Explaining Migrant Enfranchisement Worldwide: Evidence from Non-Citizen Residents and Non-Resident Citizens

Migrant voting raises important questions regarding the contemporary understanding of democratic boundaries. Several accounts do not only address the concept of democracy by the degree of contestation, but also by the level of inclusion. Emigrant and immigrant suffrage practices refer to citizenship-based and residence-based boundaries of demos. Although the notion of universal suffrage is still contested—restricted by residency or citizenship status—, countries of origin and countries of destination have extended several types of migrant enfranchisement. Scholars have separately investigated the adoption of external voting (emigrant enfranchisement) or the political incorporation of non-citizens residents in local and/or national elections (immigrant enfranchisement). We seek to bring both approaches together. Under what conditions do immigrant and/or emigrant enfranchisement occur? What are the factors for a state to extend voting franchise to its non-resident citizens and/or to its non-citizen residents? We use a panel data set for 61 countries (from 1980 to 2017) that focuses on the reasons behind various practices of emigrant and immigrant enfranchisement. We examine two sets of hypotheses related to the diffusion of global norms and regime contestation to statistically explain why states enfranchise migrants. Statistical findings are supported by legislation-based textual analysis in four countries (Canada, Chile, Ecuador and Turkey) that experienced different trajectories of migrant enfranchisement. The combination of statistical and textual analysis of migrant enfranchisement allows us to account for both driving mechanisms for all sample countries and country-specific factors that lead into different enfranchisement practices.