Overseas Voters and Representational Deficit: Regional Representation Challenged by Emigration

Peltoniemi, Johanna

doi:10.1080/00344893.2017.1300602

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Since citizens permanently residing abroad (i.e., long-term emigrants) are unlikely to be affected by decisions made by authorities in their home country (Beckman, 2014), many political theorists normatively argue against granting these persons voting rights in their country of origin (e.g., López-Guerra, 2005;Song, 2012). Nevertheless, contemporary democratic systems seem to be proceeding in the opposite direction; an increasing number of countries have acknowledged the intensification of human mobility (Beckman, 2012) and expanded enfranchisement among their emigrant citizens (Peltoniemi, 2016a). This trend has been interpreted as a strategy to stimulate loyalty to the country of origin (Smith, 2003) and keep reasonable prospects of emigrants' return by maintaining a steady connection between them and the polity (Honohan, 2011).…”

Section: Postal Voting: Theoretical Outline and Main Determinants Of Its Adoptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A growing number of contemporary democracies recognize the increasing intensity of human mobility and aim to provide universal access to electoral participation for their citizens (Beckman, 2012). In fulfilling this goal, countries implement new voting techniques to facilitate the electoral participation of citizens who temporarily or permanently reside abroad (Peltoniemi, 2016a). The real intention motivating this effort seems to be to keep up the interaction between emigrating citizens and the polity of their origin to increase the chances that these individuals will return in the future (Honohan, 2011;Smith, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Distance and Trust: An Examination of the Two Opposing Factors Impacting Adoption of Postal Voting Among Citizens Living Abroad

Peltoniemi

2021

Polit Behav

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Postal voting intends to provide citizens residing abroad with a convenient voting technique to influence political representation in their country of origin. However, its adoption among individuals is dependent on two opposing factors. On the one hand, voting via post helps to overcome the increasing distance between a voter’s residency abroad and the nearest polling station organized by a diplomatic mission (mostly at an embassy or a consulate). On the other hand, this way of voting also requires enough trust that the postal service and designated state office will successfully deliver one’s vote to the ballot box because the result cannot be effectively verified without violation of the ballot secrecy. We examine the interaction of these two factors in an originally conducted survey among Finnish citizens residing abroad fielded shortly after the 2019 Parliamentary elections—the first occasion after Finland put postal voting into effect. Altogether, 664 respondents responded to all questions required for our specification of binomial logistic regression models controlling for various potential confounders. The results demonstrate that trust in postal voting moderates the impact of distance on one’s probability to adopt postal voting. While low-trusting emigrant voters remain largely indifferent regardless of the distance to the nearest polling station, medium-trusting non-resident citizens increasingly mail their ballots when the nearest polling station is more than 100 km away. High-trusting individuals begin to increasingly do so when they are ten to 30 km away.

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Section: Postal Voting: Theoretical Outline and Main Determinants Of Its Adoptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distance and Trust: An Examination of the Two Opposing Factors Impacting Adoption of Postal Voting Among Citizens Living Abroad

Peltoniemi

2021

Polit Behav

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“…Immigrants in many countries gain local voting rights even before they are eligible for citizenship, and simultaneously voting rights have been extended to citizens living abroad (see, e.g., Justwan 2015; Seidel 2015). Some countries have even given special representation in their national parliaments for emigrant citizens (Peltoniemi 2016). This reflects the emergence of disaggregated citizenship.…”

Section: External Voting and The Boundaries Of Democracymentioning

confidence: 99%

External Voting Rights from a Citizen Perspective – Comparing Resident and Non‐resident Citizens' Attitudes towards External Voting

Himmelroos

Peltoniemi

2021

Scand Pol Stud

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The number of countries that have adopted policies allowing emigrants to participate in home country elections from abroad has increased greatly in the last few decades. The enfranchisement of non‐resident citizens in home country elections is, nevertheless, somewhat controversial because it gives political influence to individuals who are unlikely to be affected by the outcome of an election. Despite an active debate on external voting rights among political theorists, little is known what the citizens themselves think of this practice. To examine how both non‐resident and resident citizens perceive external voting rights, we use two surveys of Finnish citizens from 2019. The first survey was directed to Finnish citizens living abroad (n = 1,949), and the second was conducted using an online panel consisting of Finnish citizens living in Finland (n = 994). Both surveys included items with normative questions about external voting rights, which allows us to compare what resident and non‐resident citizens think of the enfranchisement of external citizens. Our findings suggest that resident citizens view external voting rights more negatively than non‐resident citizens. The factors associated with these attitudes are also quite different for the two examined populations. For resident citizens more education and ideological self‐placement to the left is associated with more positive views of external voting rights, while experience of having voted from abroad and dissatisfaction with democracy in the host country is associated with more positive views among non‐resident citizens.

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“…Shortly, it is the extent to which a representative resembles those being represented (Dovi, 2018). Representation has been extensively researched in feminist studies and for diaspora studies those definitions can be applied by replacing the women with the expatriates (Palop García, 2019).…”

Section: Are There Mps Like the Expatriate Finns: Descriptive Represementioning

confidence: 99%

Is Anyone Representing Non-resident Finnish Citizens in the Legislative Process of Finland?

Makkonen

2021

Front. Polit. Sci.

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This research paper examines the instances of representation of the expatriate Finnish citizen in the different stages of the legislative process in Finland: the preparation of law bills, the process in the Parliamentary committees and in the plenary sessions of the Finnish Parliament Eduskunta. The aim is to answer the questions how many and what kind of expatriate Finns issues there has been on the political agenda, when those issues were there, and who acted for the expatriates then. Here, the research approach is descriptive. Newly digitalized collections of legislative documents create novel opportunities to seek efficiently through a large number of records and find topics that have not gained much attention, in addition to the more obvious cases such as the dual citizenship or recently the postal voting. In Finland, the Finnish diaspora has not been a fervently debated issue and it is only rarely mentioned in the plenary debates of the Parliament. The data includes two kinds of sources, actions by the MPs and Government bills. In the Finnish case, the number of relevant documents is small. Therefore, including different types of text into a single study is necessary to find out the political forces that have influence on the issues concerning the Finnish citizen abroad.

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Overseas Voters and Representational Deficit: Regional Representation Challenged by Emigration

Cited by 8 publications

References 19 publications

Distance and Trust: An Examination of the Two Opposing Factors Impacting Adoption of Postal Voting Among Citizens Living Abroad

Distance and Trust: An Examination of the Two Opposing Factors Impacting Adoption of Postal Voting Among Citizens Living Abroad

External Voting Rights from a Citizen Perspective – Comparing Resident and Non‐resident Citizens' Attitudes towards External Voting

Is Anyone Representing Non-resident Finnish Citizens in the Legislative Process of Finland?

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