Meta-analysis: why do citizens vote (or abstain) in national elections

The question why people choose to vote or abstain in national elections has been extensively researched in the past decades. Yet, disagreement over what drives citizens to the polls persists. Literally, over a 100 different explanatory factors have been linked to the individual's decision to vote or abstain: ranging from individual characteristics like education, age and political interest, to socialization by friends and parents, to characteristics of the election-like political competition, and many more. Slowly, but surely, it has become difficult to see the wood for the trees. In the research project that we describe in this article, we wanted to take a step back and summarize where we stand and what we know about turnout. To this end, we carried out a meta-analysis of 90 empirical studies of individual-level voter turnout in national elections between 2000 and 2010. This allowed us to identify which variables are consistently linked to turnout, and which are not. In this article, we describe what meta-analysis is and give an example of how to carry out meta-analysis by describing our research project on turnout

Political socialisation and the making of citizens

Political socialization describes the process by which citizens crystalize political identities, values and behavior that remain relatively persistent throughout later life. This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the scholarly debate on political socialization, posing a number of questions that arise in the study of political socialization and the making of citizens. First, what is it about early life experiences that makes them matter for political attitudes, political engagement, and political behavior? Second, what age is crucial in the development of citizens’ political outlook? Third, who and what influences political orientations and behavior in early life, and how are cohorts colored by the nature of time when they come of age? Fourth, how do political preferences and behavior develop after the impressionable years? The chapter further provides an outlook of the challenges and opportunities for the field of political socialization

Revisiting the political life-cycle model:later maturation and turnout decline among young adults

Published online: 26 January 2015Turnout among young adults has declined steadily in various advanced industrial democracies in recent decades. At the same time, as a consequence of delayed transitions to adulthood, many life-cycle events considered important for the development of electoral participation are experienced later in life. These combined trends call for a revaluation of the political life-cycle model and the way in which it explains voter turnout among young adults. More specifically, in this paper it is argued that variation in the timing of life events has been overlooked as an explanatory factor of generational differences in young adults’ propensity to turn out to vote. With accumulating evidence that the decision to vote is to some extent habitual, a lack of life experiences may cause young adults to form the habit to abstain rather than to vote. If the mechanisms of the life-cycle model are indeed correct, later maturation should at least partially explain why young adults these days are less inclined to vote than their parents or grandparents in their younger years. Based on the British Election Studies from 1964 to 2010, the findings of this study confirm generally observed patterns of a delayed assumption of adult roles by young citizens. This trend toward later maturation negatively affects turnout levels of young citizens. If maturation levels had remained at pre-war levels, the average turnout among Britain’s post-seventies generation would have been no less than 12 percentage points higher.Article is based on parts of the author's EUI PhD thesis, 201

The Compensation Effect of Civic Education on Political Engagement: How Civics Classes Make Up for Missing Parental Socialization

The development of political engagement in early life is significant given its impact on political knowledge and participation. Analyses reveal a large influence of parents on their offspring’s curiosity about politics during their teenage years. Increasingly, civic education is also considered an important influence on political interest and orientations of young people as schools are assigned a crucial role in creating and maintaining civic equality. We study the effects of civic education on political engagement, focusing especially on whether and how civic education can compensate for missing parental political socialization. We use data from the Belgian Political Panel Study (2006-2011) and the U.S. Youth-Parent Socialization Panel Study (1965-1997), which both contain information on political attitudes and behaviors of adolescents and young adults, those of their parents, and on the educational curriculum of the young respondents. Our findings suggest that civics training in schools indeed compensates for inequalities in family socialization with respect to political engagement. This conclusion holds for two very different countries (the U.S. and Belgium), at very different points in time (the 1960s and the 2000s), and for a varying length of observation (youth to old age and impressionable years only)

The United Kingdom 2017 election:polarisation in a split issue space

After decades in which party competition was fought in the centre ground, the 2017 UK General Election witnessed a return to more conflictual politics. This article assesses public support for the electoral strategies of the main parties and examines the extent to which the issues the parties campaigned on resonated with their own supporters, as well as with the wider public. Drawing on the issue-yield framework, the article shows that the Conservative campaign\u2013generally considered to be badly run\u2013did not focus on issues that would fully exploit the opportunities for expanding support that were open to the party. Labour, by contrast, played a much better hand. While taking a clear left-wing stance on many policies that were popular with its constituency, the party also skilfully emphasised valence issues that Labour is often seen as more credible on, such as healthcare and education

A widening generational divide? : assessing the age gap in voter turnout between younger and older citizens

Defense date: 15 March 2010Examining Board: André Blais (Université de Montréal) (External Supervisor), Mark N. Franklin (EUI), Marc Hooghe (Catholic University Leuven), Alexander H. Trechsel (EUI) (Supervisor)This thesis departs from the observation that in some countries such as Canada the age gap in voter turnout between younger and older citizens is widening. It does so because of a rapid turnout decline among the youngest electoral cohorts. These findings prompt the following question: What are trends in the age gap in voter turnout between younger and older citizens in other Western democracies, and how can these trends be accounted for? Plotting over-time age differences for ten countries, this thesis shows that age patterns in voter turnout are far from generic. Evidence of a widening generational divide is found in Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Norway, and the United States. The age gap in Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden, on the hand, turns out to be relatively stable or even trendless through time. Turning from description to explanation, this thesis presents a novel hypothesis to account for declining turnout levels among young voters. Combining the life-cycle and cohort/generation approaches to age differences in political participation, the later maturation hypothesis examines the idea that the timing of certain life-cycle events that are considered important for the development of political participation varies from one generation to the next. Since key events such as leaving school, starting a first job, getting married and starting a family nowadays take place at a higher average age than they used to, later maturation should be able to explain turnout decline among young voters at least partially. Based on data from the British Election Studies from 1964 to 2005, this thesis shows that delays in the timing of life-cycle events are indeed negatively related to individual level youth voter turnout. Attendance of religious services, levels of political interest, turnout at previous elections, perceived party differences and strength of party identification also explain over-time differences in youth voter turnout. The largest share of individual level youth turnout is, however, accounted for by turnout trends in the rest of the electorate. At the aggregate level later maturation is also shown to explain part of the widening of the age gap. The political-institutional context, however, explains between-country differences best

Minority candidates for Westminster continue to suffer electorally from ethnic and religious prejudice

Incumbent political representatives benefit from the presence of British, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) challengers in their constituency, according to a worrying new study into the role that the race and ethnicity of candidates played in the 2010 British General Election. Summarising the research, Mary Stegmaier, Michael Lewis-Beck and Kaat Smets show that the incumbent party in a constituency typically gained at least two percentage points in vote share when they had a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic challenger