Estimating the Effect of Competitiveness on Turnout across Regime Types

Published date01 August 2021
Date01 August 2021
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720914645
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720914645
Political Studies
2021, Vol. 69(3) 602 –622
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321720914645
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Estimating the Effect of
Competitiveness on Turnout
across Regime Types
Kristin Eichhorn and Eric Linhart
Abstract
Electoral turnout as an indicator of political participation, political equality and, thus, democratic
performance is one of the most important variables in the study of elections. While numerous
studies have contributed to the explanation of electoral turnout, the picture is still incomplete.
Notably, a variable which pertains to the core of elections, the competitiveness of electoral
races, is not fully understood yet. We contribute to filling this gap by accounting for different
effects of competitiveness in democracies and autocracies, as well as against the background of
varying institutional settings. Our analyses suggest that vote margins are a suitable measure of
competitiveness, but only in democracies with plurality or majority electoral systems. Ex ante
measures of competitiveness capture the concept of competitiveness more comprehensively and
are applicable across electoral systems and regime types.
Keywords
elections, turnout, autocracies, competitiveness, electoral systems
Accepted: 1 March 2020
Introduction
Competitive elections are the core institution of representative democracies, and turnout
is among the most important variables in studies analysing elections. By quantifying the
share of the population which casts a ballot, turnout is a direct measure of political partici-
pation and can be interpreted as an indicator for a political system’s support. Beyond that,
casting a ballot is correlated to socio-economic status and biased towards more privileged
citizens and therefore related to political equality (Lijphart, 2008: 18, 94). In sum, high
turnout rates are commonly associated with good democratic performance and quality:
‘The democratic goal should be not just universal suffrage but universal or near-universal
turnout [. . .]’ (Lijphart, 2008: 203).
Department of Political Science, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany
Corresponding author:
Kristin Eichhorn, Department of Political Science, Chemnitz University of Technology, 09111 Chemnitz,
Germany.
Email: kristin.eichhorn@phil.tu-chemnitz.de
914645PSX0010.1177/0032321720914645Political StudiesEichhorn and Linhart
research-article2020
Article
Eichhorn and Linhart 603
This democratic interpretation of turnout may be reversed in electoral autocracies.1 In
elections disguised as a democratic institution, autocrats may exploit high turnout rates to
demonstrate their (alleged) support among the people and pseudo-legitimise the non-
democratic regime (Pepinsky, 2014; Schedler, 2013: 143). In addition, these elections are
a source of information about actual public support. However, the informational dicta-
tor’s dilemma (Wintrobe, 2007) can only be bridged in the case of extensive electoral
participation and at least some degree of electoral competitiveness. At the same time,
elections in autocracies have already led to changes in power (Brownlee, 2009; Bunce
and Wolchik, 2010; Donno, 2012; Lueders and Croissant, 2014). Consequently, sufficient
levels of competitiveness could also motivate potential voters in autocracies to cast
ballots.
Previous studies of electoral turnout in democracies have demonstrated the impor-
tance of institutional variables (the electoral system, compulsory voting rules, gov-
ernment system, unicameralism), socio-economic variables (such as the population
size or the economic development) and situational factors (like closeness of electoral
races and the timing of elections) (for an overview, see Blais, 2006; Cancela and
Geys, 2016; Geys, 2006). Empirical studies of turnout in young or transitional democ-
racies and autocracies find similar but weaker effects of the institutional variables
and partly similar effects of the socio-economic variables (Blais and Dobrzynska,
1998; Endersby and Krieckhaus, 2008; Kostadinova, 2003; Stockemer, 2016).
Regarding the important effect of competitiveness, for democracies, close elections
are found to increase turnout due to instrumental voting. However, previous findings
on competitiveness in autocracies remain inconclusive (Martinez i Coma, 2016;
Stockemer, 2015).
In democracies, the individual vote is generally presumed to be important as it is
directly related to the distribution of power (Endersby and Krieckhaus, 2008: 601). In
contrast, the individual vote is perceived to be less decisive in autocracies, causing gener-
ally lower turnout rates (Lust-Okar, 2009: 237). Regarding the above-mentioned possibil-
ity of transformation caused by elections in autocracies, we find it surprising that it is
precisely competitiveness which plays an ambiguous role in studies on turnout in elec-
toral autocracies.
The motivation of our article is to analyse these patterns in detail and provide an
answer to the question of how, and under which conditions, competitiveness actually
affects electoral turnout in democracies and electoral autocracies. By doing so, we con-
tribute to a core question of electoral studies, which is also relevant for the general assess-
ment of institutional settings in various regimes. Our central assumption is that the effect
of competitiveness on turnout is sensitive not only to the regime type but also to the
institutional context. Therefore, the interplay between regime types and various institu-
tional factors, most notably the electoral system, needs to be considered in order to cap-
ture competitiveness adequately. To address our question, we analyse a self-compiled
dataset including 984 parliamentary elections in 146 democracies and autocracies between
1975 and 2012.
This article proceeds with an overview of determinants of electoral turnout and a
review of the related literature. We continue with an outline of our data and the opera-
tionalisation of our variables, followed by the presentation and discussion of our results.
The final section summarises, concludes and identifies areas for future research.

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