Democracy with Group Identity

Abstract

Group-based identity undermines democracy by impeding democratic change of government. A substantial literature has therefore studied how to make democracy consistent with group identity. We contribute to this literature by introducing the role of group decisiveness into voting incentives and mobilization of voters. In the elections that we study, for the same populations, accounting for income and other influences, group identity increased voter turnout on average by some 8 percentage points in local elections and decreased voter turnout by some 20 percentage points in national elections. We empirically investigate the effect of group identity on voter turnout and also evaluate whether group identity resulted in budgetary imbalance or replacement of local government because of disfunctionality.Our general contribution is to show how democracy can persist with group identity, although democracy in such instances differs from usual political competition.

Economic Freedom and Religion: An Empirical Investigation

“…On disincentives of authoritarian rulers and elites to allow economic freedom, see Hillman (2007a). Economic freedom has also been found to be negatively associated with foreign aid, which is usually received by autocratic governments (Young and Sheehan 2014), and negatively associated with linguistic and ethnic fractionalization (Heckelman and Wilson 2017), which tends to result in autocracy (see the literature cited in Hillman, Metsuyanim, and Potrafke 2015). Rode and Revuelta (2015) conclude that populistic governments also diminish economic freedom.…”

“…See Fish (2002), Karatnycky (2002), Voigt (2005), Borooah and Paldam (2007), Rowley and Smith (2009), and Potrafke (2012Potrafke ( , 2013b. For an exception, see Hillman, Metsuyanim, and Potrafke (2015), who studied elections in Muslimmajority local-government constituencies in Israel. Voter turnout in Muslimmajority municipalities in many cases approached 100 percent against a background of decisiveness in voting by extended families in local elections.…”

Income inequality and income bias in voter turnout

“…These fixed benefits include the satisfaction of affirming efficacy in a democratic election (Riker and Ordeshook, 1968), and expressive benefits from voting itself, and from voting for their favorite parties (Engelen, 2006;Hillman, 2010). High-income citizens could be more likely to vote because they receive more satisfaction, and thus hither expressive utility, than low-income citizens do (Hillman, Metsuyanim and Potrafke, 2015).…”