Turnout and Representation Bias in Post-communist Europe
| Author | Stephen White,Ian McAllister |
| Published date | 01 October 2007 |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00660.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Turnout and Representation Bias in
Post-communist Europe
Stephen White Ian McAllister
University of Glasgow Australian National University
Electoral participation has been declining in post-Soviet Europe as in almost all of the established
democracies. Patterns of electoral abstention in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine reflect those in other
countries, but show particularly strong effects for older age.Not only do older electors vote more often,
they also have distinctive views on matters of public policy, particularly on the economy but also on the
Soviet system,strong leadership and hypothetical membership of the European Union. These differences
are diminished but nonetheless generally remain statistically significant even when socio-economic
controls are introduced. These differences may be seen as a‘representation bias’ that advantagespar ticular
sections of the electorate and the views with which they are associated. The particular forms that are
taken by this bias in post-communist societies may be transitory, but here as elsewhere lower levels of
turnout will continue to impart a significant bias to the extent to which some views rather than others
are articulated within the political process.
Communist Europe was distinctive – among other things – for its high levels
of electoral participation. Formally, there was no obligation to vote, but in
practice it was difficult to avoid. Ballot boxes were taken into hospitals, airlifted
to polar exploration stations and carried into people’s own homes if they were
unable to make it in person. According to the official figures, turnout had
reached 99.99 per cent by 1984, when the last elections to the USSR Supreme
Soviet took place (Soobshchenie, 1984, p. 199); six other communist-ruled
nations, and a few in Africa, had already attained the magical 100 per cent
(Taylor and Jodice, 1983, table 2.6). To some extent, results of this kind could
be attributed to fraud, particularly the widespread practice of voting for family
members; they could also be explained by the use of ‘absentee certificates’,
which allowed potential non-voters to be removed from the register if they
were thought likely to be away from home on polling day. But the evidence of
former election officials, now resident in the West, was that ‘genuine’ levels of
turnout were extremely high, and independent estimates suggested that no
more than 3 per cent failed to record their vote, although the proportion was
steadily increasing (Roeder, 1989, pp. 474–5; compare Karklins, 1986; Zaslavsky
and Br ym, 1978).
A rather different set of arrangements was introduced in 1988, allowing a choice
of candidate if not yet of party, and turnout at the first of these elections in March
1989 was almost 90 per cent (White, 1991). But as it turned out, this was a
short-lived peak; turnout soon began to fall across the region, not just in a newly
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00660.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2007 VOL 55, 586–606
© 2007The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
independent Russia, and so did other indicators of political activity – party and
trade union membership, newspaper circulations, str ikes and demonstrations,
levels of interest in politics.And when citizens came to cast their votes, not only
were they fewer in number, but they were also more likely to choose a distinctive
option that became available in the early 1990s: ‘against all’ the candidates or
parties. Elections themselves had changed over the same period, in a manner that
helped to account for this mood of disenchantment. In particular, incumbent
elites had begun to make use of their control of state media, and of the resources
of their own position, to ensure the kind of outcome they wanted. Scholars
warned that elections, in these circumstances,were experiencing an ‘authoritarian
adaptation’ (Afanas’ev, 2000,p. 17),and that far from eliminating the alienation of
ordinary people, they were ‘only deepening it’(Zinov’ev and Polyashova, 2003, p.
8). Beliefs of this kind made it less likely that electors would bother to vote; the
less they did so, the less likely in turn that elections would be regarded as an
effective mechanism for articulating the concerns of ordinary citizens and con-
straining the exercise of power.
In this article we examine the complex of issues that relate to elections and
citizen disengagement using evidence drawn from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine:
all Slavic, all former Soviet republics, all members of the Commonwealth of
Independent States, and accounting together for about three-quarters of the
area and half the population of what used to be communist-ruled Europe.We
draw primarily upon the evidence of representative surveys conducted in each
of these countries between 2004 and 2006, using a single agency and a
common questionnaire (further details are provided in the Appendix). First of
all, we set out some of the patterns that have been characteristic of participa-
tion in public life over the post-communist period.We move to a consideration
of the correlates of turnout, across our three countries and in a broader com-
parative perspective, and then to a consideration of the extent to which the
differential propensity to vote imparts a skew to the electoral process that
privileges the views and interests of some sections of the society, and disad-
vantages others. It is not only in Eastern Europe that turnouts have been
falling, and that a widening gap has opened up between the character istics of
voters and those of the electorate as a whole. Is there a ‘representation bias’ in
the cases on which we focus, and what light does their experience throw on
a phenomenon that has become increasingly central to public debate as well as
to the concerns of political scientists internationally?1
Patterns of Political Engagement
Levels of electoral participation were at record highs in March 1989, when the
first largely competitive elections took place throughout a democratising Soviet
Union. They had already fallen a year later,when elections took place in each of
the Soviet republics (including Belarus and Ukraine as well as the Russian
TURNOUT AND REPRESENTATION BIAS 587
© 2007The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2007, 55(3)
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