Electoral Participation in Less Democratic Countries

While the adoption of elections in authoritarian has gradually drawn attention of political scientists, the understanding of electoral participation in less democratic countries remains rare. This manuscript sets out to explore the logic behind electoral participation in four different types of regimes. We find that voting not only evinces citizens’ attitudes toward politics, but also reflect their concerns with regard to the political system. In modern democracy, the statistical results show that support for the democratic regime has a positive association with voting. In electoral democracy, citizens’ concern about the absence of checks and balances on executive powers drives them to go to the voting booth. In electoral authoritarian, the perception of the lack of vertical accountability encourages the electorate to cast their ballots. Finally, the statistics shows that in one-party states only citizens’ support for the government has a positive association with voting.