Does Compulsory Voting Increase Support for Leftist Policy?

Bechtel, Michael M.; Hangartner, Dominik; Schmid, Lukas

doi:10.1111/ajps.12224

Cited by 115 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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

Section: Turnout and Its Consequencessupporting

confidence: 54%

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

Öhrvall¹

2018

Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences

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

Section: Turnout and Its Consequencessupporting

confidence: 54%

“…Previous studies have found that these participatory inequalities have effects on political priorities and policy outcomes (e.g. Verba and Nie 1972;Fowler 2013;Bechtel, Hangartner, and Schmid 2016). One remedy suggested by Lijphart (1997) is to implement reforms to increase voting rates.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Öhrvall¹

2018

Linköping Studies in Arts and Sciences

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“…In Hill's words, 'Since voluntary voting leads to low turnout, and therefore incomplete information about the wishes of the electorate, one could argue convincingly that compulsory voting enhances the democratic principle of popular sovereignty' (Hill 2000, p. 32). This supposition is borne out by empirical research on the impact of electoral compulsion on policy outcomes which shows that higher turnout leads to higher social spending and more even income distribution (Bechtel et al 2016;Hicks and Swank 1992;Mueller and Stratmann 2003), and that states with mandatory electoral participation have lower levels of political inequality and less corruption than states operating under voluntary voting rules (Birch 2009;Chong and Olivera 2005). These findings suggest that participating in elections benefits the citizenry substantively in that it enables it to hold leaders to account and ensure that policies enacted benefit all sectors of the population.…”

Section: Equalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratic Norms, Empirical Realities and Approaches to Improving Voter Turnout

Birch

2017

Res Publica

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Though falling turnout in recent decades has been recognised as a problem for democracy, the solutions that have been proposed have mostly been drawn from the realms of the marketplace and society, rather than that of democracy. The inadequate empirical theory that subtends many policy initiatives designed to improve turnout accounts for why these initiatives have largely failed to achieve their stated aims. I argue that electoral participation should be seen through the conceptual lens of collective action, and that this approach suggests mandatory electoral participation as an equitable and effective coordination device. I further argue that compulsory turnout offers a good fit with democratic norms of equality, rights and political obligation.

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“…A large literature has examined how changes in the costs of voting affects turnout using observational, field-experimental, as well as lab-experimental data (see Feddersen (2004) for a review). For example, turnout responds to factors such as bad weather (Tucker, Vedlitz and DeNardo 1986;Gomez, Hansford and (Morton, Muller, Page and Torgler 2015), and compulsory voting laws (Jackman 1987;Panagopoulos 2008;Bechtel, Hangartner and Schmid 2015). The theoretical models that underlie these empirical contributions typically follow Downs (1957) by assuming that citizens have homogeneous voting costs or, alternatively, by focusing on a representative actor characterized by a specific cost level as is the case in the first generation of formal voting models (Riker and Ordeshook 1968;Palfrey and Rosenthal 1983).…”

Section: Cost Sensitivities Turnout and Postal Votingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Direct Democracy, Postal Voting, and the Composition of Turnout

Bechtel

Schmid

2016

SSRN Journal

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Existing work on the effects of electoral reforms suggests that decreasing the costs of voting may exacerbate rather than reduce representational biases in turnout. We argue that some electoral institutions may have more uniform mobilization effects than previously thought and exploit the sequential introduction of postal voting in Switzerland to analyze how an exogenous decrease in voting costs affects the political and socio-demographic composition of turnout in direct legislation. In contrast to previous studies we find that postal voting mobilizes equally along many dimensions including individuals' political knowledge, employment status, and religious denomination. Although it does mostly activate supporters of leftist and centrist parties, less politically interested individuals, and high earners, these changes have only limited effects on the overall turnout composition and are unlikely to affect referendum outcomes. Our results alleviate some of the concerns about the negative side effects of electoral reforms on political choice in large electorates.

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Does Compulsory Voting Increase Support for Leftist Policy?

Cited by 115 publications

References 60 publications

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

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

Democratic Norms, Empirical Realities and Approaches to Improving Voter Turnout

Direct Democracy, Postal Voting, and the Composition of Turnout

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