Institutions, Inequality and Social Norms: Explaining Variations in Participation
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00246.x |
| Date | 01 February 2007 |
| Author | Michael Lister |
| Published date | 01 February 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Institutions, Inequality and Social
Norms: Explaining Variations
in Participation
Michael Lister
This article seeks to explain why electoral participation varies over time and space. It develops a
hypothesis that one factor is the nature of social citizenship rights, which relates to welfare state
provision. The article argues that institutions shape and influence social norms and, in so doing,
affect individual behaviour. Rights which are more universal in nature encourage norms of
solidarity and participation in ways that more residual systems do not. Therefore, where welfare
states are more universalist in nature, we should see higher levels of participation. I use inequality
rates as a measure of welfare state outputs to investigate this and find a significant negative
relationship between inequality and electoral turnout. This suggests that the nature of welfare state
institutions has an effect upon individuals’ political behaviour.
Introduction
The subject of political participation, and particularly electoral participation, has
always been a subject of attention in political science. Yet, there is something about
the contemporary climate which seems to have given renewed vigour to these
enquiries. In part this seems to be related to declines in electoral participation,
membership of political parties, membership of trade unions and increased cyni-
cism towards public institutions in many western countries (Franklin 1996; Norris
2002). Yet, the decline in turnout is not universal, or universally experienced. Some
countries have continued to enjoy high levels of participation, including Sweden,
Norway, Denmark and Germany, whereas other countries such as the United
Kingdom, the United States and Canada have seen large falls in participation (data
from the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)). Also, different
countries have different levels of participation at different times; turnout varies over
time and space. It is this variation that the article intends to explore in greater detail.
The political science literature has long tried to explain why people do or do not
vote, but with mixed success. The article will outline some of these explanations
and assess their weaknesses. I will then go on to outline an alternative explanatory
hypothesis: that one of the reasons why turnout varies across time and across space
is the nature of social citizenship rights, which relates to the institutions of the
welfare state. Thus, the hypothesis to be investigated is whether the nature of social
citizenship impacts upon electoral participation.
The article will proceed in three main sections. In the first section, the weaknesses
of the main explanations of participation will be highlighted. I will then go on, in
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00246.x BJPIR: 2007 VOL 9, 20–35
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
the second section, to develop an alternative explanation, derived from T. H.
Marshall and institutionalists such as Bo Rothstein and Paul Pierson, that the nature
of social citizenship rights, instantiated through the institutions of the welfare state,
has an impact upon individuals’ political behaviour. A key part of this argument is
that institutions shape and influence social norms, and certain types of institutions
encourage certain types of social norms which, in turn, encourage participation. A
hypothesis is thus outlined, that more extensive social citizenship provision, by
facilitating solidaristic social norms, encourages participation. In the third section,
the article begins to assess how to go about empirically assessing the proposition,
and reports a first run at the available data, which shows a significant, negative
relationship between inequality and turnout.
Explaining Participation
If political participation matters, then explaining who does and who does not
participate and why is an important issue. Within the political science literature,
there are a number of different theories that attempt to do just this. These include:
the socioeconomic resource; rational choice; and social capital approaches. While
each of these approaches does contribute to explanations of participation, they are
all somewhat problematic and these problems are in some way related to their
difficulties in explaining spatial and temporal variation. For the civic resources
model (see Verba et al. 1995), the problem seems quite clear. Over time, educa-
tional and economic standards have broadly risen, but turnout has not; indeed, it
has declined in many countries. Furthermore, most advanced democracies have
similar levels of socioeconomic and educational performance. Yet, as mentioned
above, some countries have seen a huge fall in turnout and others have seen either
slight rises or much smaller falls. The social capital approach (see Putnam 2000) has
difficulties in accounting for change across time. Social capital seems to be self-
reinforcing; when it is there it produces more; when it is absent it is difficult to
create. As such, it is difficult to explain why there should be changes from a
situation of high participation to one of lower participation, or vice versa. It is
frequently noted that rational choice theory has difficulty with political participa-
tion (see Green and Shapiro 1994), or more specifically, it has difficulty in explain-
ing why people do participate, as according to rational self-interest, people should
not vote. Some authors, such as William Riker and Peter Ordeshook (1968), have
sought to overcome this problem by widening the concept of motivation to include
the gratification individuals may feel about ‘doing their bit’. Yet, a number of
authors have suggested that this creates problems about how these broader moti-
vations are to be measured, such that one might know which motivations are
important and how they are distributed among a population (Benn 1976; Barry
1978; Green and Shapiro 1994).
If we wish to understand why people participate or do not participate, it seems that
to examine the question solely at an individual level is myopic. As Franklin argues,
‘the most striking message is that turnout varies much more from country to
country than it does between different types of individuals’ (Franklin 1996, 217–
218). It is, therefore, vital to consider why turnout varies so much between
countries which are, in many ways, broadly similar. Further, it seems that the main
EXPLAINING VARIATIONS IN PARTICIPATION 21
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2007, 9(1)
To continue reading
Request your trial