Income inequality, development and electoral turnout – New evidence on a burgeoning debate

A Bark But No Bite: Inequality and the 2014 New Zealand General Election

“…Debate continues about whether or not there are connections between low levels of turnout, changes in political participation in general and growing economic inequality. As noted in Chapter 1, several scholars have argued that there is a linkage between low turnout and increasing levels of inequality in advanced democracies (Boix 2003;Solt 2008), while others claim the link is tenuous at best (Stockemer and Scruggs 2012).…”

Explaining Turnout Decline in Post-Communist Countries: The Impact of Migration

“…Other measures of socio-economic development related with VT are human development (positive) (Pacek et al, 2009) and economic inequality (negative) (Solt, 2010). Other studies (Stockemer and Scruggs, 2012) failed to find a connection between income inequality and VT.…”

“…Even if there are questions and controversies about these relations (Blais, 2006), generally, VT it correlates positively with district size (Blais and Aarts, 2006;Kostadinova and Power, 2007), it is greater when voting is compulsory (Blais and Dobrzynska, 1998;Franklin, 2004;Geys, 2006;Stockemer and Scruggs, 2012), in unicameral systems (Fornos et al, 2004;Kostadinova and Power, 2007), in presidential systems (Stockemer and Calca, 2012), and in systems with proportional representation (Blais and Aarts, 2006;Blais and Dobrzynska, 1998;Geys, 2006). According to some studies (Endersby and Krieckhaus, 2008), the last finding is true only for fully democratic countries in systems with proportional representation, but other studies show that the relation between electoral disproportionality and VT increase in time even in the new democracies (Gallego, Rico, and Anduiza, 2012).…”

“…Generally, concurrent and presidential elections attract a higher turnout (Geys, 2006;Kostadinova and Power, 2007;Kostelka, 2010). Margin of majority has systematic negative effect on VT (Geys, 2006;Stockemer and Scruggs, 2012), but sometimes the impact is rather small (Blais, 2006;Blais and Dobrzynska, 1998;Kostadinova, 2003).…”

When Do Close Elections Matter for Higher Turnout? Gauging the Impact of the Interaction Between Electoral Competitiveness and District Magnitude

“…On the one hand, the majoritarian perspective (Escaleras et al, 2012;Geys, 2006) supports the instrumentalist hypothesis that close races push more citizens to cast ballots. On the other hand, some studies (Matsusaka, 1993;Matsusaka & Palda, 1993;Stockemer & Scruggs, 2012) find either a nuanced impact or no effect of the electoral competitiveness on macro-level political participation.…”