Is the Turnout Function in Democracies and Nondemocracies Alike or Different?

Abstract

Are the turnout functions in democracies and nondemocracies different beasts that cannot be compared or are there more similarities than differences in the constituents of electoral turnout in the two universes of cases? Interested in this question, I compare electoral turnout in democracies and nondemocracies. Based on a large-scale dataset, which includes data for over 540 elections over an 18-year period (1994-2012), I find distinct patterns in the predictors of turnout across the two regime types. One the one hand, my results indicate that the influence of institutions such as compulsory voting or electoral rules is alike in democracies and nondemocracies. However, the same cannot be said for contextual factors such as corruption or electoral closeness, whose influence fundamentally differs in the two settings.

Do Leader Evaluations (De)Mobilize Voter Turnout? Lessons From Presidential Elections in the United States

“…Jackman and Miller (1995) report positive effects, but then others (Blais & Carty, 1990;Radcliff & Davis, 2000) find no such effects whatsoever. Nor is there clear evidence that turnout is higher in federated systems (Stockemer, 2016). Compulsory voting rules do boost turnout but only in "old" democracies and when accompanied by sanctions (Norris, 1999).…”

Estimating the Effect of Competitiveness on Turnout across Regime Types

“…The results of global studies differ similarly. Stockemer (2016) examines legislative elections between 1994 and 2012 in both democracies and autocracies. His study confirms a positive relationship between competitiveness and turnout in democracies but finds a reversed effect in autocracies.…”

“…Furthermore, there is theoretical and empirical evidence for lower levels of electoral turnout in legislative elections in presidential systems (Tavits, 2009). Institutional effects are largely reproducible in electoral autocracies (Martinez i Coma, 2016: 56; Stockemer, 2016: 903) but remain weaker as there is an ongoing process of institutional learning (Gallego et al, 2012).…”

“…In many studies, the institutional factors outperform the socio-economic variables (Blais, 2006; Franklin, 2004; Jackman, 1987), possibly due to a lack of variance in the commonly analysed samples which mainly include industrialised countries (Blais and Dobrzynska, 1998: 252). Moving beyond Western democracies, however, the findings remain conflicting concerning the socio-economic determinants (Endersby and Krieckhaus, 2008; Fornos et al, 2004; Kostadinova, 2003; Lehoucq and Wall, 2004; Martinez i Coma, 2016; Schaufnagel et al, 2014; Schaufnagel and Gowen, 2014; Stockemer, 2016).…”

“…Previous studies of electoral turnout in democracies have demonstrated the importance of institutional variables (the electoral system, compulsory voting rules, government system, unicameralism), socio-economic variables (such as the population size or the economic development) and situational factors (like closeness of electoral races and the timing of elections) (for an overview, see Blais, 2006;Cancela and Geys, 2016;Geys, 2006). Empirical studies of turnout in young or transitional democracies and autocracies find similar but weaker effects of the institutional variables and partly similar effects of the socio-economic variables (Blais and Dobrzynska, 1998;Endersby and Krieckhaus, 2008;Kostadinova, 2003;Stockemer, 2016).…”