Civic norms, social sanctions and voting turnout

Stephen Knack

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This study views voter participation as a collective action problem overcome chiefly by means of "solidary" and "purposive" selective incentives. It is argued that these incentives are primarily in the form of civic or societal norms, rather than special interest norms associated with partisan or group loyalties. The emphasis on civic norms is supported by positive correlations between turnout and other socially cooperative behaviors such as responding to the census, participating in PTA's, and giving to charities. Data on interpersonal pressures to vote are found to support the hypothesis that "enforcement" of voting norms via social sanctions significantly enhances turnout. The American turnout decline is interpreted in terms of a weakening of social ties adversely affecting the socialization and enforcement of norms responsible for generating civic participation.

Keywords: voting; elections; collective action; social sanctions; free riding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (44)

Published in Rationality and Society 2.4(1992): pp. 133-156

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/28080/1/MPRA_paper_28080.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:pra:mprapa:28080

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter (winter@lmu.de).