The Participation Gap: Evidence from Compulsory Voting Laws

Why do some people go to the polling station, sometimes up to several times a year, while others always prefer to stay at home? This question has launched a wide theoretical debate in both economics and political science, but convincing empirical support for the different models proposed is still rare. The basic rational voting model of Downs (1957) predicts zero participation because each individual vote is extremely unlikely to be pivotal. One prominent modification of this model is the inclusion of a civic duty term into the voter's utility function (Riker and Ordeshook, 1968) which has been the basis of structural ethical voting models such as Coate and Conlin (2004) and Feddersen and Sandroni (2006). Another branch of structural models looks at informational asymmetries among citizens (Feddersen and Pesendorfer, 1996, 1999). This paper tests the implications of these two branches of structural models by exploiting a unique variability in compulsory voting laws in Swiss federal states. By analyzing a newly compiled comparative data set covering the 1900-1950 period, we find large positive effects of the introduction of compulsory voting laws on turnout. Along with the arguably exogenous treatment allocation, several specification and placebo tests lend support to a causal interpretation of this result. The findings of this study lend support to the ethical voting models since citizens do react to compulsory voting laws only if it is enforced with a fee. At the same time, the informational aspect of non-voting is questioned as „new" voters do not delegate their votes.Compulsory Voting, Voter Turnout, Structural Voting Models

Redesigning integration: access to government records is necessary for researchers to identify policy effects.

Especially for complex social issues like migration and integration, there is a pressing need to understand why certain policies work and others do not. Dominik Hangartner argues that when scholars are able to combine credible research designs with linked registry data and state-of-the-art targeted surveys, they have a greater chance of identifying the causal effects of policy parameters on short- and long-term immigrant and refugee integration

A Choice Set Modeling Approach to EU Issue Voting

Focusing on the case of Britain, this paper evaluates the role that EU issue voting played in the 1992 and 1997 elections. EU issue voting arises when the issue of European integration has a direct in uence on vote choice by in uencing the attractiveness of party alternatives. In this paper, we explore two different ways in which such infleunce can occur: elimination of party alternatives due to their EU stance or moderator of the utility felt toward a subset of party alternatives that are all viable for the voter. These two in uences are explored through a choice set logistic regression model. The results suggest that EU issue voting increased from 1992 to 1997, especially in England. However, compared with traditional left-right issues, the influence of EU issue voting remained modest even in 1997, when public opinion had taken a Euroskeptic turn and when the Conservative party was seen as much closer than Labour on this issue

Circular Data in Political Science and How to Handle It

There has been no attention to circular (purely cyclical) data in political science research. We show that such data exist and are mishandled by models that do not take into account the inherently recycling nature of some phenomenon. Clock and calendar effects are the obvious cases, but directional data are observed as well. We describe a standard maximum likelihood regression modeling framework based on the von Mises distribution, then develop a general Bayesian regression procedure for the first time, providing an easy-to-use Metropolis-Hastings sampler for this approach. Applications include a chronographic analysis of U.S. domestic terrorism and directional party preferences in a two-dimensional ideological space for German Bundestag elections. The results demonstrate the importance of circular models to handle periodic and directional data in political scienc

Who Gets a Swiss Passport? A Natural Experiment in Immigrant Discrimination

We study discrimination against immigrants using microlevel data from Switzerland, where, until recently, some municipalities used referendums to decide on the citizenship applications of foreign residents. We show that naturalization decisions vary dramatically with immigrants' attributes, which we collect from official applicant descriptions that voters received before each referendum. Country of origin determines naturalization success more than any other applicant characteristic, including language skills, integration status, and economic credentials. The average proportion of "no” votes is about 40% higher for applicants from (the former) Yugoslavia and Turkey compared to observably similar applicants from richer northern and western European countries. Statistical and taste-based discrimination contribute to varying naturalization success; the rewards for economic credentials are higher for applicants from disadvantaged origins, and origin-based discrimination is much stronger in more xenophobic municipalities. Moreover, discrimination against specific immigrant groups responds dynamically to changes in the groups' relative siz

Profiling compliers and non-compliers for instrumental-variable analysis

Instrumental-variable (IV) estimation is an essential method for applied researchers across the social and behavioral sciences who analyze randomized control trials marred by noncompliance or leverage partially exogenous treatment variation in observational studies. The potential outcome framework is a popular model to motivate the assumptions underlying the identification of the local average treatment effect (LATE) and to stratify the sample into compliers, always-takers, and never-takers. However, applied research has thus far paid little attention to the characteristics of compliers and noncompliers. Yet, profiling compliers and noncompliers is necessary to understand what subpopulation the researcher is making inferences about and an important first step in evaluating the external validity (or lack thereof) of the LATE estimated for compliers. In this letter, we discuss the assumptions necessary for profiling, which are weaker than the assumptions necessary for identifying the LATE if the instrument is randomly assigned. We introduce a simple and general method to characterize compliers, always-takers, and never-takers in terms of their covariates and provide easy-to-use software in R and STATA that implements our estimator. We hope that our method and software facilitate the profiling of compliers and noncompliers as a standard practice accompanying any IV analysis

The Participation Gap Evidence from Compulsory Voting Laws

Why do some people go to the polling station, sometimes up to several times a year, while others always prefer to stay at home? This question has launched a wide theoretical debate in both economics and political science, but convincing empirical support for the different models proposed is still rare. The basic rational voting model of Downs (1957) predicts zero participation because each individual vote is extremely unlikely to be pivotal. One prominent modification of this model is the inclusion of a civic duty term into the voter’s utility function (Riker and Ordeshook, 1968) which has been the basis of structural ethical voting models such as Coate and Conlin (2004) and Feddersen and Sandroni (2006). Another branch of structural models looks at informational asymmetries among citizens (Feddersen and Pesendorfer, 1996, 1999). This paper tests the implications of these two branches of structural models by exploiting a unique variability in compulsory voting laws in Swiss federal states. By analyzing a newly compiled comparative data set covering the 1900-1950 period, we find large positive effects of the introduction of compulsory voting laws on turnout. Along with the arguably exogenous treatment allocation, several specification and placebo tests lend support to a causal interpretation of this result. The findings of this study lend support to the ethical voting models since citizens do react to compulsory voting laws only if it is enforced with a fee. At the same time, the informational aspect of non-voting is questioned as “new” voters do not delegate their votes

Immigration and inequality: the role of politics and policies

This commentary examines the relationship between immigration and economic inequality, focusing on the role of politics and policies. The main argument is that although the direct economic effects of immigration on native employment and wages may be minor, immigration can have significant indirect economic ramifications through political channels. We summarize existing evidence and discuss how immigration shapes politics and policies by influencing political discourse, voters, and parties. Notably, the rise of anti-immigrant parties can lead to shifts both in immigration and integration policy, and in other policy areas, such as law and order, social security, and international relations. These shifts have the potential to affect inequality across different segments of society, including between immigrants and citizens and along gender and employment dimensions. However, due to the scarcity of empirical evidence, predictions about the consequences of immigration on inequality across these groups are uncertain and further research is needed

Catalyst or crown: does naturalization promote the long-term social integration of immigrants?

We study the impact of naturalization on the long-term social integration of immigrants into the host country society. Despite ongoing debates about citizenship policy, we lack reliable evidence that isolates the causal effect of naturalization from the non-random selection into naturalization. We exploit the quasi-random assignment of citizenship in Swiss municipalities that used referendums to decide on naturalization applications of immigrants. Comparing otherwise similar immigrants who narrowly won or narrowly lost their naturalization referendums, we find that receiving Swiss citizenship strongly improved long-term social integration. We also find that the integration returns to naturalization are much larger for more marginalized immigrant groups and somewhat larger when naturalization occurs earlier, rather than later in the residency period. Overall, our findings support the policy paradigm arguing that naturalization is a catalyst for improving the social integration of immigrants rather than merely the crown on the completed integration process

Managing Refugee Protection Crises: Policy Lessons from Economics and Political Science

We review and interpret research on the economic and political effects of receiving asylum seekers and refugees in developed countries, with a particular focus on the 2015 European refugee protection crisis and its aftermath. In the first part of the paper, we examine the consequences of receiving asylum seekers and refugees and identify two main findings. First, the reception of refugees is unlikely to generate large direct economic effects. Both labor market and fiscal consequences for host countries are likely to be relatively modest. Second, however, the broader political processes accompanying the reception and integration of refugees may give rise to indirect yet larger economic effects. Specifically, a growing body of work suggests that the arrival of asylum seekers and refugees can fuel the rise of anti-immigrant populist parties, which may lead to the adoption of economically and politically isolationist policies. Yet, these political effects are not inevitable and occur only under certain conditions. In the second part of the paper, we discuss the conditions under which these effects are less likely to occur. We argue that refugees’ effective integration along relevant linguistic, economic, and legal dimensions, an allocation of asylum seekers that is perceived as ‘fair’ by the host society, and meaningful contact between locals and newly arrived refugees have the potential to mitigate the political and indirect economic risks