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Faced with rising levels of cross-border migration, many countries have extended local voting rights to non-citizen residents. However, empirical evidence indicates that voter turnout among non-naturalized immigrants is lower when compared to citizens. This raises the question of how to explain this difference. A common answer is that the low turnout rates of non-citizen residents are primarily due to the socio-economic composition of this group and the challenges involved in adapting to a new political system. An alternative but less discussed possibility is that the low turnout concerns the nature of the elections. Hence, we examine whether the turnout of non-citizens is hampered because they are only allowed to partake in local elections. Based on a regression discontinuity design (RDD) using Swedish administrative data, we find that turnout could increase by 10–20 percentage points if the voting rights of non-citizens were extended to the national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we explore whether the economic integration of immigrants may function as a stepping stone to their political integration. We show that there are strong theoretical reasons to expect entrance into the labour market to be pivotal for the political socialisation of immigrants in the new host country and in extension for their opportunities to stand for office. Empirically, we make use of Swedish register data and study whether labour market entrance among refugees affects their chances of being nominated for political office in Swedish municipal councils. We focus on refugees that arrived in Sweden between 1985 and 1994 and explore whether they became political nominees in seven consecutive elections between 1994 and 2014. Our results indicate that getting an early foothold in the labour market has a significant positive effect on the likelihood of running for office. These results hold even when we make use of more exogenous variation in the labour market conditions that refugees encountered when they arrived in Sweden, which provides some support that labour market entrance may have a causal effect on political candidacy among refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a well-established fact, from decades of research on political socialization, that the children of politically active parents are more likely to become politically active themselves. This poses a challenge for democracy, as it means that inequalities in political influence are reproduced across generations. The present study argues that this problem may be more severe than has hitherto been acknowledged. The reason for this is that previous research on the topic has focused almost exclusively on political transmission between parents and their children, whereas the role played by more distant forebears, such as grandparents, has been largely neglected. In this study, we use Swedish register data to analyze multigenerational associations in electoral participation. The empirical results clearly indicate that the traditional two-generation approach to the study of political transmission tends to underestimate intergenerational persistence in voting behavior and that this excess persistence has both genetic and social roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to recent scholarship on the effects of economic hardship on political participation, and particularly on the issue of how individual and contextual effects interact. More specifically, we study whether the effect of individual unemployment on turnout depends on the level of aggregate unemployment. In contrast to most existing researchers on this topic, we argue that contextual unemployment may reinforce the negative effects of individual unemployment. We also contend that previous studies have not adequately considered how the composition of the unemployed population differs across times of high and low unemployment. Our empirical approach uses state-of-the-art Swedish register panel data, which gives us good opportunities to control for the selection of the unemployed population over the business cycle. We find that once this problem of dynamic selection is taken into account, the negative effect of individual unemployment on electoral turnout is actually stronger in high unemployment contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The absence of a gendered analysis of the effect of marriage on voting is surprising given researchers' cognizance of the heterogeneous effects of marriage on a range of other social outcomes. In this paper, we shed new light on spousal dependency by studying the gendered effect of marital disruption, in the form of divorce, on voter turnout. First, drawing on Swedish populationwide data, we use the differential timing of divorces in relation to general elections to generate more credible estimates of the causal effect of divorce on turnout. Second, although we find that both sexes are adversely affected by divorce, we show that the effect is much more pronounced for men. Specifically, the long-term effect is almost twice as large for men. Finally, we use these data to show that the gendered effect of divorce is mainly driven by asymmetrical spousal mobilization due to higher levels of turnout among women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use population-wide Swedish data with information on adopted children's biological and adoptive parents to assess the importance of prebirth factors (measured by biological parents' voting) and postbirth socialization factors (as captured by adoptive parents' voting) for generating intergenerational associations in voter turnout. We find that both prebirth and postbirth factors explain the parent-child similarity in turnout behavior. More importantly, we show that the conditions that strengthen the social pathways to intergenerational transmission—such as youth and exposure to consistent parental behavior—at the same time weaken the biological mechanisms and vice versa. Follow-up analyses based on US and UK samples suggest that these results are externally valid. Our findings are important for understanding how political inequality is reproduced across generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study leverages population registry data from Sweden to examine whether immigrants who live in areas with a high concentration of ethnic minorities are more or less likely to be nominated for political office. It exploits a refugee placement program in place in Sweden during the late 1980s and early 1990s that restricted refugees' opportunities to freely choose their place of residence. The article presents evidence that immigrants who live in areas with a high ethnic density are less likely to be nominated for political office. The findings have important implications for local integration policies as well as refugee placement policies, as many countries consider local context when resettling refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the effect of residing in ethnic enclaves on immigrants' future political participation? We study a comprehensive refugee placement reform that was implemented in Sweden in the mid-1980s in combination with unique individual-level turnout data to study the causal effect of being settled in neighborhoods with a high residential concentration of coethnics on immigrants' future probability of voting. We find little evidence that ethnic concentration per se affects voter turnout. On average, newly arrived immigrants were equally likely to vote whether they were placed in a neighborhood with many or few coethnics. Further analyses, however, indicate that the effect of ethnic concentration depends on the degree of political integration among previously settled coethnics; ethnic concentration increases turnout among the newly immigrated when they are placed with already politically integrated coethnics. These results underscore the conditions under which the political socialization of immigrant newcomers is enhanced in ethnic enclaves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have stressed the role of a child's family environment for future political participation. This field of research has, however, overlooked that children within the same family have different experiences depending on their birth order. First-borns spend their first years of life without having to compete over their parents' attention and resources, while their younger siblings are born into potential rivalry. We examine differences in turnout depending on birth order, using unique population-wide individual level register data from Sweden and Norway that enables precise within-family estimates. We consistently find that higher birth order entails lower turnout, and that the turnout differential with respect to birth order is stronger when turnout is lower. The link between birth order and turnout holds when we use data from four other, non-Nordic countries. This birth order effect appears to be partly mediated by socio-economic position and attitudinal predispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigrants are underrepresented in most democratic parliaments. To explain the immigrant–native representation gap, existing research emphasizes party gatekeepers and structural conditions. But a more complete account must consider the possibility that the representation gap begins at the supply stage. Are immigrants simply less interested in elected office? To test this explanation, we carried out an innovative case–control survey in Sweden. We surveyed elected politicians, candidates for local office, and residents who have not run; stratified these samples by immigrant status; and linked all respondents to local political opportunity structures. We find that differences in political ambition, interest, and efficacy do not help explain immigrants' underrepresentation. Instead, the major hurdles lie in securing a candidate nomination and being placed on an electable list position. We conclude that there is a sufficient supply of potential immigrant candidates, but immigrants' ambition is thwarted by political elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent research finds strong evidence that birth order affects outcomes such as education, IQ scores, earnings, and health, the evidence for effects on political outcomes is more limited. Using population-wide data from Sweden, our within-family estimates show that firstborns are significantly more likely to run for and be elected to political office. In addition, for the males in our sample we test whether a number of potential mechanisms account for the relationship between birth order and political participation. Disconfirming our expectations, the birth order effects are only marginally smaller when controlling for occupational economic status, cognitive ability, and leadership skills. Our results suggest that big brother, or for that matter big sister, not only sees us; to a certain extent he or she also rules us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how one's adult political participation is affected by having social ties to a politician during adolescence. Specifically, we estimate the long-term effect of having had a classmate during upper secondary school whose parent was running for office on future voter turnout and the likelihood of running for and winning political office. We use unique Swedish population-wide administrative data and find that students in school classes with a larger number of politically active parents are more politically active as adults, both in terms of voting and political candidacy. Our results suggest that the effect of vertical social ties is predominantly mediated by indirect links between the politician and the student via the children of politicians. Moreover, we show that the strength of these mobilizing effects depends on the individual's basic predisposition to engage in different types of political activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well documented that voter turnout is lower among persons who grow up in families from a low socioeconomic status compared with persons from high-status families. This paper examines whether reforms in education can help reduce this gap. We establish causality by exploiting a pilot scheme preceding a large reform of Swedish upper secondary education in the early 1990s, which gave rise to exogenous variation in educational attainment between individuals living in different municipalities or born in different years. Similar to recent studies employing credible identification strategies, we fail to find a statistically significant average effect of education on political participation. We move past previous studies, however, and show that the reform nevertheless contributed to narrowing the voting gap between individuals of different social backgrounds by raising turnout among those from low socioeconomic status households. The results thus square well with other recent studies arguing that education is particularly important for uplifting politically marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What motivates citizens to run for office? Recent work has shown that early life parental socialization is strongly associated with a desire to run for office. However, parents not only shape their children’s political environment, they also pass along their genes to those same children. A growing area of research has shown that individual differences in a wide range of political behaviors and attitudes are linked to genetic differences. As a result, genetic factors may confound the observed political similarities among parents and their children. This study analyzes Swedish register data containing information on all nominated and elected candidates in the ten parliamentary, county council, and municipal elections from 1982 to 2014 for a large sample of adoptees and their adoptive and biological parents. By studying the similarity in political ambition within both adoptive and biological families, our research design allows us to disentangle so-called “pre-birth” factors, such as genes and pre-natal environment, and “post-birth” factors like parental socialization. We find that the likelihood of standing as a political candidate is twice as high if one’s parent has been a candidate. We also find that the effects of pre-birth and post-birth factors are approximately equal in size. In addition, we test a number of potential pre- and post-birth transmission mechanisms. First, disconfirming our expectations, the pre-birth effects do not seem to be mediated by cognitive ability or leadership skills. Second, consistent with a role modeling mechanism, we find evidence of a strong transmission in candidacy status between rearing mothers and their daughters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, many suggestions have been made on how to reduce the importance of family background in political recruitment. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of one such proposal: the expansion of mass education. We utilize a difference-in-difference strategy to analyze how a large school reform launched in Sweden in the 1950s, which lengthened schooling and postponed tracking, affected the likelihood of individuals with different family backgrounds to run for public office. The data come from public registers and pertain to the entire Swedish population born between 1943 and 1955. The empirical analysis provides strong support for the view that improved educational opportunities for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds can be an effective means to reduce the social bias of elected assemblies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widespread and persistent political underrepresentation of immigrant-origin minorities poses deep challenges to democratic practice and norms. What accounts for this underrepresentation? Two types of competing explanations are prevalent in the literature: accounts that base minority underrepresentation on individual-level resources and accounts that emphasize political opportunity structures. However, due to the lack of data suitable for testing these explanations, existing research has not been able to adjudicate between these theories. Using registry-based microdata covering the entire Swedish adult population between 1991 and 2010 our study is the first to empirically evaluate these alternative explanations. We examine election outcomes to municipal councils over the course of six elections and find that variation in individual-level resources cannot explain immigrants’ underrepresentation. Further, when comparing immigrants and natives who face comparable political opportunity structures a large representation gap remains. Instead, we argue that discrimination by party gatekeepers plays a more significant role in perpetuating the underrepresentation of immigrants than do individual resources or structural variables. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the breakdown of the 'permissive consensus' in the early 1990s we have witnessed an input turn in the debate on EU legitimacy. Many scholars have been arguing for enhancing the input legitimacy of the EU through promoting stakeholder participation and deliberation on important European issues. Yet, others warn that this strategy might not help in increasing overall legitimacy of the EU, since increased input legitimacy could be thought to undermine its output legitimacy by making decision-making less efficient. This article assesses, empirically, the relationship between input and output legitimacy within the context of the EU chemicals policy overhaul. Contrary to what some scholars suggest, we find evidence from a survey that measures aimed at increasing the input legitimacy of the EU also hold the promise of increasing its output legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of representation lies at the heart of liberal democratic thinking, and over the years considerable effort has gone into defining and measuring the concept. The least common denominator in the voluminous literature is that in a representative political system there should be a certain amount of attitudinal congruence between masses and elites. One much-debated strategy for obtaining a better match between elite and mass policy opinion is that of increasing the representation of women in important decision-making positions in society. Using data on nearly 5,000 elite-mass dyads within 24 Indian villages, the authors find strong support for the view that a more equal representation of women increases opinion congruence between masses and elites. The results are challenging because they show that women are not only better equipped than men to politically represent women but also that they are better at representing men—and the results are shown to apply in a variety of socioeconomic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]