‘When do states give voting rights to non-citizens? The role of population, policy, and politics on the timing of enfranchisement reforms in liberal democracies’

Abstract

Today the inclusion of non-citizens in the electorate is an increasingly common phenomenon. Yet, we know relatively little about under what conditions some states extend such voting rights to non-citizens earlier than others. In this paper, we investigate the timing of local enfranchisement policies for noncitizens in 28 democracies from 1980 to 2010 using event-history analysis. Adding to the conditions studied in earlier work, we examine the extent to which demographic composition, immigration policy regimes, and political partisanship relate to the timing of non-citizen suffrage. We find that higher shares of immigrant residents delay whereas EU membership and economic openness advance the timing of voting rights for non-citizens. At all demographic heterogeneity conditions, less permissive immigration regimes have been able to enfranchise non-citizens earlier. The findings suggest that, over time, having more leftwing parties in the government accelerates the timing of enfranchisement, while right-wing parties contribute to delays. The article brings forward new data and an original explanatory framework emphasising relevance of partisanship and immigration policy at different demographic contexts. Our analysis sheds light on the idiosyncratic state practices in the timing of enfranchisement reforms adding to the debates in migration and citizenship studies and the broader comparative politics field.

Power sharing at the local level: evidence on opting-in for non-citizen voting rights

“…His main analyses are based on data for 25 democracies between 1975 and 2010. In recent work, Kayran and Erdilmen (2020) replicate in a panel of 28 democracies between 1980 and 2010 the finding that a stronger representation of left-wing parties accelerates the adoption of 6 There is a rich literature of qualitative single country studies as well as comparative case studies that provide in-depth analyses on the discourse and conditions when parliaments engage in liberalizing or retracting non-citizen voting rights (see, e.g., Benhabib 2004;Hayduk 2006;Hayduk and Coll 2018;Howard 2010;Pedroza 2019;Soysal 1994 and the contributions in the special issues on "Who Decides? Democracy, Power and the Local Franchise in Cities of Immigration" of the Journal of International Migration and Integration in 2015, and "Voting Rights in the Age of Globalization" of the journal Democratization in the same year edited by Caramani and Grotz 2015).…”

Political Regimes and External Voting Rights: A Cross-National Comparison

“…As other studies related to migrant voting rights (e.g., Turcu and Urbatsch, 2015;Kayran and Erdilmen, 2020), we use proportional survival models to estimate the relation between political regime and the timing of emigrant enfranchisement. Proportional survival analyses are also well known as event history statistical models.…”

Non-citizen voting rights and political participation of citizens: evidence from Switzerland

“…One such local electoral institution that has become increasingly common in democratic countries is local NCV rights (Earnest, 2015;Stutzer and Slotwinski, 2020;Kayran and Erdilmen, 2021;Koukal et al, 2021). While earlier studies on non-citizen enfranchisement policies have added significantly to what we know about the timing and conditions of NCV rights, there is relatively scant attention paid to the political consequences of such electoral rules.…”

“…Whereas previous studies have shown that naturalisation boosts the political incorporation of immigrants (Hainmueller et al, 2015), the evidence regarding NCV rights remains scarcewhich we aim to address in this study. Despite increasing interest in the topic in recent years (Stutzer and Slotwinski, 2020;Kayran and Erdilmen, 2021), the precise political and electoral consequences of NCV rights have not been well-understood, with few notable exceptions (Ruedin, 2018;Engdahl et al, 2020;Ferwerda et al, 2020). Here, we expand the study of the impact of NCV rights on voter turnout beyond its effects on non-naturalised immigrants and concentrate on citizens.…”