voter turnout declined in democracies all over the world? This article draws on findings from microlevel studies and theorizes two explanations: generational change and a rise in the number of elective institutions. The empirical section tests these hypotheses along with other explanations proposed in the literature—shifts in party/candidate competition, voting-age reform, weakening group mobilization, income inequality, and economic globalization. The authors conduct two analyses. The first analysis employs an original data set covering all post-1945 democratic national elections. The second studies individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and British, Canadian, and US national election studies. The results strongly support the generational change and elective institutions hypotheses, which account for most of the decline in voter turnout. These findings have important implications for a better understanding of the current transformations of representative democracy and the challenges it faces.

The twelve books under review, written by scholars representing many different disciplines and nationalities, are proof that the comparative analysis of electoral systems has made significant progress in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is still not a well-developed field, but it has clearly become a less underdeveloped one. Renewed interest in research on electoral systems has been stimulated by major changes in election rules—usually in the direction of proportional representation—that have been adopted in several countries, and by a vigorous debate on electoral reform in countries that now rely mainly on the plurality method. The United States is the principal deviant case. Two election systems frequently serve as models for electoral reform: the Irish single transferrable vote and the West German additional-member system.

This article considers the potential to use knowledge of expected electoral system effects to engage in electoral engineering. The review focuses on contributions made in the past dozen or so years and is limited to five specific questions: How do electoral systems affect (a) the proportionality of seats–votes relationships, (b) party proliferation, (c) the ideological nature of party competition, (d) voter turnout, and (e) the degree of match between the preferences of citizens and the policy choices of the government?

Although the majority of studies on political knowledge document lingering gender-based differences in advanced industrial democracies, most contributors have drawn such conclusions from a single or a handful of countries, using limited batteries of political information items. Exploiting a pooled data set of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems encompassing 106 post-election surveys in forty-seven countries between 1996 and 2011, this article demonstrates that survey instrument–related factors, such as question format and content, as well as the overall difficulty of questions, are more consequential in shaping the size of gender gaps in political knowledge than institutional factors, such as electoral rules or opportunity structures. The research design of this article draws from almost three hundred different items measuring factual political knowledge using the broadest country coverage and most comprehensive approach to measurement to date.

As voter turnout is steadily declining in western democracies, various authors have expressed concern about the stratification in electoral participation that this trend might entail. Some research suggests that specific categories of potential voters refrain from voting, leading to the electoral dominance of more privileged groups within the population. In this article, we investigate whether systems of compulsory voting are associated with more equal participation in elections. We study 36 countries that participated in the 2004 International Social Survey Programme. The analysis shows that compulsory voting is associated with higher turnout rates, but we do not observe any significant differences in electoral participation based on gender or educational level. However, we find a significant interaction effect between age and compulsory voting, suggesting that young age cohorts are unlikely to be affected by the dynamics of the civic duty argument that is inherent in systems of compulsory voting.

Belgium’s electoral system is idiosyncratic in many ways but one of its defining characteristics is its reliance on compulsory voting (CV). This chapter discusses the historical conditions and party-strategic considerations that have led to the adoption and endurance of CV, as well as the arguments in favor of or against CV. It explains the historical roots of CV in Belgium, before turning to current debates on CV. The chapter puts Belgium in a comparative perspective and determines whether CV actually leads to high levels of voter turnout, and describes the consequences of CV on individuals’ voting behavior, on voter equality, and on party political strength. CV has been a favorite subject of normative debates on how to improve democracy. The paradox of abolishing CV would thus be that everyone would be given the equal right and liberty to cast their vote but only the politically advantaged would take up that right.

Elections as poorer reflections of preferences under compulsory voting

When politics is not just a man's game: Women's representation and political engagement

The purpose of this study is to compare Indonesian and Malaysian elections in terms of (1) legal basis, (2) organizing institution, (3) implementation, (4) political party function, and (5) public participation. It was a library study using a qualitative approach. Documentation was used to gather information. The data were analyzed descriptively using the Miles and Haberman model. The data were collected, grouped, reduced, interpreted, and concluded. The data were interpreted based on concepts, theories, and critical analysis. Cross-checking was used as the data validity technique. The results of this study are (1) Indonesia has hosted 12 elections, some of which have been influenced by political dynamics, including Law No. 12 of 2003 concerning Elections for the 2004 Election, Law No. 10 of 2008, and Law No. 7 of 2017 concerning Elections. Malaysian elections are governed by two laws: (a) the Malaysian Law on General Election Deed 1958 and (b) the Malaysian Law on General Election Error Act 1954. (c) P.U.(A) 293/2002 concerning the General Election (Voter Registration) Regulation last amended by P.U.(A) 106/2012; (d) P.U.(A) 185/2003 concerning Election Regulation (Post Elections) 2003; (e) P.U.(A) 386/1981 concerning General Election Regulations (Execution of Grand Elections) 1981, last amended by P.U. (A) 134/2013. (2) General Election Commission (KPU) is the name of the election organizers, whereas General Election Institute is the name of the election organizers in the New Order Era (LPU). Suruhanjaya Choice Raya is the Malaysian election organizer (SPR) (3) The election system in Malaysia is simpler and more efficient. Malaysia uses the District Election System which is based on the location of the election district, not the population. The election system in Indonesia uses the proportional election system. (4) Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy and adheres to a parliamentary democracy system. Both Indonesia and Malaysia adhere to a multi-party system. (5) The average voter turnout in Malaysian elections is 85 percent, while voter turnout in Indonesia is only 74 percent. In general, Malaysian elections are worse than those in Indonesia. In Malaysia, election organizers tend to favor government parties. Suruhanjaya Choice Raya Malaysia (SPR) barred Diaspora residents in other nations from using the post in 2018, claiming that the Diaspora favored opposition parties.

Political scientists and others involved in election administration have long been concerned about the importance of young people’s participation in politics, particularly in Africa. When it comes to politics, youth play an important role and are expected to play an even larger one through voter registration. Intriguingly, the youth of Nigeria showed remarkable eagerness to participate actively in the just finished 2023 electoral process by turning out in large numbers for the Continuous Voters’ Registration (CRV) drive in 2022. Examining the causes of the dramatic increase in young voters’ registration in Nigeria’s 2023 elections and the effects of this trend on youth participation in politics and the electoral process were the primary goals of this research. This study used a descriptive research strategy based on a survey design. Information was gathered by means of survey questionnaires and in-depth interviews. Tables and basic percentages were used for quantitative data analysis, while discourse analysis was used for analysing the content of qualitative data. The study’s results showed that the youths’ rights had been violated on a large scale, particularly in recent years. For instance, the handling of the 2020 End-SARS protest, such as being beaten with the butt of a gun, whips, and fists during arrest; continued torture by the police in detention, and the surge in support for Peter Obi were also factors that contributed to the surge. On the other hand, the implications of the massive turnout for governance and political participation in Nigeria include the youths’ ability to speak out against bad governance across ethno-religious lines, and an increase in youth participation in politics. The study concludes that young people should be more informed and engaged, that electoral institutions should be strengthened, and that voter registration should be continuous.

Party identification is a well‐documented force in political behaviour. However, the vast majority of work on partisanship considers only its positive side, rather than recognizing that partisan identities may also have a negative component. Recent work has shown that negative partisanship has important effects, such as reinforcing partisan leanings, directing strategic behaviour and increasing the rate of straight‐ticket voting. This study takes a step back to explore the sources of such orientations, rather than the effects. Specifically, it considers whether the electoral system context contributes to the presence of negative affective orientations towards parties. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we examine the influence of factors related to electoral system features and consider whether their influence is moderated by voter sophistication. Data reveal significant variation in the rate of negative partisanship across countries, and that these differences are related to the electoral system context in which voters are making decisions. We also find some evidence that these effects are moderated by sophistication. This work adds to our understanding of the role of affect in political behaviour, as well as the impact that country‐level institutional factors can have upon the relationship between voters and parties.

Despite the rich and growing body of research addressing how turnout and party choice depend on the institutional context, far less is known about the impact of the political environment on voters’ propensity to vote for candidates – not parties. Recent single-country studies have focused almost exclusively on individual-level resource- and identity-based differences in preference voting. Combining data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and Participation and Representation in Modern Democracies (PARTIREP) election studies in six countries, this article provides the first comprehensive, cross-national test of the impact of macro-contextual factors on a voter’s decision to indicate a candidate preference, instead of simply casting a party list vote. It demonstrates that both the failure of preference votes to affect the allocation of seats and choice overload dissuade voters from marking a candidate name on the ballot. These contextual factors affect informed and uninformed voters differently, moreover. The findings have important implications for electoral scholars and political practitioners when designing electoral systems.

One of the limits of previous studies using respondents’ self‐placements and subjective party placements to examine levels of citizen‐government congruence is that they were limited to the post‐1995 period. This article extends the number of elections where it is possible to examine levels of citizen‐government ideological congruence with a survey‐based approach. In particular, a unique dataset has been collected that combines data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and several national election studies. The results confirm recent studies that show that levels of citizen‐government ideological congruence are similar under majoritarian and proportional representation (PR) systems. Such studies, however, did not provide evidence that congruence is maintained over the course of a government's mandate. This article introduces, therefore, two measures of citizen‐government congruence that address this issue and that may revive the debate about which electoral systems strengthen the citizen‐government connection: citizen‐government congruence at the end of government mandates and change in congruence between elections. The results indicate that governments stay closer to the median citizens between elections under PR systems than under majoritarian systems. It is found, however, that this decrease in congruence in majoritarian systems is not detrimental to the point of observing smaller levels of congruence at the end of government mandates under majoritarian systems than under PR systems.

The objective of this article is to analyze invalid votes under compulsory voting in Peru. I analyzed three Peruvian presidential elections (held in 2006, 2011, and 2016). I investigated the results of these elections at the municipal level, examining the first and second rounds separately. Thus, I created an original dataset that includes 5,478 cases from each round. I used the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to test theories related to invalid votes. First, I found that the higher the level of development in municipalities, the lower the number of invalid votes in municipalities. Second, I examined a feature of runoff voting and found that the higher the share of votes for eliminated candidates in the first round, the greater the number of invalid votes in the second round. These results suggest that invalid voting is linked to socioeconomic grievances and that electoral abstention under non-compulsory voting transforms into invalid votes in the second round under compulsory voting when voters’ choices are limited. These findings contribute to the current research on invalid voting, electoral systems, and electoral behavior in Peruvian municipalities.