Explaining Voter Turnout in Latin America, 1980 to 2000

Abstract

Previous cross-national research on voter turnout has focused attention primarily on Western industrial democracies, with relatively little attention paid to turnout in developing countries. In this article, the authors extend the research program on comparative voter turnout to presidential and legislative elections held in Latin American countries from 1980 to 2000. Building on previous research, the authors estimate a series of models that represent the effects of institutional, socioeconomic, and political variables in shaping turnout. The findings suggest that turnout in Latin American countries is influenced primarily by institutional variables (such as unicameralism, compulsory voting, and concurrent legislative and executive elections) and political variables (i.e., founding elections and political freedoms). Surprisingly, the authors find that socioeconomic variables, which are found to have strong effects on turnout in Western democracies, are unrelated to turnout in Latin American countries.A lthough the issue of voter turnout is a perennial one in political science, its importance is increasing rather than decreasing. Because of the extraordinary global political changes of the past two decades, competitive elections are more widely practiced than ever before. And although voter 909 AUTHORS' NOTE: The authors' names are listed in random order, with each contributing equally to the preparation of this article. We would like to thank Daniel Buquet, Daniel Chasquetti, Kurt Weyland, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of the article. We are also grateful to Mark P. Jones and J. Mark Payne for sharing unpublished data.

What Explains Voter Turnout in Latin America?: A Test of the Effect of Citizens' Attitudes Towards the Electoral Process

“…Pérez-Liñán (2001) finds that neither multipartism, unicameralism, electoral disproportionality, the type of electoral district (whether it is competitive or not), nor compulsory voting are significant predictors of voter turnout in presidential and legislative elections. On the contrary, the findings of Fornos et al (2004) suggest that turnout is determined primarily by unicameralism, compulsory voting, and concurrent elections, which have significant positive effects on turnout. Kostadinova and Power (2007) also find an effect of institutional variables on voter turnout in the region: unicameralism, disproportionality, district magnitude, and concurrent elections are all significant predictors of participation in legislative elections.…”

“…Institutional and political context explanations focus on the effects of electoral rules and the structure of the political system on voters' decision-making calculations about whether to vote. The electoral system (Blais and Carty 1991;Radcliff and Davis 2000), the electoral cycle (Fornos et al 2004;Dettrey and Schwindt-Bayer 2009), compulsory voting laws (Jackman 1987;Hirczy 1994;Jackman and Miller 1995;Pérez-Liñán 2001;Fornos et al 2004;Power and Garand 2007), unicameralism (Jackman 1987;Pérez-Liñán 2001;Fornos et al 2004;Kostadinova and Power 2007), district magnitude, the disproportionality of the electoral system, nationally competitive districts, and party fragmentation (Jackman 1987;Pérez-Liñán 2001;Fornos et al 2004;;Lehoucq and Wall 2004;Kostadinova and Power 2007) have all been linked to voter turnout.…”

“…On the other hand, PR should have a negative effect on voter turnout due to the higher number of parties that it fosters in comparison to majority systems. Almost all of the empirical research has found a negative correlation between the number of parties and turnout (Jackman 1987;Blais and Carty 1991;Blais and Dobrzynska 1998;Radcliff and Davis 2000), except in Latin America, where there seems to be no relationship between these variables (Pérez-Liñán 2001; Fornos et al 2004). …”

“…The incentives to comply with the obligation to vote will likely depend on whether the government is strict about its enforcement, and the literature on turnout in Latin America has shown that in countries where voting is compulsory and sanctions for non-voting are enforced turnout tends to be higher (Pérez-Liñán 2001; Fornos et al 2004;Carlin and Love 2015). As a result, I expect this variable to have a positive effect, and that citizens will be more likely to vote in countries where voting is both mandatory and enforced.…”

“…Comparative research on electoral participation in Latin America at the individual level is also scarce. Over the last decade, several scholars have studied the determinants of the cross-country differences in electoral participation in the region (Pérez-Liñán 2001;Fornos et al 2004;Dettrey and Schwindt-Bayer 2009), but have mainly focused on institutional and contextual factors such as registration procedures, compulsory voting laws, and concurrent presidential and legislative elections.…”