Before Norms: Institutions and Civic Culture

5. Institutions and Voter Turnout

FIVE Institutions and Voter Turnout Political participation manifests itself in many ways. Voting, signing petitions, working in political campaigns, and attending political rallies are some of the more widely discussed forms (see, e.g., Verba, Nie, and Kim 1978; Dalton 2002). Even so, voting occupies a special place in the analysis of political participation, and for good reason. As Putnam reminds us, “voting is by a substantial margin the most common form of political activity, and it embodies the most fundamental democratic principle of equality” (2000, 35). Further, rates of voter turnout are often taken as a leading indicator of broader patterns of participation. Thus, as we observed in chapter 3, Putnam begins his analysis of civic disengagement in the United States with a discussion of how, “like the canary in the mine pit,” rates of electoral abstention signal “deeper trouble within the broader body politic” (2000, 35). Against this backdrop, rates of electoral participation vary dramatically across the established democracies. As shown in table 5.1, the average turnout in national elections from 1950 through 2000 was 93 percent in Italy, 65 percent in France, and less than 50 percent in the United States and Switzerland. What drives these differences across countries? Our argument starts from the premise that political institutions as embodied in electoral laws play a powerful role in shaping the distribution of incentives for people to participate in the political system. They do so in two complementary ways. First, institutions directly affect the incentives of individual citizens contemplating whether to vote. The presence of a compulsory voting law, for example, typically enhances voter turnout (even when the penalties for noncompliance are minor) by its direct 137 138 before norms marginal impact on the incentive structures of citizens who would otherwise be nonvoters. Second, at times the effect of institutions on turnout is indirect, in the sense that they alter the incentives of parties and candidates to mobilize voters, which in turn influences turnout. Thus, in singlemember district systems, some legislative districts may be considered so safe for incumbents that nonincumbent parties and candidates move resources (e.g., time and money) away from those districts to others where they believe their resources have more potential to affect the outcome by mobilizing voters. Here, the institutional impact is indirect: electoral laws induce lower levels of mobilization effort in the first set of districts, which in turn inhibits voter turnout. Perhaps the earliest systematic institutional account of electoral participation was offered by Gosnell (1930), whose impressive analysis of European political systems showed that levels of political participation varied consistently with variations in type of electoral system. Following this line of thought, Powell (1986a) and Jackman (1987) concluded that variations in turnout rates across the industrial democracies in the 1960s and 1970s are largely a function of institutional arrangements embodied in electoral laws, including the number of political parties, the presence of compulsory voting laws, and the degree of electoral disproportionality. Among students of American politics, much attention has centered on the impact on turnout of legal factors such as residency requirements and registration procedures (see, e.g., Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980; Squire, Wolfinger, and Glass 1987; Nagler 1991; Teixeira 1992; Highton and Wolfinger 1998), both of which have powerful implications for how institutions affect political participation. The principal alternative against which we evaluate this institutional view is the cultural approach that stresses linkages between enduring values and participation. Indeed, these linkages have long been central to key analyses of mass political behavior. Almond and Verba (1963) represents the classic statement of the relationship between culture and political participation, while Inglehart (1997) and Putnam (1993, 2000) exemplify the most recent variants. In participatory cultures, according to this view, citizens are more politically satisfied with their institutions (whatever the particular form that those institutions take) and are therefore more politically efficacious. Cultures that foster such values thereby enhance participation in general and voter turnout in particular. In contrast, political cultures in which more passive values are the norm inhibit participation , which is why turnout rates are often taken as symptomatic of broader patterns of political and social engagement. Institutions and Voter Turnout 139 We proceed as follows. First, we examine the connections between institutional factors and voter turnout rates in 22 democracies with populations greater than one million from 1950 to 2000. Second, we consider whether cultural factors add to our understanding of the mechanisms that generate electoral participation. Institutions and Voter Turnout, 1950–2000 We begin by extending our earlier...