Shane P. Singh. Beyond Turnout: How Compulsory Voting Shapes Citizens and Political Parties. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 225 pages. ISBN: 9780198832928. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198832928.001.0001.

Abstract

Should voting in elections be compulsory? For quite some time now, scholars have been debating this issue: for instance, an article published more than a century ago (in 1891) by Frederick W. Holls called for the adoption of compulsory voting in the United States. Two years later (in 1893), John M. Broomall published another article defending compulsory voting, too.A long time has passed since the publication of these two studies. But, as with several other debates in political science, researchers have not yet reached a consensus about whether voting should be compulsory or not. This is because compulsory voting has been shown to lead to both positive and negative political consequences: for instance, while compulsory voting has been shown to foster electoral participation (e.g., Panagopoulos, 2008;Kostelka et al., 2022), it is also likely to reduce the ''quality'' of the vote (Dassonneville et al., 2018;Selb & Lachat, 2009) and people's satisfaction with democracy (Singh, 2018), as well as to increase invalid and blank balloting (Barnes & Rangel, 2018;Singh, 2019). Shane Singh's new book on compulsory voting -the focus of this reviewmakes a consensus on the adoption of compulsory voting even harder to be reached, as it shows that compulsory voting actually has a double-sided effect on citizens and parties. For instance, compulsory voting, especially when strictly enforced, is shown to amplify "the negative relationship between dissatisfaction with democracy and support for authorities" (169). Moreover, non-mainstream parties are shown to "take more extreme positions" when voting is compulsory than when it is not (170).This review -a non-exhaustive account of Singh's new book -is divided in two parts: first, I present some of the book's keys findings. Then, using Singh's book as the point of departure, I discuss potential avenues for future research.