Attitudes towards Voting Rights in Comparative Perspective

• In Event: Voting Behavior for and in Parliament

Abstract

Representative democracies almost ubiquitously rely on universal suffrage. That said, what is considered universal vary from country to country. Voting age, inclusion of non-citizen and treatment of prison inmates regulate the extent of the francize. Determining who has the right to vote is mostly up to elites and public opinion on the matter is underexplored. We survey public attitudes towards the extension of voting rights in three western democracies: the UK, Italy and the Netherlands. We find that support voting rights reform proposals is driven by factors that are grounded in partisanship and social norms.

Authors

• Laura Sudulich, University Of Essex

• Jeffrey A. Karp, Brunel University London