Ethnic diversity decreases turnout. Comparative evidence from over 650 elections around the world

Abstract

Ethnic diversity has been shown to play a significant role in public goods provision, economic growth and government quality, to mention a few. However, we do not know which is the impact of ethnic diversity on turnout. In this article, we determine which dimensions of ethnic diversity affects turnout. To do so, we have gathered data from over 650 parliamentary elections in 102 democracies covering over a fifty-year period. Our models and seven complementary robustness checks show that elections in countries with more fractionalised, more polarised and more concentrated ethnic groups have a significantly and substantially lower turnout.

Peers' Race in Adolescence and Voting Behavior

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study to use this across-cohort, within-school strategy to examine the long-term effects of the racial composition of one's peers in high school on individual voter participation and political orientation later in life. Previous studies on racial diversity focus on the short-run effects and find a negative relationship with turnout (Costa and Kahn, 2003;Martinez i Coma and Nai, 2017;Bellettini et al, 2020). 4 This paper is also closely related to an emerging literature on the effects of school desegregation policies on voting registration, turnout and political partisanship.…”

“…In this paper, we focus on voting, which is a type of civic engagement whose relationship to community racial composition has been investigated in a number of studies (Costa and Kahn, 2003;Oberholzer-Gee and Waldfogel, 2005;Cancela and Geys, 2016;Shertzer, 2016;Martinez i Coma and Nai, 2017;Bellettini et al, 2020). 2 We address the gaps in the literature by examining the causal long-run impact of the racial composition of one's peers in high school, which is arguably a community in which intergroup contacts are likely to evolve, on voting behavior later in life, and explore channels through which peer racial diversity could play a role.…”

Correlates of Voter Turnout

“…Recent years have seen a proliferation of potential theoretical factors shaping turnout as well as an expansion of coverage. For instance, voter turnout is depressed with the size of a political community (Remmer, 2010), economic globalization (Steiner, 2010), corruption (Stockemer, LaMontagne, & Scruggs, 2013), and ethnic diversity (Martínez i Coma & Nai, 2017). Terrorism, in turn, increases the electorates' attention on national politics and, consequently, turnout increases (Robbins, Hunter, & Murray, 2013).…”

Does Population Diversity Matter for Economic Development in the Very Long Term? Historic Migration, Diversity and County Wealth in the US

“…Further consequences of highly diverse and polarized societies are a reduction in trust and social participation, inefficient communication, less economic integration, lower voting turnout and a rise in transaction costs for bridging cultural differences (i.e. Ancona and Caldwell 1992; Alesina et al 1999; Alesina and La Ferrara 2000; Richard et al 2002; Van Knippenberg and Schippers 2007; Alesina and Zhuravskaya 2011; Uslaner 2011; Mavridis 2015; Martinez i Coma and Nai 2017). The resulting rent-seeking behaviour leads to slower growth, lower production, reduced investment and diminished prosperity (Rodrik 1999; Alesina and La Ferrara 2005, Montalvo and Reynal-Querol 2005b).…”