Voting when the Stakes are High

Jørgen Andersen, Jon Fiva and Gisle Natvik

No 3167, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Rational choice theories of electoral participation stress that an individual's decision to vote depends on her expected net benefit from doing so. If this instrumental motive is relevant, then turnout should be higher in elections where more is at stake. We test this prediction, by studying how turnout is affected by exogenous variation in governments’ financial flexibility to provide pork for their voters. By utilizing simultaneous elections for different offices, we identify a positive effect of election stakes on turnout.

Keywords: voter motivation; elections; turnout (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp3167.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Voting when the stakes are high (2014)
Working Paper: Voting When the Stakes Are High (2013)
Working Paper: Voting when the stakes are high (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3167

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().