Turnout and Abstention in the Developed and Developing Worlds

Abstract

Voter turnout is one of political science’s enduring preoccupations. Questions about why voters turn out to vote and why turnout is higher in some places and at some times have become even more pressing with the spread of democracy across the globe. Because democracy was, for many decades, largely limited to the advanced industrial world, much research on turnout has focused primarily on advanced democracies. This panel, by contrast, brings together research on turnout from around the world, including both the developed and developing worlds. The papers on the panel together provide a range of novel insights. Two of the papers do so by charting new territory in the study of turnout in the developed world through attention to causal inference and previously understudied aspects of turnout, such blank voting. The other two papers do so by generating insights about turnout based on empirical relationships (between education and turnout) and electoral conditions (party system fluidity) common to developing democracies.

Title	Details
Electoral Consequences of Rainfall on the Election Day: Compositional Data Analysis	View Paper Details
In With the New and Out With the Old: Party System Change and Turnout in India	View Paper Details
The Two Faces of “Non-Voting”: Blank Voting and Voting Abstention in the Case of Italy	View Paper Details