The mobilising effect of political choice

Hobolt, Sara B.; Hoerner, Julian

doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12353

Cited by 28 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Unfortunately, no indication could be found that the remaining factor in this set of explanations, political polarization, also plays a role (judging by the results from the unified specification). In this, my findings partly confirm those of Polacko (2021), who finds no impact of polarization on turnout for either the bottom or top income quintiles in his sample, but partly go against those of Hobolt and Hoerner (2020). Before moving on, though, it's important to point that fractionalization and, to a lesser extent, union density typically have small effects, in the range of a few percentage points of turnout rate for the lower-SES group.…”

Section: What Drives the Turnout Gap: Implicationssupporting

confidence: 72%

Determinants of the Socio-Economic Turnout Gap in OECD Countries

Bosancianu¹

2021

Preprint

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Consistent evidence of variation in the participation gap between education or income groups in developing and developed democracies has begun to accrue. This points to varying disparities in participation between the haves and have nots that occasionally reach alarming levels, potentially triggering breakdowns in political representation. A few cross-sectional analyses identify institutional factors, such as voting complexity or state capacity, or economic ones, like income inequality, as driving the difference. Few explanations currently try to address why this participation gap varies over time. This is the question I take up here—I examine the extent to which the turnout gap has changed over time, and what the most robust explanations are for this temporal trend out of a set of factors grouped into 3 “families”. These sets of explanations refer to mechanisms that operate through voters’ (1) resources, (2) motivation to participate, or (3) likelihood of being mobilized at election time. Using an original pooled data set, with individual-level turnout data from 170–180 elections in 21 OECD countries, and party placement data from the MARPOR project, I show that the magnitude of the turnout gap between lower-SES and higher-SES citizens has increased over time, and that this trend has mainly been driven by the demobilization of lower-SES citizens. A two-stage analysis reveals that union density along with legislative fractionalization are the most consistent correlates of the participation gap between SES groups. The results are obtained from the most comprehensive evaluation to date of the way in which the SES-based turnout gap in advanced democracies has evolved over time. The findings contribute to our understanding of the long-term consequences for individual political behavior of institutional transformations in advanced democracies, and the democratic implications of these changes.

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Section: What Drives the Turnout Gap: Implicationssupporting

confidence: 72%

Determinants of the Socio-Economic Turnout Gap in OECD Countries

Bosancianu¹

2021

Preprint

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“…Voters like choice. When there is a wide array of political alternatives to choose from, voters are more inclined to feel that a party offers something for them to gain and are more likely to turn out to vote as a result (Brockington, 2009; Hobolt and Hoerner, 2020; Rodon, 2017; Wessels and Schmitt, 2008), especially when there is a high level of congruence between an individual’s preferences and those on offer (Hobolt and Hoerner, 2020). Lipset (1983: 191) argues that the motivating impulse of self-interest in driving individuals to participate in elections is only activated when voters believe that the differentiated policy choices they are afforded by political competitors can be understood as having a significant impact on their everyday lives.…”

Section: Eu Intervention and Political Participation: Three Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why vote when you cannot choose? EU intervention and political participation in times of constraint

Turnbull‐Dugarte

2020

European Union Politics

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This article analyses how economic intervention affects individuals’ political behaviour by assessing the impact of intervention on aggregate and individual turnout. The intervention of the European Union in a selection of member states is viewed as having negative consequences for democratic choice, reducing the ability of voters to select between distinct policy alternatives, resulting in the absence of the primary benefit of voting: choice. It is argued that when voters are faced with electoral choices without the ability to shape policy alternatives, they are less likely to vote. Moreover, the negative effect of intervention is found to be conditioned by both individuals’ level of education and ideological identification. Voters on the centre and the left who feel abandoned by left-leaning parties, who have prioritised being responsible to their European paymasters, are significantly more likely to abstain when exposed to intervention. Empirical support for the argument is found via the analysis of aggregate turnout as well as individual level data from the European Social Survey from across fifteen Western European states.

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“…More recently, members of the more radical wing of the party have openly challenged Germany’s culture of memory. In consecutive regional elections, the presence of the AfD had a strong mobilizing effect on former non-voters who consider themselves right wing (Hobolt and Hoerner, 2019). Furthermore, research has shown that there was a correlation between the vote share of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) and votes for the AfD in 2017, but not in 2013 (Cantoni et al, 2019).…”

Section: Data and Research Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

The long-term impact of the location of concentration camps on radical-right voting in Germany

Hoerner

Jaax

Rodón

2019

Research & Politics

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Of all atrocities committed by state actors in 20th century Europe, the systematic killings by Nazi Germany were arguably the most severe and best documented. While several studies have investigated the impact of the presence of concentration camps on surrounding communities in Germany and the occupied territories in terms of redistribution of wealth and property, the local-level impact on voting behaviour has not yet been explored. We investigated the impact of spatial proximity to a concentration camp between 1933 and 1945 on the likelihood of voting for far-right parties in the 2013 and 2017 federal elections. We find that proximity to a former concentration camp is associated with a higher vote share of such parties. A potential explanation for this finding could be a ‘memory satiation effect’, according to which voters who live in close proximity to former camps and are more frequently confronted with the past are more receptive to revisionist historical accounts questioning the centrality of the Holocaust in the German culture of remembrance.

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The mobilising effect of political choice

Cited by 28 publications

References 55 publications

Determinants of the Socio-Economic Turnout Gap in OECD Countries

Determinants of the Socio-Economic Turnout Gap in OECD Countries

Why vote when you cannot choose? EU intervention and political participation in times of constraint

The long-term impact of the location of concentration camps on radical-right voting in Germany

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