Election Frequency & Electoral Abstention Approval

• In Event: Do Electoral Systems Ask Too Much of Voters?

Abstract

Liberal democracies have experienced a significant increase in election frequency in recent decades. The existing literature finds that high election frequency is detrimental to electoral participation and that it contributes to the global decline in voter turnout. However, the causal mechanisms remain understudied. In particular, we do not know whether high election frequency makes electoral abstention more acceptable to citizens. This paper investigates the effect of election frequency on the perception of the participatory norm. It hypothesizes that high election frequency temporarily reduces the perceived moral imperative to participate in elections, and that this effect is propotional to the number of recent elections and heterogeneous across respondents. The empirical analyses draw on a original pre-registered survey experiment fielded in five countries with a total sample size of over 12,000 respondents.

Author

• Filip Kostelka, European University Institute