Compulsory Voting and Income Inequality: Evidence for Lijphart's Proposition from Venezuela

Abstract

What difference does it make if the state makes people vote? The question is central to normative debates about the rights and duties of citizens in a democracy, and to contemporary policy debates in a number of Latin American countries over what actions states should take to encourage electoral participation. Focusing on a rare case of abolishing compulsory voting in Venezuela, this article shows that not forcing people to vote yielded a more unequal distribution of income. The evidence supports Arend Lijphart's claim, advanced in his 1996 presidential address to the American Political Science Association, that compulsory voting can offset class bias in turnout and, in turn, contribute to the equality of influence.

Growing into Voting : Election Turnout among Young People and Habit Formation

“…Other studies on the effects of compulsory voting have reached the same conclusion (e.g. Bechtel, Hangartner, and Schmid 2016;Carey and Horiuchi 2017).…”

Should and Does Compulsory Voting Reduce Inequality?

“…Cross-national evidence finally supports the hypothesis that countries with strict enforcement of sanctions for nonvoting (though not all compulsory voting systems) feature a more equal distribution of incomes than countries with voluntary voting or where compulsion is not enforced (Birch, 2009b;Chong & Olivera, 2008). Abolishing compulsory voting in Venezuela has led to an increase in income inequality supporting the Lijphart thesis (Carey & Horiuchi, 2017).…”

“…It just seems more pressing to tackle the inequalities in education, workplace, health care, or the justice system than to rely on the quite optimistic claim that more equal turnout would be the most effective way to tackle the inequalities that plague modern democratic societies. Even though there are studies that find empirical linkages between the presence of compulsory voting and higher levels of social spending (see Carey & Horiuchi, 2017;O'Toole & Strobl, 1995), there are many countries characterized by high levels of social cohesion, a strong welfare state and an egalitarian social and political ethos that do not have compulsory voting (e.g., the Scandinavian countries). Compulsory voting thus is neither a sufficient, nor necessary factor for dealing with the issues of making certain social classes less advantaged than others.…”

El voto obligatorio y la redistribución del ingreso reexaminando el argumento lijphartiano con "matching"

“…La tesis de ha tenido amplia influencia en la literatura comparada y, en particular, en la literatura de American Politics, en la cual la evidencia empírica es contundente a favor de una fuerte asociación entre el votante de nivel socioeconómico alto y una mayor participación política y electoral . Sin embargo, a nivel internacional, diversos trabajos comparados y estudios de caso han puesto a prueba esta hipótesis sin obtener resultados concluyentes a su favor (Chong y Olivera, 2008;Carey y Horiuchi, 2017;.…”

“…Este país no tiene VO desde la aprobación de la Constitución de 1999. Sin embargo, ya para las elecciones de 1993 y 1998 fueron canceladas las sanciones por no ir a votar Carey y Horiuchi, 2017). Los autores analizan el efecto de la «cuasi» no obligatoriedad del voto a partir de 1993 y encuentran un sustantivo incremento del índice de Gini en ese lapso de tiempo.…”