Voter Turnout and City Performance

Anna Lo Prete and Federico Revelli

Working papers from Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica

Abstract: We study the impact of exogenous variation in Italian municipal elections'voter turnout rates on city performance scores and elected mayors' indicators of valence. First, we build a simple model of voluntary and costly expressive voting, where the relative weight of ideology and valence issues over voting costs determines how people vote, and if they actually turn out to vote. We show that the cost of voting depresses voter turnout, yet can raise the chances of selecting higher valence candidates and thereby improve government performance. Em- pirically, city performance is measured along a number of dimensions including a unique index of overall urban environmental quality, and mayors'valence is proxied by variables reflecting their professional experience and competence. The staggered nature of the municipal election schedule allows us to exploit exogenous variation in voter turnout rates through the 2000s due to the pres- ence of concomitant regional, general and European parliament elections, and to weather conditions (rainfall) on the election day. The results from a number of specifications and quality of policy-making indicators consistently point to a negative impact of voter turnout rates on the performance of cities and the valence of mayors.

Keywords: local elections; voter turnout; urban environmental quality; weather (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 D72 H72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-env, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Working Paper: Voter Turnout and City Performance (2014)
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