Turnout Worldwide

1
Turnout Worldwide

• Mark Stephan
• Political Behavior
• PS 417

2
Last class and Todays Class

• Norris Theories
• Turnout worldwide
• Modernization
• Institutions..

3
General Points

• The report of my death was an exaggeration Mark
  Twain (1896)
  
• Turnout worldwide
• Post-industrial countries
• Do political institutions matter?

4
Societal Modernization and Turnout

• Reminder what are societal modernization
  theories helpful for?
  
• What are three possible trends in turnout given
  increases in modernization?
  
• How can we measure turnout?
• What type of data does Norris use here?

5
Results

• Modernization and turnout?
• Ceiling effects
• Regional trends
• Post-industrial countries

6
News Flash!!

• Choosing a pope
• Blair calls national elections
• Zimbabwe.not looking too good for the
  opposition.
  
• Other news???

7
Institutional influences

• What is meant here by institutions?
• Political institutions, legal rules, voting
  facilities
  
• Why would we expect that institutions would
  matter? Costs, choices, decisiveness
  
• Reading Norris tables (see Table 4.1)

8
Results political institutions

• Electoral systems matter (whats the difference
  between them?)
  
• Ratio of representatives to voting age population
  matters
  
• Frequency of national elections matters
• Presidential versus parliamentary elections matter

9
Results institutions (continued)

• Literacy rules
• Compulsory voting
• Number of political parties in a system
• Facilities?

10
Getting down to who votes

• Similar analyses to what weve already looked at
  it, except now cross-national
  
• Subset of countries (citizens in 22 countries
  were surveyed)
  
• Social structure, culture, mobilizing agents
• Surveys dont include all possible factors, but
  many of the ones we were already familiar with

11
Results

• See table 5.2 page 86 (small groups compare
  models what do you find?)
  
• Structural Age, Gender, etc.
• Education? Broken down by country..
• Agency variables
• Cultural variables
• Similar to the results from RH?

12
Summary Points

• Societal modernization
• Institutions
• Resources and Motivations
• Key conclusions

13
News Flash!!

• More news

14
To wrap it up

• Turnout worldwide you should now have a handle
  on it
  
• Other forms of participation? More to come