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Authors consider political corruption and clientelism in the electoral process as destructive phenomena that violate the normal principle of society and artificially create obstacles within the political system. The understanding of clientelism by different authors as a component of political corruption, the conditions of its existence, as well as the consequences and influence on political power are analysed. Basing on the achievements of foreign scientists, the content and the essence of the concept of “electoral clientelism” is determined, the main reasons and preconditions of this phenomenon emergence are found, the authors’ own definition, summarizing the known scientific approaches, is offered. The devastating impact of clientelism on the electoral process that results in violating the principle of competition between political forces, and further leads to the development of corruption in the power system, is elucidated. Varieties of electoral clientelism in accordance with the tasks set by corrupt subjects of the electoral process in order to gain an advantage over opponents during the voting are found out. Apart from the approach, where electoral clientelism provides material benefits to voters, an approach, where the voters are constantly informed of the clientele character data, basing on which the unfair politicians create a mobilization campaign, is considered. The authors showed their own vision of the connection between electoral clientelism and political corruption manifested in the occupation of political positions by ineffective candidates and further use of their powers for private purposes, which will threaten the long-term prospects of social development. A number of ways to regulate clientelism’s impact on the electoral process, in particular through electronic voting introduction, established compulsory voting, agitation campaign financing control, severe penalties for clientele activity etc., are traced.

Despite decades of research, there is no consensus as to the core correlates of national-level voter turnout. We argue that this is, in part, due to the lack of comprehensive, systematic empirical analysis. This paper conducts such an analysis. We identify 44 articles on turnout from 1986 to 2017. These articles include over 127 potential predictors of voter turnout, and we collect data on seventy of these variables. Using extreme bounds analysis, we run over 15 million regressions to determine which of these 70 variables are robustly associated with voter turnout in 579 elections in 80 democracies from 1945 to 2014. Overall, 22 variables are robustly associated with voter turnout, including compulsory voting, concurrent elections, competitive elections, inflation, previous turnout, and economic globalization.

Adopting compulsory voting (CV) legislation is expected to produce near-universal turnout, which in turn is assumed to iron out class-based differences in political influence and representation. The article traces the historical process generating the sequential adoption of CV in 8 of the 17 Cisleithanian crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1907 and 1911, and leverages a difference-in-differences (DiD) method to estimate its causal effect on turnout and voting patterns in elections to the Imperial Council. Exploiting unique data on the turnout of citizens based on their occupational categories, it further examines whether the adoption of CV attenuated class bias in turnout. Despite a large boost to turnout, CV neither increased support for parties representing the working classes, nor attenuated the class bias in turnout.

Who are “protest voters” and do they affect elections? We study this question using the introduction of a pure protest option (“None Of The Above” (NOTA)) on Indian ballots. Using structural estimation, we find that in elections without NOTA, most protest voters simply abstain. Protest voters who turn out scatter their votes among many candidates and consequently have little impact on election results. From a policy perspective, NOTA may be an effective tool to increase political participation, and can attenuate the electoral impact of compulsory voting.

Voting is a central pillar of political science research; indeed, scholars have long addressed questions like, “Who votes?,” “Why do people vote?,” and “What interventions increase voting?” However...

Clientelism’s traditional direct, contingency-based system of patrons using private finance to pursue vote-buying continues to be of significance in countries around the world. However, the rise of secret ballots, civil service protocols for public employment, and fiscal restrictions have all limited its efficacy as a tool of electoral influence, especially in modern, advanced democracies. This has promoted new, indirect variants of clientelism, in which state resources are provided to contractors in return for the finances necessary to buy votes and affect voter mobilization. Ultimately, despite these new formulations, clientelism remains premised on contingent exchanges of benefits that require monitoring and enforcement for their efficacy. These requirements have fuelled an increasing reliance on pork barrel politics and the distribution of state resources as a way to influence votes without the need for clientelism’s system of contingency-based transfers and monitoring. This paper examines distributive politics in Australia’s party-based parliamentary system and its unique compulsory voting requirement as a way to compare the strategic advantages and disadvantages of partisan pork barrel as an alternative to clientelism’s contingency-based distributive logic. Because Australia’s ruling party controls executive power and has discretion over the distribution of public funds, there are significant incentives to use the public purse for maximum electoral effect, though the possibility of scandal from charges of bias and malfeasance, as with clientelism, remains a threat. The assumptions of the clientelist and pork barrel models are compared in the context of two Australian pork barrel programs: 1993 Labor sports grants; and 2004 Liberal-National Regional Partnerships Program grants.

Generalized majority rules are electoral rules in which an alternative needs to obtain a fixed percentage (not necessarily 50%) of all votes in order to win. While Krishna and Morgan (Am Econ J Microeconom 7:339–375, 2015) demonstrate that simple majority maximizes expected utilitarian welfare for limiting populations regardless of the prior support for the alternatives, this paper finds that, when the prior support is known, a continuum of voting rules also achieves the same welfare. Moreover, as the population approaches the limit, every voting rule eventually becomes welfare inferior to picking the ex-ante majority without an election. Examining the properties of these optimal rules allows us to generalize the relationship between voter participation and welfare beyond the symmetric case.

Does compulsory voting (CV) result in divergent voting paths? Using the heterogeneous attribution thesis, we test whether compelled voters are less likely to rely on egotropic perceptions of the ec...

Research has established that compulsory voting rules have a strong effect on turnout. There are good reasons to think compulsory voting has such an effect because it leads citizens to feel a stron...

In political science literature, it is often argued that compulsory voting can serve as a remedy against turnout inequality and thereby contribute to more egalitarian societies. However, the literature neglects differences between compulsory voting systems, and most studies consider the obligation to vote as a dichotomous variable. As a result, relatively little is known about the causal effects of particular stimuli and features of compulsory voting. By exploiting quasi-experimental conditions from direct-democratic decision-making in Switzerland, this research assesses the degree to which abstention fines account for a citizen’s willingness to vote under a compulsory voting context. The findings reveal that a marginal increase in monetary sanctions for voter-abstention leads temporally to a sizeable increase in turnout. However, it does not necessarily contribute to the expression of preferences by those traditionally underrepresented in direct-democratic decision-making since a third of those motivated to vote by the threat of a heavier fine will cast an empty or invalid ballot. The effect on turnout is further found to be moderated by income.

Under mandated choice policies, people are free to choose whichever option they prefer, but “choosing not to choose” is penalized. In Australia, voting is mandatory, and abstaining is penalized with a fine. In New Zealand and several American states, it is mandatory for those who want to obtain a driver’s license that they decide whether to register as organ donors. If they fail to do so, they will not receive a driver’s license. Proponents of such policies stress that they may be the least autonomy-infringing ways of achieving some good and provide society with knowledge about people’s preferences and are, partly for these reasons, preferable to employing defaults. This article compares mandated choice in voting and donor registration with respect to the ends served, how a mandated choice policy will serve these ends, the distribution of burdens, and the nature of the possible options. It is argued that mandated choice is more attractive in the context of donor registration. Under mandated choice policies, people are free to choose whichever option they prefer, but “choosing not to choose” is penalized. In Australia, voting is mandatory, and abstaining is penalized with a fine. In New Zealand and several American states, it is mandatory for those who want to obtain a driver’s license that they decide whether to register as organ donors. If they fail to do so, they will not receive a driver’s license. Proponents of such policies stress that they may be the least autonomy-infringing ways of achieving some good and provide society with knowledge about people’s preferences and are, partly for these reasons, preferable to employing defaults. This article compares mandated choice in voting and donor registration with respect to the ends served, how a mandated choice policy will serve these ends, the distribution of burdens, and the nature of the possible options. It is argued that mandated choice is more attractive in the context of donor registration.

In recent years, there has been considerable scholarly interest in inequalities in representation between rich and poor citizens. Just over 20 years ago, Lijphart argued that compulsory voting coul...

It has normally been argued that because compulsory voting systems present higher turnout rates relative to voluntary voting systems, they do not generate as many biases between different groups of voters. This article qualifies that view. It argues that in cases in which compulsory voting does not ensure near-universal participation, there is no certainty that switching to voluntary voting will increase inequalities. This issue is examined by looking at Chile, a democracy that moved from compulsory voting to voluntary voting in 2012. The research finds that while the reform generated class bias in urban districts, it also substantially reduced age bias and, in national elections, equalized participation between small and large districts. The conclusion is that abandoning compulsory voting does not necessarily increase turnout biases, since much depends on the structure of preexisting biases and how these are conditioned by particular electoral institutions.

A systematic review of the literature on the determinants of voting leads to classifying them as individual and contextual factors, which, in turn, can consist of demographic, psychological, macro-demographic, political and institutional variables. This analysis shows that, far from being a “natural act”, the action of voting has high costs for the potential voter. From this perspective, the abstentionist should not be demonized as a “bad citizen”. Furthermore, forcing citizens to vote in order to increase voter turnout could be counterproductive, since there is empirical evidence that compulsory voting produces less informed electoral decisions that deteriorates the quality of democracy. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21017/Rev.Repub.2019.v27.a73

Citizens' attitudes are crucial in preventing or encouraging democratic weakening, specifically satisfaction with the functioning of the democratic system. We analyse the nexus between the rules and characteristics of the political system and satisfaction with democracy in Latin America. Using data from the 2015 Latinobarometer survey, we have estimated ordered multilevel logit models. We find that satisfaction is greater in countries that use a proportional electoral rule to elect the legislature. The rule used to elect the president is partially related to satisfaction with democracy, while the age of democracy is negatively related to satisfaction. Moreover, the degree of voting obligatoriness in elections and the degree of federalism are not related to satisfaction with democracy. Our results suggest that a more representative legislature and a stronger fight against corruption could improve people's level of satisfaction with democracy. Resumen Las actitudes de los ciudadanos son cruciales para prevenir o impulsar el retroceso democrático, específicamente la satisfacción con el funcionamiento del sistema democrático. Analizamos el nexo entre las reglas y las características del sistema político con la satisfacción con la democracia en América Latina. Usando datos de encuestas proporcionados por Latinobarometer, se han estimado modelos multilevel logit ordenados. Encontramos que la satisfacción es mayor en los países que utilizan una regla electoral proporcional para elegir la legislatura. La regla utilizada para elegir al presidente está parcialmente relacionada con la satisfacción con la democracia, mientras que la edad de la democracia tiene una relación negativa con la satisfacción. Por otro lado, el grado de obligatoriedad del voto en las elecciones y el grado de federalismo no están relacionados con la satisfacción con la democracia. Nuestros resultados sugieren que una legislatura más representativa y una lucha más fuerte contra la corrupción podrían mejorar el nivel de satisfacción con la democracia.

Do people acquire more information when they are encouraged to participate in elections? This paper presents empirical evidence on the effects of compulsory voting laws on the consumption of TV news. In Brazil, literate citizens over the age of eighteen are subject to a number of legal penalties if they fail to turn out on election day. This allows us to identify the causal effect of being under a compulsory voting regime on information acquisition. We find that compulsory voting has a significant and substantial positive impact on the probability of an individual to watch Brazil's main TV newscast. Additionally, the effect is stronger for individuals with neutral evaluations of the incumbent president. Our regression discontinuity results are restricted to young voters who just turned eighteen and are robust to different polynomials and bandwidth lengths.

In this article I aim to show that compulsory voting cannot be defended on democratic grounds. In pursuing this task, I first offer a generic account of the democratic argument in favor of compulsory voting, drawing on some of the most salient recent defenses of a moral duty to vote. I then offer an overarching objection that defeats both the generic form of the democratic argument for compulsory voting and its various operationalizations. The crux of the objection is that the democratic justification of a moral duty to vote is parasitical upon the existence of a moral duty to vote well. This decisively undermines the democratic argument for compulsory voting, since the latter can only be deployed as an enforcement mechanism for a duty to vote, regardless of the substantive content of that vote.

How should a society choose between two social alternatives if participation in the decision process is voluntary and costly, and monetary transfers are not feasible? Assuming symmetric independent private values, we show that it is utilitarian‐optimal to use a linear voting rule: votes get alternative‐dependent weights, and a default obtains if the weighted sum of votes stays below some threshold. Any combination of weights and threshold can be optimal. A standard quorum rule can be optimal only when it yields the same outcome as a linear rule. A linear rule is called upper linear if the default is upset at every election result that meets the threshold exactly. We develop a perturbation method to characterize equilibria of voting rules in the case of small participation costs and show that leaving participation voluntary increases welfare for any two‐sided upper linear rule that is optimal under compulsory participation.

Low-income voters are typically underrepresented in elections. Even in countries adopting compulsory voting, there is a consolidated pattern of voter turnout decline among the poor. I argue that implementing an unconditional cash transfer (UCT) can decrease both direct and indirect costs of voting and thus enhance the electoral participation of low-income voters. I test these claims by leveraging Maricá’s unconditional cash transfer (MUCT), the largest UCT in Latin America implemented in Brazil in 2013. Causal estimates from a difference-in-differences design show that voter abstention decreased by 15% after the cash transfer intervention in Maricá. Furthermore, the share of undecided voters - typically those who decide to discard their votes instead of voting for one of the candidates displayed on the ballot - decreased by 33% after the MUCT implementation. These findings suggest that paying periodic unconditional benefits can mobilize low-income voters and encourage them to participate in elections.

Scholars who study compulsory voting realize their research in countries where compulsory voting already exists. On the contrary, there are not many studies that deal with ex ante analyses of the economic and political consequences of voter behavior caused by a new element in public elections—compulsory voting. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to find out what voters’ reactions will cause when compulsory voting is introduced in the Czech Republic. This paper has the ambition to contribute to the understanding of the economic and political context of sanctions for non-voters. The analysis of non-voters’ willingness to change their behavior due to the fine and the determination of the amount of this fine in the Czech Republic are the practical benefits of this study. In this way, we determine the “abstention price” of a vote. The input data of the analysis are data obtained by a questionnaire survey conducted in the Czech Republic in 2020, the target group is 807 respondents. The basic statistical operations, and binary and multinomial logistic regressions were employed in this study. The results of the research show that compulsory voting has only a minimal effect on the turnout. The introduction of compulsory voting changes the characteristics of the typical voter. Voters with lower political interest and political knowledge will take part in the elections more often. The fine that non-voters would be willing to pay is approx. 6% of their average monthly income.

This chapter examines the correlates of support for compulsory voting in Australia and their implications for both electoral politics and democratic processes more broadly. The level of support for compulsory voting among Australians is high, having remained above 64 per cent since the first survey in 1967, and stabilizing at around the 70 per cent since 1987. Furthermore, the percentage of Australians expressing a willingness to vote voluntarily also remains high, at around 80 per cent in 2019. There is also a decrease in willingness to vote voluntarily among women since 2007, and growing support for compulsory voting and willingness to vote voluntarily among youngest voters—aged between 18 and 24—over the past ten years. Finally, the data reveals that no one party gains an obvious electoral advantage from compulsory voting in Australia.

This chapter explores why attempts to kindle debate on compulsory voting in Australia have been largely fruitless. The answer can be found in a number of contributing factors: that compulsory voting is compatible with the national political temperament; that it is buttressed by path dependency; that while there have been spikes of dissent about the practice in the Liberal Party (especially from the 1980s to the first decade of the twenty-first century) that opposition never attained a majority position on the right-of-centre side of politics; that the critics of compulsory voting have been reliant on abstract arguments in contrast to its readily demonstrable benefits (namely, the consistently high voter turnout); that the way in which compulsory voting has been enforced by authorities has been generally lenient; and, most importantly, that compulsory voting has enjoyed sustained and widespread public support.

This chapter argues that compulsory voting significantly enhances the legitimacy of Australian democracy by ensuring that it optimises the values of procedural democracy. For proceduralists, a political system cannot be legitimized unless the process that establishes it is itself legitimate. In ‘authentic’ electoral democracies, it is vitally important that electoral procedures are duly complied with for the result to be deemed legitimate. The five criteria for judging whether this has occurred are: ‘political equality’, ‘effective participation’, ‘enlightened understanding’, ‘final control of the agenda by the demos’ and ‘inclusiveness’. Compulsory voting, as it is practised in Australia, is better at fulfilling these standards than almost every other comparable voluntary-voting system due to its ease of use and access, capacity to deliver high and socially even turnout and tendency to inspire a more informed, alert and critical public. It also produces two desired effects: greater levels of equality and lower levels of corruption. It is argued that, in order to enhance democratic legitmacy, the ‘inclusiveness’ criterion should be more demanding to ensure that the entire demos not only has the right to vote but actually votes.

This chapter focuses on field campaigning. While doorknocking or phonebanking may appear analogue in the digital age, twenty-first-century field campaigns are about more than generic voter outreach. Data is meant to be central to these practices but as will be shown, there is little consistency in how parties collect or employ data in their field campaigns. Nonetheless, the field campaigns provide significant insight into how political parties are evolving, including the continued blurring between members and supporters. Given Australian parties are focussed on persuasion, field campaigns are the key channel that two of the Australian parties use to persuade voters and it is seen as increasingly important in the other. This suggests campaign organisation in Australia differs from what is evident elsewhere and this is largely a product of compulsory voting.

This chapter explores the connection between compulsory voting in Australia and public reason, i.e. the view that political rules are legitimate only if they are justified by appealing to reasons that all citizens can accept at some level of idealization. While constitutional democracies such as the US assign a significant role to institutions like the Supreme Court in the process of public reasoning, parliamentary supremacy regimes rely instead more extensively on democracy and majorities. In a polity like Australia, which presents many features typical of a parliamentary supremacy regime, compulsory voting can play a key role in guaranteeing public reason, by forcing public officials to take into account a broad variety of perspectives, interests and demands, and therefore refrain from appealing to sectarian non-public reasons when justifying political rules.

Most government and state officials serve at the hands of the people – that is they are elected to their positions. This is typically accomplished by voting, a formal expression of one’s opinion or choice. Voting is a fundamental process in a democratic system; however, the right to vote is sometimes taken for granted. The privilege to determine a country’s leadership is not universal. The ability and requirement to vote varies from country to country. The spectrum ranges from compulsory voting where citizens in 22 countries face fines if they do not vote, to optional voting where it is a civic right not duty, to 20 autocratic countries where there is no ability to vote (ITV, 2015). Many countries that allow citizens to vote require citizens to be a minimum of 18 years old; however, the age requirements vary from 16 to 21 years old (Chughtai, 2019). The ability to vote in the United States (US), is a right granted to citizens by the Constitution and has been modified over time to be more inclusive. So, what happens when the validity of a citizen’s vote or the integrity of the voting system is compromised? From a US Presidential election perspective, this paper will analyze the history of elections focusing on potential compromises, the technologies used to support elections, and outline the risks and associated mitigations to prevent election compromise. The paper also will compare election systems between the US and Australia. Finally, this paper will provide recommendations for securing the election process based on research and the stated comparisons.

This chapter examines the characteristics of Australia’s political and social development that enabled compulsory voting to take such tenacious root and come to enjoy relatively uncontroversial support in this country. Compulsory voting in Australia is best understood in the context of a majoritarian and bureaucratic political culture that had its genesis in the colonial era of the nineteenth century, in a propensity to experimentation in electoral matters, and in the desire to ensure that the votes of moderate, respectable citizens would balance those of radical partisans.

This chapter examines how the practice of compulsory voting was debated in Belgium and France at the turn of the twentieth century. Two principal arguments in favour of compulsory voting stand out. One builds on the concept of ‘true’, ‘exact’ and ‘mirror’ representation. Abstention, it is argued, creates a ‘false’ and ‘corrupt’ image of majority will; by summoning all voters, parliaments will be more representative, election results more credible, and democracies more legitimate. The second argument is that compulsory voting brings out the moderate vote. Radicals tend to either boycott elections or obsess about them. By contrast, abstainers are thought to be less passionate about voting, thus less radical in their views. Compulsory voting will prevent ‘turbulent minorities’ from being overrepresented and more influential than their overall share in the population. As well as justifying compulsory voting historically, these arguments can also provide valuable conceptual resources for thinking about ways of countering the crisis of contemporary democracies.

This chapter explores judicial norms and rhetoric around compulsory voting in Australia. These legal principles and tropes are derived from two classes of cases. The first are decisions, from courts elevated in the hierarchy, about why compulsory voting is constitutionally legitimate. These decisions have survived a turn from respect for parliamentary sovereignty over electoral law towards implied political rights and freedoms. The second class of cases involve courts, both low and high in the judicial pecking order, reflecting on what amounts to a ‘valid and sufficient reason’ for not turning out to vote. Ultimately, the courts have been remarkably supportive of compulsion, albeit with a bleak, rather than positive, vision of the role of compulsion in electoral democracy. In rhetorical terms, Australian courts have treated electoral compulsion as akin to military conscription or to choosing the manner of one’s death.

This chapter considers several objections to compulsory in Australia: that compulsory voting unacceptably abridges individual liberty; that it is unnecessary for high electoral turnout; that it is undemocratic; that it violates the ‘right not to vote’; that it has a detrimental effect upon the behaviour and composition of Australia’s political parties; and that it mobilises large numbers of disengaged citizens, with negative consequences for Australian democracy. The chapter provides a critical assessment of these objections and concludes that none of them comes anywhere close to showing that compulsory voting in Australia ought to be repealed.

We study the elasticity of turnout on the size of the monetary fines that governments impose on those who fail to vote. We leverage a discontinuity in the size of monetary fines in Peru, where voters in districts above an arbitrary cutoff in poverty rates face higher fines for not voting relative to voters who reside in districts below the cutoff. Using individual-level data on millions of voters for every regional and national election between 2010 and 2016, we find that turnout increases slightly in districts with higher fines—an effect of roughly one percent. This modest effect is similar across socioeconomic groups and elections. Our results highlight a challenge that governments face in designing the sanctions in compulsory voting systems: how to increase turnout without disproportionally hurting the poor or raising turnout inequality.

Turnout is in decline in established democracies around the world. Where, in the mid-1800s, 70–80 percent of eligible voters regularly participated in US Presidential elections, turnout has averaged just 53.7 percent since 1972. Average turnout in general elections in the UK has fallen from 76.6 percent during the period 1945–92, to 64.7 percent since 1997. Average turnout in Canadian federal elections has fallen from 74.5 percent during the period 1940–79, to 62.5 percent since 2000. For most democrats, these numbers are a cause for alarm. Compulsory voting is amongst the most effective means of raising turnout. However, compulsory voting is also controversial. Most of us think that coercion may only be employed against the citizenry if it is backed by a justification of the right kind. Opponents of compulsory voting charge that no such justification is available. This article resists this line of argument in two ways. First, I offer an argument from free-riding which, though gestured towards by others, and widely criticized, has yet to be defended in any depth. Second, I consider a range of objections to compulsory voting as such, arguing that none succeeds.

Research on invalid voting has expanded rapidly over the past few years. This review article for the first time examines its principal findings and provides a new theoretical perspective on the origins of invalid votes based on a two-dimensional framework. The main results of 54 studies using both individual-level and aggregate-level data as well as the results of experimental and qualitative studies are analysed. The meta-analysis of all existing aggregate-level studies finds that compulsory voting, quality of democracy, fragmentation and closeness of the electoral race play important roles in explaining invalid voting. On the other hand, the research is accompanied by many theoretical and empirical contradictions that hamper the accumulation of knowledge in this field. We therefore conclude by suggesting the challenges for future research.

Research over the last two decades has resulted in improved understandings of the nature and characteristics of driving anxiety. However, we still do not know the extent of driving anxiety in the general population, as most studies have focused on clinical or vehicle accident samples, and the only population study is of older adults. The present study addressed this gap in knowledge using data from 441 people who responded to a survey sent to a random sample of 1500 adults recruited from the compulsory voting register in New Zealand. While 31% reported no driving anxiety, 52% endorsed mild driving anxiety and 16% reported moderate to severe driving anxiety. There were small but significant differences in the average age at which participants in these three groups started to learn to drive, but there were no differences in driving-related accidents and incidents over the past 12 months. Those with higher driving anxiety endorsed more anxiety about road rage, lower feelings of safety while driving, and more driving-related avoidance and negative cognitions than the less anxious participants. However, levels of helpseeking were low, and suggest the need to develop online self-help packages that are more accessible and acceptable to those experiencing driving anxiety.

Invalid voting, meaning blank and spoiled ballots, is a regular phenomenon in democracies around the world. When its share is larger than the margin of victory or greater than the vote share of som...

I advance a theory about how compulsory voting affects the behavior of political parties. The theory suggests that parties will pivot toward programmatic vote‐seeking strategies and away from clientelistic tactics, such as vote buying, where voting is compulsory. I test my expectations in three separate studies, using several data sources and empirical approaches. In Study 1, cross‐national analyses show that parties behave more programmatically under compulsory voting and that vote buying is less common where voting is mandatory. In Study 2, synthetic control and difference‐in‐differences analyses show that a switch to compulsory voting in Thailand produced an increase in programmatic vote seeking. In Study 3, a list experiment conducted in tandem with a natural experiment shows that compulsory voting leads parties to rely less on vote‐buying tactics in Argentina. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings, which together are broadly supportive of my theoretical expectations.

Can electoral institutions induce lasting changes in citizens’ voting habits? We study the long-term and spillover effects of compulsory voting in the Swiss canton of Vaud (1900–1970) and find that this intervention increases turnout in federal referendums by 30 percentage points. However, despite its magnitude, the effect disappears quickly after voting is no longer compulsory. We find minor spillover effects on related forms of political participation that also vanish immediately after compulsory voting has been abolished. Overall, these results question habit formation arguments in the context of compulsory voting.

Pre-election day voting increases the opportunities for citizens to vote in an election. This paper asks who votes before election day in Australia and whether early voters and election day voters ...

Opponents of compulsory voting often allege that it violates a ‘right not to vote’. This paper seeks to clarify and defend such a right against its critics (Lardy in Oxf J Leg Stud 24:303–321, 2004; Hill in Aust J Polit Sci 50:61–72, 2015a; in Crit Rev Int Soc Polit Philos 18:652–660, 2015b). First, I propose that this right must be understood as a Hohfeldian claim against being compelled to vote, rather than as a mere privilege to abstain. So construed, the right not to vote is compatible with a duty to vote, so arguments for a duty to vote do not refute the existence of such a right. The right against compulsion is most easily defended within a liberal framework, hence its critics often appeal instead to a republican conception of freedom. In the latter part of the paper, I argue that even these republican arguments are inconclusive. Even non-dominating interference still conditions freedom, which may require justification. Further, citizens can live up to republican ideals, so long as they are vigilant; they need not actually vote. Thus, republican arguments fail to refute a right not to vote.

Teóricamente, con voto voluntario baja la participación electoral y tienden a votar más los ricos que los pobres, generando lo que la literatura denomina como sesgo de clase. Entonces, ¿qué lleva a los políticos a optar por un régimen de voto voluntario? Considerando el caso de Chile, nuestro objetivo es identificar las razones que impulsaron la reforma. Metodológicamente, utilizamos tres fuentes de información: discusión legislativa, encuestas de opinión y una inédita encuesta aplicada al 100% de los diputados luego de aprobada la reforma. Nuestros resultados indican que la reforma se aprobó producto de la interacción entre intereses estratégicos de la coalición de gobierno (de centro-izquierda) y de la oposición. Mientras el gobierno impulsó la reforma creyendo que los nuevos votantes serían principalmente de centro-izquierda, la derecha lo hizo pensando en que sus nuevos electores tendrían mayor probabilidad de votar dado su mayor nivel de ingresos. A esto se sumó un amplio apoyo ciudadano a la reforma expresado en las encuestas, lo que pudo presionar a los diputados. Constatamos que en la centro-izquierda hubo rápidas señales de arrepentimiento, pues el 70% de los diputados –en una encuesta hecha a meses de la reforma– se mostró partidario del voto obligatorio.

In an informational voting environment, we study the impact of an explicit nil vote option on the ballot when some voters are uninformed and face the swing voters curse. We postulate a simple model of strategic voting in which voters entertain heterogeneous thresholds on legitimacy of different voting actions. We predict that introducing a nil vote option reduces the number of uninformed and invalid votes, increasing expected welfare in both voluntary and compulsory voting. We test our model in a pen-and-paper laboratory experiment, and find that the predictions of the model hold in the data, for both voting systems.

Objetivos: identificar las características del Voto Obligatorio y su aplicabilidad en el sistema democrático de Colombia. Metodología: investigación cualitativa y documental; las fuentes documentales fueron las leyes, decretos e investigaciones sobre la elección popular, la Democracia, el Voto y el Voto Obligatorio en Colombia. De igual modo, se tuvieron en cuenta estadísticas y muestreos publicados por el Congreso de la Republica, periódicos nacionales y de centros de estudios políticos internacionales. Resultado: se encontró que en Colombia el Voto Obligatorio no ha tenido mayor relevancia, debido a que su difusión y puesta en práctica no cuenta con las bases teóricas y jurídicas requeridas para ser aprobado por el Congreso de la Republica; esto, sumado a la creciente ola de desconfianza en el sistema electoral del país. Conclusiones: se concluye que el Voto Obligatorio tiene ventajas para la Democracia y que su establecimiento implica contravenciones para quienes no cumplan el deber de votar.

Under what democratic conditions does the ‘vertical accountability’​ mechanism of voting maximise rights protection? Using an empirically informed political theory approach I argue that the Austral...

Invalid ballots are relatively common in countries with compulsory voting, yet there is no cross-national evidence as towhois more likely to cast a blank or spoiled ballot where voting is forced. I argue that increased rates of blank and spoiled balloting where voting is obligatory result from the behavior of the politically unknowledgeable, uninterested, untrusting, and disaffected, who are incentivized to turn out to the polls where they can be sanctioned for abstention. To test this, I conduct an individual-level examination of the influence of compulsory voting on invalid balloting across countries. I find support for my expectations with analyses of survey data from several American democracies, many of which compel electoral participation.

Mandatory voting has received public and scholarly interest as a solution for problems of unequal representation and policies that advantage the wealthy. Yet some oppose mandatory voting because it seems to coerce political expression, in violation of the human right to free expression. This article fundamentally reinterprets the point of mandatory voting as serving the self-identified purposes of citizens and so minimizes concerns about coercion. It uses survey evidence to show that mandatory voting can help the large majority of American citizens who believe they should vote to do so, thereby functioning as a precommitment mechanism. For the minority who do not think they should vote, mandatory voting functions as a nudge to surveillance, which helps citizens protect their interests, whatever they may be, through encouraging surveillance of political actors. The argument concludes that mandatory voting would make all citizens better off by their own lights and without troubling coercion.

Democratic elections imply that the electorate holds incumbents accountable for past performance, and that voters select the party that is closest to their own political preferences. Previous resea...

What difference does it make if the state makes people vote? The question is central to normative debates about the rights and duties of citizens in a democracy, and to contemporary policy debates in a number of Latin American countries over what actions states should take to encourage electoral participation. Focusing on a rare case of abolishing compulsory voting in Venezuela, this article shows that not forcing people to vote yielded a more unequal distribution of income. The evidence supports Arend Lijphart's claim, advanced in his 1996 presidential address to the American Political Science Association, that compulsory voting can offset class bias in turnout and, in turn, contribute to the equality of influence.

We study a unique quasi-experiment in Austria, where compulsory voting laws are changed across Austria's nine states at different times. Analyzing state and national elections from 1949 to 2010, we show that compulsory voting laws with weakly enforced fines increase turnout by roughly 10 percentage points. However, we find no evidence that this change in turnout affected government spending patterns (in levels or composition) or electoral outcomes. Individual-level data on turnout and political preferences suggest that these results occur because the impacts of compulsory voting on turnout are larger among those who are non-partisan, who have low interest in politics, and who are uninformed.