One person one vote? Unequal turnout in comparative perspective
- Autores: Aina Gallego
- Directores de la Tesis: Eva Anduiza Perea (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2008
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Mariano Torcal Loriente (presid.), Laura Morales Diez de Ulzurrun (secret.), Gábor Tóka (voc.)
- Materias:
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
- Resumen
The resource-rich citizens vote more frequently than the socially disadvantaged in some contexts. In other contexts there are little differences in the turnout rates of people from different social groups. This dissertation examines unequal turnout across countries and over time focusing on the impact of education on voting.
I propose four different explanations of the changing levels. According to institutional theory, turnout is more unequal where voting is difficult in cognitive terms due to institutional arrangements. The social structure model claims that participatory inequality mirrors the levels of social and educational inequality because of spill-over effects. Thirdly, mobilization theory predicts that strong organizations recruiting the socially disadvantage people are equalizing agencies. Finally, having positive attitudes towards political actors is particularly useful for people endowed with few cognitive resources.
The theories are examined in a double perspective: cross-nationally, with data from 28 advanced industrial democracies and longitudinally for Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Various multilevel techniques are employed.
In the presence of compulsory voting turnout inequality disappears. Other institutional features also predict inequality. Party identification is useful to foster the vote of the poorly educated and it is an equality enhancing attitude. Longitudinally, the models works better to explain the Swedish case than the changing levels of inequality in other Scandinavian countries. Surprisingly, neither social structure, nor the characteristics of political mobilization shape unequal turnout.
This dissertation firstly pushes the point that inequalities in voter turnout cannot be taken for granted because they are not ubiquitous. It makes two original theoretical contributions with the extension of institutional theory and of a functional interpretation of political attitudes to encompass unequal turnout. Methodologically, it assesses the potentialities and limitations of multilevel models. Finally, this work is the first thorough empirical investigation on unequal turnout since the 'Political Participation and Equality in Seven Nations'.
