Differential Turnout Decline in Norway and Sweden: A Generation of Apathy or Alienation?

Abstract

Voter turnout has been in a trend of gradual decline in most established democracies in recent decades and the reasons for this are by no means fully understood. While most studies agree that the trend is largely driven by younger generations voting less than older cohorts, the individual-level mechanisms of their declining propensity to vote are still disputed. A major distinction in the literature on democratic developments is that between theories of political apathy and political alienation: whether citizens are less interested in politics or still interested but instead estranged from their political systems. An interesting test for these different explanations can be found in Scandinavia: While Norway and Sweden have intimate historical, political and cultural similarities, Norway has been experiencing gradual turnout decline, while there has been no clear overall trend in Sweden. This study uses a combined dataset of over 50.000 respondents from 31 national election studies in these two countries from 1956-2013 to test the relative roles of apathy, alienation and generational dynamics in explaining these different trends in turnout. The results indicate that apathy has been declining while alienation has been rising in both countries. However, in Norway, those who are more apathetic today are much less likely to vote than apathetic citizens were in the past. The youngest generations are also significantly more apathetic and less likely to vote in Norway than in Sweden. These dynamics appear to account for the larger trend of turnout decline in Norway.

Political brand experience and voting intention: Is there a relation?

“…From the political marketing context, it supports the view of van der Meer (2010) who propagates that in modern-day democracy; trust in the political system is one major cornerstone. In line with Valgarðsson (2020), the result argues that for electorates, political trust development does not require factual and complete information about the party as cues, hints, and insights as part of experiences can be enough.…”

“…Voters remember their past and present experiences with the political party and develop their opinions about the party. For electorates, political trust development does not require factual and complete information about the party as cues, hints, and scraps of insights as part of experiences can be enough (Valgarðsson, 2020). Positive experiences enhance voters' dependence on the party, which then builds their trust in the party.…”

Intergenerational income mobility in Sweden: A look at the spatial disparities across municipalities

“…The former implies that citizens are generally less interested in politics. The latter admits the possibility that they can be interested, but they are de facto estranged from the formal political system for some reason (see Górecki, 2013; Valgarðsson, 2019 and references therein).…”

The recession generation? Age-period-cohort dynamics of political trust in six countries severely affected by the 2008 crisis

“…Such "age-period-cohort" models have in recent times been applied to explore the drivers of change over time in various politically salient phenomena: including value change (Inglehart and Baker, 2000;Grasso et al, 2017), party identification (Niemi and Jennings, 1991;Tilley, 2002;Bartels and Jackman, 2014), voter turnout (Franklin et al, 2004;Blais and Rubenson, 2013;Valgarðsson, 2019), alternative means of participation (Grasso, 2016;Grasso et al, 2019), political knowledge (Jennings, 1996) and social trust (Jennings and Stoker, 2004). However, one fundamental topic of study in political science has been largely ignored in this literature thus far: political trust.…”