Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe (Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology) 3030975045, 9783030975043

Table of contents :
Praise for Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
References
2 Voter Turnout and Imperfect Inclusivity: A Democratic Problem
Democracy and Representation: The Theoretical Debate
The Management of Participation in the Age of Mass Parties
After the Golden Age: Streamlined Parties and New Inequalities
The Voters We Have Lost in a Global World
References
3 Turnout and Socio-economic Inequality at the Individual Level
The Resource Theory of Political Participation and Beyond
Unbundling Socio-economic Status
Unemployment, Insecurity and Turnout
Who Feels Underprivileged? Subjective Status Inconsistency and Relative Deprivation
References
4 The Institutional Determinants of Turnout Inequalities
Excluded by Law: Non-eligible Voters as Neglected Categories
The Impact of Political Institutions and the Nature of Elections
Socio-economic Considerations and the Turnout Gap
Welfare State Systems and Cultural Norms as Barriers to Voting
The Enduring Effect of Political Mobilisation
References
5 Voting in Times of Crisis: From Opting Out to Regaining a Voice
The Political Consequences of the Economic Downturn
The Rise of Populism and the Claim of Representing the Poor
Economic Adversity, Populist Supply and Turnout: An Uncertain Relationship
References
6 Conclusion
References
Appendix
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN EUROPEAN POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe Dario Tuorto

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology

Series Editors Carlo Ruzza, School of International Studies, University of Trento, Trento, Italy Hans-Jörg Trenz, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology addresses contemporary themes in the field of Political Sociology. Over recent years, attention has turned increasingly to processes of Europeanization and globalization and the social and political spaces that are opened by them. These processes comprise both institutional-constitutional change and new dynamics of social transnationalism. Europeanization and globalization are also about changing power relations as they affect people’s lives, social networks and forms of mobility. The Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology series addresses linkages between regulation, institution building and the full range of societal repercussions at local, regional, national, European and global level, and will sharpen understanding of changing patterns of attitudes and behaviours of individuals and groups, the political use of new rights and opportunities by citizens, new conflict lines and coalitions, societal interactions and networking, and shifting loyalties and solidarity within and across the European space. We welcome proposals from across the spectrum of Political Sociology and Political Science, on dimensions of citizenship; political attitudes and values; political communication and public spheres; states, communities, governance structure and political institutions; forms of political participation; populism and the radical right; and democracy and democratization.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14630

Dario Tuorto

Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe

Dario Tuorto Department of Education Studies University of Bologna Bologna, Italy

Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology ISBN 978-3-030-97504-3 ISBN 978-3-030-97505-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Getty images/selimaksan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Praise for Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe

“Inequality in people’s vote participation boosts the challenges to democracy originating from trends of falling turnout. Tuorto’s engaging book offers a thoroughly theoretical and empirical exploration of the causes and consequences of falling turnout among unprivileged segments of society, whose abandonment of the polling booth has widened with the inception of the Great Recession. A must-read for the political behaviour community and for all concerned about the prospects of representative democracy.” —Professor Paolo Bellucci, University of Siena, Italy

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Contents

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Introduction References

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Voter Turnout and Imperfect Inclusivity: A Democratic Problem Democracy and Representation: The Theoretical Debate The Management of Participation in the Age of Mass Parties After the Golden Age: Streamlined Parties and New Inequalities The Voters We Have Lost in a Global World References

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Turnout and Socio-economic Inequality at the Individual Level The Resource Theory of Political Participation and Beyond Unbundling Socio-economic Status Unemployment, Insecurity and Turnout Who Feels Underprivileged? Subjective Status Inconsistency and Relative Deprivation References The Institutional Determinants of Turnout Inequalities Excluded by Law: Non-eligible Voters as Neglected Categories The Impact of Political Institutions and the Nature of Elections

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Socio-economic Considerations and the Turnout Gap Welfare State Systems and Cultural Norms as Barriers to Voting The Enduring Effect of Political Mobilisation References 5

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Voting in Times of Crisis: From Opting Out to Regaining a Voice The Political Consequences of the Economic Downturn The Rise of Populism and the Claim of Representing the Poor Economic Adversity, Populist Supply and Turnout: An Uncertain Relationship References Conclusion References

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Appendix

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Index

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3

Fig. 3.4

Trends of turnout in Europe. Period 1945–recent elections (Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance [IDEA]) Relative risk of voting in high and low socio-economic groups. EU-28 countries, 2002–2018 (Note Relative risk for income: period 2008–2018. Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9]) Turnout rates and turnout socio-economic gap (relative risk). EU-28 countries. Period 2008–2018 (Source European Social Survey 2008–2018 [round 4–9]) Relative risk of voting in high and low socio-economic groups, over time. EU-28 countries, 2002–2018 (Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9]. Data on income are available since 2008) Predicted turnout by level of socio-economic status, period and group of countries (Note Regression models include “voted in previous Parliamentary election” as dependent variable, socioeconomic status [SES] as regressor and gender, age, marital status, year and country type as control variables [year and country type are moderators respectively in the graph on the top and the graph on the bottom]. Source European Social Survey 2008–2018 [round 4–9])

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.5

Fig. 3.6

Fig. 3.7

Fig. 3.8

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

Relative risk of voting in employed stable, precarious and unemployed. EU-28 countries (Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9]) Marginal effects of occupational status as predictor of turnout in different groups of European countries (Note Regression models include “voted in previous Parliamentary election” as dependent variable, occupational condition as regressor and gender, age, education, year and country type as control variables [country type as moderator in the procedure margins]. Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9]) Relative risk of voting in stable employees, precarious and unemployed groups, over time. EU-28 countries (Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9]) Marginal effect of socio-economic status (SES) as predictor of turnout by level of relative deprivation. EU-28 countries (Note Regression models include “voted in previous Parliamentary election” as dependent variable, occupational condition as regressor and gender, age, education, year and country type as control variables [level of relative deprivation as moderator in the procedure margins ]. Source European Social Survey 2014 [round 8]) Turnout evolution in PIIGS countries and EU-15 high-income countries in Parliamentary and European elections. 2000–2020 (Source ParlGov) Turnout rates (left axis) and percentages of votes for populist/Eurosceptic parties (right axis) in different groups of EU-28 countries, period 2000–2020 (Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance [IDEA]; ParlGov + PopuList) Variation (percentage points) in turnout rates and votes for populist/Eurosceptic parties. Period 2000–2009 vs 2010–2019. EU-28 countries (Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA); ParlGov + PopuList) Percentage of low socio-economic status voters among abstainers, voters for populist/Eurosceptic parties and other voters. EU-28 countries, 2008–2018 (Source ESS, round 4–9 [2008–2018])

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.5

Fig. 5.6

Predicted probabilities of non-voting and voting for populist/Eurosceptic parties by SES level in different EU countries (Note Predicted probabilities derive from multinomial regressions where dependent variable has three categories: “vote for populist/Eurosceptic party”, “non-vote”, “vote for other parties”. Figure in the left-hand panel contrast “vote for populist/Eurosceptic” vs “vote for other parties”, while comparison in the right-hand panel is between “non-vote” vs “vote for other parties”. Source ESS, round 4–9 [2008–2018]) Predicted probabilities of voting for populist/Eurosceptic parties and non-voting by level of socio-economic status among voters with different economic evaluations and political attitudes (Source ESS, round 4–9 [2008–2018])

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 2.4 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 4.1 Table 4.2

Table 4.3

Table 5.1 Table 5.2

Dates of universal male and female franchise in selected European countries Turnout rates in EU-15. Parliamentary elections, 1945–1970 Turnout rates in EU-28 countries. Elections 1980–2000 Turnout rates in EU-28 countries. Elections 2000–2020 Turnout rates by income, social class, education and relative risk. Period 2002–2018 Turnout rates by occupational condition, and relative risk Perceptions of social status and turnout, by group of countries Degree of electoral inclusion among different categories of voters. EU-28 countries Turnout rates by SES, turnout gap and strength of relationship (beta coefficient) in countries with different political and electoral characteristics. EU-28 countries Turnout rates by SES, turnout gap and strength of relationship (beta coefficient) in countries with different economic condition. EU-28 countries Socio-economic and political indicators of crisis in EU-28 and PIIGS countries Economic evaluations, blame attributions and negative political attitudes. EU-28 and PIIGS countries

14 19 25 34 53 66 73 86

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Table 5.3

Table 5.4

Table 5.5

Percentages of votes for populist and Eurosceptic parties in different groups of EU-28 countries and different periods Profiles of abstainers and voters for populist/Eurosceptic parties on demographic, socioeconomic dimensions and political attitudes. EU-28 countries Impact of personal economic conditions, evaluation on the state of economy and political trust on the probability of non-voting, voting for populist/Eurosceptic parties vs. voting for other parties. Multinomial logistic regressions, EU-28 countries. Beta coefficients (standard errors in parentheses)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract The initial chapter introduces the volume’s principal theme and explains its relevance to the ongoing debate in the literature, its topicality in public discussion, and the methodological implications of its study. By dealing with the question of the disparities in electoral participation and the dynamics of the deliberate exclusion of the more deprived sectors of society, we can gain an insight into the broader transformation of political parties, of politics in general and of the concept of representation in contemporary democracies. Keywords Turnout · Political inequalities · Centre-periphery

Twenty-first-century democracy was established in the name of participation. Thanks to the consolidation of democratic institutions in the post-war period, and to the development of new technologies during the transition to the new millennium, it has become easier for citizens to access the world of politics. Today’s voters exhibit a greater degree of political awareness and can use various tools with which to interact with candidates, acquire information on political actors, express their opinions, and above all, equip themselves with the basic instruments to vote consciously. All this has happened despite the fact that political parties © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Tuorto, Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0_1

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have radically changed their organisational arrangements, seen their social rootedness significantly weakened, and lost their capacity to represent broad sections of society and be something which voters can identify with in the long term (Katz and Mair 1994; Dalton and Wattenberg 2000; Ignazi 2017). Regardless of this favourable scenario, democracy has been increasingly under challenge in the form of the growing instability of government and the party system, greater criticism of politics in the form of both radical protests and deep disaffection. Since the 1980s, and increasingly so after the global crisis of 2008, a large number of citizens in many Western European democracies have become less trustful of politicians, political parties and democratic institutions, to the point of delegitimising the act of voting itself (Dalton 2004; Pharr and Putnam 2000; Norris 2011). When coupled with evidence of different approaches to partisan politics, and new patterns of political participation, this would suggest that the ideals of a democratic political culture are changing significantly. The profound transformation of political behaviour and attitudes has also altered the consensus on which democratic life is based, and has brought to the fore the problem of participative inequality, that is, the different ability of social groups to keep in touch with conventional political actors and institutions and to react to changing conditions by adapting their relationship (and the quality of the relationship) with politics (Lutz and Marsh 2007; Bartels 2008). Voting remains the most expected form of political behaviour in Western democracies, and in nearly all such countries those who do vote represent the majority of peoples entitled to do so, at least in firstorder elections. The average voter generally has a variety of different resources, information and stimuli, and this translates into the probability of his/her turning out to vote. However, in a situation characterised by people’s freedom to vote or not, there will always be a certain share of the electorate who abstain, as a result of unconscious processes or as the effect of deliberate choices. This becomes a problem when the share of nonvoters increases from one election to the next. In particular, the effects of low turnout below the natural limit may be significant when certain sectors of the population, identified by specific socio-demographic or socio-political characteristics, refrain from choosing those who are going to govern them, and thus from submitting their own demands to the ruling class.

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In his well-known article Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma, Lijphart (1997) raised the question of the weak inclusiveness of voting in the presence of very high, increasing rates of abstention, and the need to adopt institutional mechanisms capable of boosting voter turnout, to the point where a democratic constraint like compulsory voting gets introduced. Lijphart’s underlying assumption is that conventional political participation is shrinking and that this will lead to a deficit of democracy and to incomplete citizenship. In Lijphart’s view, the problem was not how many participate, but rather who participated, that is, which electors actually voted, and whether such dynamics result in the under-representation (within Parliament, on the political agenda) of the most economically disadvantaged groups. This concern was not always a priority issue in academic debate. With reference to the case of the USA, Lipset (1960) saw as plausible a scenario of a low-turnout democracy which, having enjoyed success almost unchallenged, could afford to generate forms of democratic relaxation—a sort of apathy from well-being—among wealthy, fully integrated, loyal categories of citizens, in regard to a system capable of functioning almost automatically, and of managing social conflict without producing any deep divisions within that system. According to Lipset, class solidarity and politically virtuous forms of behaviour such as voting, proved necessary during those phases of history, and in those national contexts, dominated by scarcity and/or strong competition between rival social groups; in mature democracies, on the other hand, the achievement of generalised economic well-being, and the acquisition of civil rights and citizenship, effectively freed the masses from the need to cooperate for the collective good. Fifty years after its formulation, the optimistic reading of a democratic process no longer requiring citizens’ participation, has been challenged by the opposing problem. The main risk inherent in contemporary politics is not only that few sections of the population participate, but that they are mainly or exclusively selected groups of those better-equipped and more central, in terms of resources, interests and motivations, while the spread of socioeconomic hardship, together with the exhaustion of the inclusive action of the political parties, makes participatory investment difficult for the most problematic sections of the electorate. Underprivileged groups have become increasingly marginalised from mainstream politics. As Evans and Tilley have suggested, given that political decisions are no longer based on social class, we have in fact seen increased class-based non-voting, with

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people in working-class jobs, together with the temporarily employed and the unemployed, now much less likely to turn out to vote (Evans and Tilley 2017). The book deals with participatory inequalities in the context of voting, and in particular with how they redefine, in the face of increasing socioeconomic and socio-territorial inequalities, the decline in the welfare state’s redistributive mechanisms, and access to regular, continuous employment. In a post-democratic scenario, where national governments hand over power to the global processes of the economy (Crouch 2004; Mouffe 2005), the political elites have become self-referential, and the crisis is perceived as an act of betrayal by the ruling class (Mair 2013), most political parties find it hard (or do not consider it very useful) to dedicate their energies to helping the more disadvantaged groups; the latter, although larger than they were in the past, remain fragmented and electorally weak due to the fact that they are unwilling to establish long-term links with those collective actors who would like to, or could, represent them. From the voters’ perspective, there has been a fragmentation of the political experiences of involvement, as a consequence of the more general process of individualisation (Beck 1992). Unlike the significant degree of mobilisation during the epoch of mass parties, contemporary participation is increasingly organised outside of the traditional representative institutions and requires a greater endowment of individual skills which are not equally available to all sections of the population, and consequently the less well-equipped sections of the electorate are at greater risk of marginalisation. New forms of direct action are even more dependent on the skills and resources offered by social status, and as such may widen the participation gap between lower-status groups and higher-status individuals (Dalton and Klingemann 2007; Dalton 2017). My study intends to re-examine certain key issues that have emerged following the decline of Fordism and mass parties, and that have been significantly exacerbated in the recent years of global recession. These issues include: the relationship between socio-economic status and political exclusion; the participation gap between privileged and underprivileged groups; the question of whether the disadvantage at individual level is correlated to that at aggregate level. Are the current political parties still able to represent powerless voters? What is the role of each nation’s institutions in promoting or discouraging the political participation of the more disadvantaged groups? Moreover, is there an alternative to electoral demobilisation, and if so, for which disaffected voters?

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In an attempt to provide satisfactory answers to these questions, the book examines the various issues concerning electoral inequality, through a combination of theoretical reflections and empirical analyses based on existing data gathered at both aggregate and individual levels. Chapter 2 introduces the theoretical debate on democracy and discusses the question of political representation in constituting democratic practices, with particular reference to the patterns of inclusion and exclusion of disadvantaged groups in the electoral arena. It retraces the steps taken during the twentieth century towards the progressive extension of universal suffrage, and the affirmation and rooting of mass parties, as well as their decline, as aggregators of collective participation. The chapter points to international evidence of declining voter turnout in the advanced industrial democracies as an expression of a “democratic deficit”, a crisis of the legitimacy of political institutions (Klingemann and Fuchs 1995; Pharr and Putnam 2000). Finally, the chapter analyses the dynamics of voter turnout over the last two decades, during a period in which the acceleration of globalisation has had a dramatic impact on the political sphere, and the question of the political representation of the disadvantaged classes has taken on even greater importance. Chapter 3 offers a detailed analysis of the differences in turnout rates resulting from the individual characteristics of voters. In this section of the book I analyse the effect of socio-economic status, in an attempt to try and establish whether the most disadvantaged sections of the electorate actually participate less, how this relationship varies, and whether the participation gap between economically advantaged and economically disadvantaged voters has widened in correspondence to the general decline in turnout rates. The added value of this chapter consists in its focus on the changes in the labour market and on the effects that the economic crisis has had on the characteristics of employment, by making it more fluid, consequently conditioning the relationship between voters, politics and voting. The chapter also deals with the closely related question of perceptions, by looking at the dimension of the subjective status inconsistency and the role of relative deprivation. Chapter 4 offers an overview of the macro institutional and contextual factors that may motivate underprivileged groups to vote or discourage them from doing so. I examine the procedures governing the course of elections in a given country, such as the registration requirements and the policy instruments determining who is entitled to vote and who is not (as non-eligible residents or non-resident citizens). The chapter also

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evaluates the impact of institutional and political variables such as the electoral system, the existence of compulsory voting, the importance of elections and the number of parties involved; all of these elements may influence the perceived importance of voting. Another set of variables examined here concern the characteristics of welfare systems, that is, the capacity they have to promote forms of inclusiveness for the more disadvantaged groups of individuals, but also to produce stigmatising societal perceptions of the poor or the socially excluded. The final chapter seeks to place the question of participatory inequalities within a broader interpretative framework that considers the evolution of the party supply and the choices available to electors in a period of economic crisis. It focuses on the challenge launched by populist parties, and more generally by those new parties taking advantage of the emerging establishment/anti-establishment cleavage, and legitimising themselves as alternatives to the globalised left, while re-politicising social and economic inequalities and social questions in general. The chapter aims to establish whether the presence of a strong supply of anti-establishment parties has curbed declining voter turnout, and if so, whether it has done so by getting the most deprived social groups to vote once again. The present volume investigates the underlying reasons for contemporary participatory inequality, the form and entity of this inequality in relation to the institutional constraints regulating access to the electoral arena, and the socio-cultural changes that have altered both the class nature and the territorial basis of voting behaviour. At the same time, here I reflect on the effects that the intensification of these processes could have, if left uncontrolled, on the stability of the democratic system as such and on the individual lives of voters deprived of political-institutional representation and left with the choice between protesting (through existing parties or through organisations outside of the party system) and becoming totally detached from politics.

References Bartels, Larry M. 2008. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Toward a New Modernity. London: Sage. Crouch, Colin. 2004. Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity.

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Dalton, R. 2004. Democratic Challenges, Democratic Choices: The Erosion of Political Support in the Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Dalton, Russell J. 2017. The Participation Gap: Social Status and Political Inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalton, Russell J., and Hans D. Klingemann, eds. 2007. The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalton, Russell J., and Martin Wattenberg, eds. 2000. Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, Geoffrey, and James Tilley. 2017. The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ignazi, Piero. 2017. Party and Democracy: The Uneven Road to Party Legitimacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair, eds. 1994. How Parties Organize: Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies. London: Sage. Klingemann, Hans D., and Dieter Fuchs. 1995. Citizens and the State. Oxford: Oxford Press. Lijphart, A. 1997. “Unequal Participation: Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 1996.” American Political Science Review 91 (1): 1–14. Lipset, Seymour M. 1960. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Doubleday: Garden City. Lutz, Georg, and Michael Marsh. 2007. “Introduction: Consequences of Low Turnout.” Electoral Studies 26 (3): 539–547. Mair, Peter. 2013. Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London: Verso. Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. Hove: Psychology Press. Norris, Pippa. 2011. Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pharr, Susan J., and Robert D. Putnam, eds. 2000 [2018]. Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Voter Turnout and Imperfect Inclusivity: A Democratic Problem

Abstract One of the key viewpoints from which to observe the question of electoral participation in western democracies is that of the historical, social and political conditions that have rendered voting an inclusive or exclusive experience. This chapter shall provide an overview of the changes during the twentieth century that led first of all to universal suffrage, then to the establishment of mass parties as the activators of mobilisation for a broad section of the population, and finally to the decline of those parties. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the dynamics of voter participation over the course of the last decade, during which the effects of globalisation and the economic crisis on the relationship between citizens and the institutional political sphere have emerged more clearly. Keywords Political inclusion · Representation · Enfranchisement · Cleavages · Post-democracy

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Tuorto, Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0_2

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Democracy and Representation: The Theoretical Debate Western representative institutions initially emerged around the idea that the citizens of a given area choose the politicians who are to govern them, and that said politicians duly undertake to respond to the demands they receive, and to take care of their community’s interests. An open dialogue between citizens and their elected representatives is created through representation and elections. Society’s various projects compete with one another, and a country’s political parties ask citizens to express their judgement in this regard. Nevertheless, it is also reasonable to assume that politicians are more likely to respond to those who chose them, that is, those who voted (Franko et al. 2016). Consequently, in order for the democratic ideal to take root, the political process must take equal account of the interests and demands of all citizens, with no forms of exclusion or inequality permitted (Dahl 1989). Each person must have the same right of participation in collective decisions, and thus in the selection of their institutional representatives. Clearly, such rights are not guaranteed if any citizens are denied a voice, due to their exclusion, on legal or private grounds, from access to the socio-cultural tools required to choose between different political options. Electors’ participation in the collective rite of voting is a key aspect of democratic life. Various different positions have emerged with regard to the question of the extent and intensity of citizens’ involvement in political life (Clarke et al. 2004). One early position taken up in this regard was that of the theory of elite competition or the realist school (Schumpeter 1942; Sartori 1965), according to which representative democracy is inevitably aristocratic and meritocratic, unlike the idea of government by ordinary citizens (Manin 1997) whose involvement in the construction of political action represents the expression of utopian demands (Urbinati and Warren 2008). This elite competition theory assumes that citizens do not possess adequate information, and that they base their decisions on emotional ideas, prejudices and irrational impulses, which prevent them from formulating a measured view of things. The limited involvement of electors, who seem fundamentally extraneous to political affairs and to possess very limited intellectual and moral capacities, is considered by this school of thought to be the necessary condition for governability, and ultimately for the stability of the democratic order (Held 1996, p. 197).

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According to this elitist view of representative democracy, ordinary citizens are offered little chance of actually participating in the political process. Public politics is left to those few with the necessary experience and expertise. Everyone else’s involvement should be limited to merely voting, that is, they should be granted the “right to periodically choose and authorise governments to act in their interests, and only have the right to replace one government with another, and thus safeguard themselves against the danger that governments become an immovable force” (ibid., p. 244). Basically speaking, the elitist school conceives democracy as a means of choosing, through elections, those who are to take the decisions, without electors having to concern themselves also with establishing which political questions are to be considered of greatest importance. Ordinary citizens merely benefit from the minimum requirements of liberal democracy: elections at regular intervals, equal voting rights, freedom of expression, association and access to information and the presence of a multi-party system (Dahl 1989, p. 37; Ferrin and Kriesi 2016, p. 5). As Pizzorno has observed, this form of democracy means that the electorate do not possess any real power of control, or exercise any pressure, over the representatives: “on election day, citizens do not go to choose their representatives, but merely to nominate a fixed number of functionaries they have no control over, and whose powers the same citizens are not aware of” (Pizzorno 2017, p. XXII). Unlike the elitist theory’s limited representation of public life and of politics’ transformational capacities, the theory of “participatory citizenship” (Pateman 1970; Macpherson 1977; Barber 1984), on the other hand, sees voting as a minimum expression of citizenship. The reason for this is that only full participation in civic-political life can result in responsible government. In order to survive and regenerate itself, democratic life requires a large number of active citizens who adopt a positive position and submit proposals to a country’s institutions. By doing so, they can get their interests onto the political agenda, thus encouraging a positive form of feedback between the governors and the governed. The theory of participatory citizenship overlaps to some extent with various ideas of democracy that emerged during the course of the twentieth century. For example, deliberative democracy theory (Habermas 1984; Rawls 1971; Dryzek 2002) focused on the formation of public opinion, and on those conditions guaranteeing broader forms of inclusion. This theory conceives the great limitation of representative democracy as being

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the replacement of popular self-government by oligarchical governments that exclude ordinary people from political life. In order to overcome the consequent disparity, representative democracy should be counterbalanced by forms of small-scale direct participation in the community’s political life (Pitkin 2004). This can be achieved through the attentive presence of citizens, thus permitting a better understanding of individual and public interests compared to that offered by simple consent and delegation (Urbinati 2006). Citizens should be consulted not only through voting mechanisms, but also in regard to the entire process leading up to the vote, and in particular during the establishment of the political agenda, and the discussion of options and arguments. This would constitute deliberation among equals (Landmore 2020). Like deliberative theory, direct democracy theory (Cheneval and El-Wakil 2018; Gastil and Richards 2013) also underlines the importance of measures designed to promote bottom-up initiatives, utilising referenda where necessary, in order to approve or reject individual decisions, and to offer citizens direct control over the legislative process. The democratic theory’s acceptance of broader forms of participation marks a greater focus on the micro dimension and on individual agency. Participation is understood to be a voluntary act; a way of expressing political positions and individual opinions beyond the limited framework of the electoral process. It entails the direct involvement of citizens in multiple consultations or extra-institutional political actions. Where it underscores the limitations of an exclusively electoral form of democracy, this approach, however, tends to avoid or undervalue the issue of representation and voting, which are considered of little importance, or in any case less important than other occasions for participation. This means that the question of elections is left to those theories that consider democracy as the mere selection and organisation of the governing class. Another equally important question deriving from a broader understanding of participation, is that regarding access. The promotion of other forms of participation could weaken the already fragile election process, and accentuate inequality among citizens. Beyond the voting booth, the expression of personal political ideas requires a greater number of skills and capacities than when simply voting. Other forms of participation beyond the electoral sphere, and also the deliberative process in which individuals may get involved, are more demanding in terms of the time required, and could consequently be accessible to more privileged social groups only (Verba et al. 1995). As Dalton has pointed out: “nearly all can

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vote, and most do. But very few citizens can (or do) file a lawsuit, make requests under a Freedom of Information Act, attend an Environmental Impact Review hearing, or attend local planning meetings” (Dalton et al. 2003, p. 262). This risk attributed to the more difficult forms of democratic participation, should in truth also apply to the relationship with conventional politics. While voting itself is in fact a simple enough act, how is it possible to guarantee that everyone (or at least a majority of electors) exercises their right to vote, and are not prevented from participating, or dissuaded from doing so by their own disinterest or the belief that their voting is a complete waste of time? Furthermore, how can all citizens be guaranteed political representation? In other words, how can they not only possess the capacity to knowingly choose who to vote for, but also have parties to vote for who will listen to their demands? These questions call for a detailed overview of when, and how, electoral democracy was established during the course of the twentieth century, and of the role that political parties played in promoting participation through elections.

The Management of Participation in the Age of Mass Parties For a long period in history, democracy was marked by the battle for universal suffrage. Elections have historically played a key part as the principal means by which people’s aspirations have influenced the policymaking process in capitalist democracies (Skocpol and Amenta 1986). Nevertheless, the removal of restrictions on voting eligibility proved to be a long, complicated process that was played out in various stages. The first important period of democratisation was seen in Europe between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. This period witnessed the gradual removal of the existing restrictions on voting eligibility based on wealth, education, religion and race. As a result, all adult males were gradually included in the electorate. The first major European nation to grant voting rights to all males was France, in 1848, followed by Germany, while in the rest of Europe this goal was achieved between the final years of the nineteenth century and the onset of the First World War (Table 2.1). The significant extension of democracy to larger sections of the population accompanied a series of technical improvements of the systems of representation, which led to the application of less unequal mechanisms capable of guaranteeing compliance with

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Table 2.1 Dates of universal male and female franchise in selected European countries

Finland Norway Denmark Russia Poland Austria Germany Ireland United Kingdom Sweden Luxemburg Netherlands Belgium US Spain Portugal France Serbia Italy Greece Switzerland

Male franchise

Female franchise

1907 1900 1918 1917 1918 1897 1848 1918 1918 1909 1919 1918 1894 1870 1869 1911 1848 1888 1913 1844 1848

1906 1913 1915 1917 1918 1918 1918 1918 1918 1919 1919 1919 1919 1920 1931 1931 1944 1945 1945 1952 1971

Source Bertocchi (2011), Caramani (2000)

the principle of one vote per person, and the transformation of votes into parliamentary seats (Bartolini 1996). During the second wave of democratisation, which affected many European countries in the first thirty years of the twentieth century, women were enfranchised, thus meaning that the entire population of Europe was now eligible to vote. Finland was the first country to extend the franchise to women (in 1906), followed by Norway (1913) and Denmark (1915), and then other European countries during, or immediately after, the First World War, following considerable pressure from the suffragette movement (Rubio-Marín 2014). In other countries, such as France and Italy, this barrier was only overcome some 25–30 years later, at the end of the Second World War. From then onwards, universal suffrage became a rather generalised phenomenon. The last two countries to grant the vote to women were Greece (in 1952) and Switzerland (in 1971), during what can be considered the third wave of democratisation that was

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to lead to the overthrow of the remaining European dictatorships, and the establishment of universal suffrage (Ferrin and Kriesi 2016; Paxton 2000). The achievement of universal suffrage coincided with the establishment of more egalitarian policies in general. The real point, however, was to see whether the working class, having obtained the right to vote, would actually exercise that right, and whether that class was to be part of the new democratic experiences emerging at the time. Political mobilisation was rendered more tangible through the intervention of mass parties, who gathered and channelled workers’ demands on a large scale. These parties were established at the end of the nineteenth century. However, it was not until after the Second World War that they managed to fully embody, in completely democratic forms, the new opportunities granted to citizens to experiment with political participation in a democratic setting, by expressing their needs and expectations through the voting booth. During this phase of democratisation, and aided by strong economic growth, political inclusion also implied socio-economic inclusion for large sections of the working class. It was the expansion of the State’s actions, in fact, that permitted—through the formulation of the famous Marshall Plan—the achievement of a form of full citizenship, whereby the social rights deriving from the welfare system, rendered previously acquired civil and political rights effective, thus freeing citizens from a situation of deprivation. For around twenty years after the Second World War, political participation in Europe was channelled through the various countries’ political parties, and was identified with activism and voting (Katz and Mair 1994). The parties were a fundamental means by which people could participate in public life, and as such they developed enormously within the space of just a few decades. During the era of Europe’s dictatorships, the parties of total integration came to the fore (Neumann 1956); their ambitious aim was to radically transform society through the complete commitment and obedience of their members. After the Second World War, the mass party model took on new significance and a new central role within a context characterised by the emergence of political and cultural liberalism, the politicisation of social cleavages, and the intensification of participatory demands from the more marginal sections of the population previously excluded from the political scene (Duverger 1954). The action that led to the spread of economic democracy and the extension of the welfare state, was mirrored, as we know, by the existence of deep cleavages in society. The theory of cleavages, originally formulated

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by Lipset and Rokkan (1967) and further developed by Rokkan (1970), sees national party systems and the support for such systems as an expression of underlying social conflict or division between: the State and the Church; centre and periphery; rural areas and towns; and employers and blue-collar workers. These divisions in society acted, in other words, as external forces capable of feeding lasting rifts, such that they impacted the structure of the party system and the workings of democracy (Hooghe and Marks 2018). It was during this very phase of partisan politics that political parties established stable links with the electorate, the members of which identified with one or other of such parties, and the extensive inclusion of the masses came about through their voting at elections. The diffusion, relevance and role of the mass parties was particularly important in terms of their channelling participation, extending the scope of activism, and contributing to the subaltern classes’ political education and integration; to the extent where they promoted forms of inclusion, including that at the social level, thanks to the impetus they received from the grassroots, and managed to impose such inclusion on the political sphere. The parties’ actions together with those of workers’ organisations and of other large organisations present nationwide, such as the Church, aimed to bring the various components of society back to the electoral arena, and to keep them there. Such components included the factory workers and the working classes as a whole. The key to triggering this participation was that of ideological polarisation. Socialist and confessional parties embodied this approach, being the only political families together with the British conservatives that reached a mass dimension in Europe (Ignazi 2017, p. 123). The socialists were an expression of the political mobilisation of the working class, and they succeeded, more than anyone else, in enhancing the value of membership, by establishing a sound relationship with the trade unions and other collateral organisations capable of projecting the party’s political agenda from the electoral sphere to other spheres (Duverger 1954, pp. 70–72). Following the example of the socialist model, parties that were not on the political left—nationalist parties and, more frequently, confessional parties—adopted similar forms of arrangement, and tried to incorporate their supporters into official organisations by broadening the membership base, thus adapting to the mass party model (Duverger 1954; Katz and Mair 1994). Each large party not only boasted a considerable number of members, but was also organised into local units spread across the country and constantly politically active. In this phase, political parties could count

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on numerous, democratically elected representatives at both local and national levels, and it pursued political education and training objectives (Heidar 2006; Allern and Pedersen 2007). Activism took multiple forms, including official membership, the provision of electoral campaign support and attendance at party meetings. Each activist was part of a much larger family which influenced personal life and opportunities (Manoukian 1968). Being a member of a party was considered to be the best way of meeting electoral demands (voting, counting electors during canvassing campaigns), of increasing organisational resources (through voluntary work and networking initiatives), and finally, of increasing the party’s power. During this period, the experience of affiliation was particularly widespread: in the early 1960s, there were more than 4 million party members in Italy, over 3 million in the UK, and over 1 million in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Party members represented a considerable percentage of the electorate, in some cases as much as 20% (Katz and Mair 1994). These figures reflected what was almost constant growth from the end of the Second World War onwards, and this upward trajectory continued into the 1970s before eventually coming to an end in the 1980s. The channelling of the more marginal sections of the population’s participatory impetus was also the result of the parties’ ability to offer new forms of identification to those masses that had previously been excluded from the political system. It enabled them to have their partial, partisan interests represented within the State (Pizzorno 1993). The parties operated as channels for the transmission of people’s views to the political policy sphere (Dalton and Wattenberg 2002), and in doing so the leftwing forces in particular stood out for the greater political importance they gave to social class. The broad debate on the class vote (Nieuwbeerta 1996; Evans 1999; Manza et al. 1995) focused for some considerable time on analysing those conditions which over time, and in numerous countries, had made the political integration of manual workers possible through their special relationship with left-wing parties. In the decades following the Second World War, the composition of the party system substantially shaped the nature of State intervention and conditioned economic and social policies. Social democracy managed to guide workers’ movements towards the development of the welfare state system, and led them to fight against market inequalities (Castles 1982; Korpi 2018; Huber et al. 1993). This institutionalisation of the conflict had a standardising effect on the way people voted. In particular within the world

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of work, citizens of a particular social class tended to form a positive connection with the party that defended the interests of that class (Butler and Stokes 1974). As well as having a social basis, the class vote also possessed a clear spatial nature. For a long time, the existence of territorially circumscribed organisations guaranteed the construction of lasting relations and the stabilisation of social and political affiliation. Much social activity and interaction operated on a local basis, and such interaction acted as a channel for the informal transmission of group rules. Socially homogeneous local units (the neighbourhood, the district, the community) populated by long-term residents, made it possible to express voting preferences along class lines, thus strengthening collective participation and party affiliation (Butler and Stokes 1974; Huckfeldt and Sprague 1987; Harrop et al. 1991). As a result of all this, the problem of participatory inequality was of little numerical relevance at this stage and, when present, it was handled by the parties, who were capable of strengthening their local presence if necessary in order to facilitate the political socialisation of new electors. The rigid, stable nature of the socio-economic system during Fordism, the sound reasons for being a party member, and the close relationship between the electors and the parties, had clear effects on political behaviour at the time. So it should come as no surprise to discover that the percentage of the population going to the poll booths during the long successful era of the mass parties, was particularly high. During the period between the 1940s and the 1970s, the average voter turnout stood at around 84–85%, and this positive trend only began to wane at the end of the 1970s, with a more pronounced downward trend from the 1980s onwards. If we look at individual countries, in some such as Italy, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, voter turnout during those peak years stood at over 90%1 In other countries, although voter turnout was not quite as high, it still ranged between 70 and 80% over the period as a whole (Table 2.2).

1 The extremely high levels of voter turnout were partly the result of compulsory voting

in certain cases. Legal provisions on voting of a more or less binding nature, had been introduced in the following European countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Greece, the Netherlands (until 1970), Switzerland and Austria (one canton and individual regions). In Italy, penalties were officially introduced for those failing to vote, although they were never applied. For more detailed information, see the website: www.idea.int.

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Table 2.2 Turnout rates in EU-15. Parliamentary elections, 1945–1970 First period after WWII (1945–49)

1950s

1960s

1970s

Diff. p.p. 1970s–1950s

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom

95.5 92.4 86.0 76.6 80.8 78.5 53.5 74.2 90.7 91.9 93.4 – – 82.7 72.6

95.3 93.1 82.1 76.5 80.0 86.9 75.8 74.3 93.8 91.9 95.4 – – 78.8 80.2

93.8 91.3 87.3 85.0 76.6 87.1 82.2 74.2 92.8 89.6 95.0 – – 86.4 76.6

92.3 93.0 87.7 78.2 76.5 90.9 80.3 76.5 92.3 89.5 83.5 87.5 72.5 90.4 73.7

−3.0 −0.1 +5.6 +1.7 −3.5 +4.0 +4.5 +2.2 −1.5 −2.4 −11.9 – – +11.6 −6.5

Total (mean)

84.6

84.9

86.0

84.3

−0.6

Note There were no national elections in Spain for 1946–1976, Greece for 1965–1973, and Portugal for 1946–1974. The data on registered voters is not available for Greece in 1946–1950 Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)

The aforesaid extremely high voter turnout occurred at a time when party membership was also very common. Identification with the mass parties, and the persistence of class voting, guaranteed high levels of participation also among the working classes. Voting for a socialist party and being a manual worker were closely correlated everywhere, albeit to varying degrees from one country to another. The strongest correlation between the two was to be found in the UK and Scandinavia, and was particularly high both during the period 1945–1960 and in the years from 1961 to 1970 (Nieuwbeerta 1996, p. 53). Moreover, where social class was not particularly relevant (as in the case of Ireland or the Netherlands), other factors of identification contributed towards binding the majority of electors at elections. This was not the case in the USA, however, where economic divides and restrictions on voting continued to exclude large swathes of the poorer sections of the population, even during the period of economic growth and democratic consolidation (Fox Piven and Cloward 1977, 1988).

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After the Golden Age: Streamlined Parties and New Inequalities The socio-economic arrangements and the party system that had driven considerable levels of electoral participation during the immediate postwar decades, began to be radically transformed from the late 1970s onwards. It was the mass party that now entered a period of crisis. It could no longer preserve its close ties with the corresponding social class or group. From an organisational viewpoint, the mass party with its great many members was replaced by a party dominated by governing groups, while in ideological terms, political parties had now become “catch-all” entities deprived of their traditional support, but particularly adept at generating support among diverse segments of the population (Kirchheimer 1966). The internal reorganisation of political parties thus marked the weakening of the close link between social class and voting behaviour which for a long time had guaranteed the stability of voting. The strong shaping of the social and economic divide that for many years had characterised the European political system, had “thawed” (Särlvik and Crewe 1983) following the economic changes leading to the emergence of new social groupings and the increased fragmentation of the middle class (Franklin 1985; Kriesi 1998). Another important factor that contributed towards this development was the intensification of residential instability as a result of processes of social mobility (Teixeira 1992; Campbell 2006), which loosened the ties holding communities together, and thus also the workplace relationships within which the majority of political activity took place (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993). Consequently, all of these changes favoured the detachment of large sectors of the population, who had previously been party members and active in public life, but whose ties with such had now loosened considerably. The literature on this question points to a clear decline in class voting in the major European nations, from the early 1980s onwards. This was the case in the UK, Germany and also in the Scandinavian countries (Evans 1999). Lane and Ersson (1991, p. 94) compared two decades (1950–1960 and 1970–1980), and discovered that there had been a weakening of the correlation between social class and voting behaviour in 9 western nations. Knutsen (2004) confirmed this decline in class voting between 1975 and 1997, albeit with the exception of two nations, Denmark and the Netherlands (2004, p. 236). A generalised decline in

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class voting was also the conclusion reached by Nieuwbeerta (1996), who discovered a negative trend in a total of 18 of the 20 countries analysed. During this period characterised by the weakening of one of the resilient traditional cleavages, the socialist parties saw a radical change in the sociodemographic characteristics of their membership, with party members now coming from diverse social classes (Rennwald 2020). This finding is in line with the overall reduction in the number of people comprising the working class. Social, technological and political changes had rendered the traditional mass parties obsolete. Instead of being sought after, party membership was now viewed as a cost. Parties began to look to broadening their appeal, and they even offered non-members the opportunity to participate through lighter, less expensive forms of affiliation. One result of all this was a significant decline in party membership. The figures gathered by Van Biezen and colleagues (2012), and previously by Mair and Van Biezen (2001), clearly show that during the period from 1980 to the end of the century, the parties’ membership bases were gradually pulverised, and the proportion of people active within a political party was now minimal. Overall membership numbers fell significantly in nearly all of the European nations taken into consideration. They were down by 60% in France (−one million), 50% in Italy (−two million) and the UK (−800,000). In Scandinavia as well, party membership fell dramatically, in particular in Norway (−8 points in the membership/electorate [M/E] ratio, with a 50% fall in the number of members). Those parties heir to the old mass parties gradually discovered that they had less need for activists and members in order to compete electorally, and to mobilise and gather electors’ votes (Ignazi 1996; Allern and Pedersen 2007). The secularisation process, the expansion of education even among the more disadvantaged social classes (particularly among the younger generations), meant that the educational value of political action, which had accompanied the history of the mass parties, became more marginal, indeed superseded. The role of party activists inexorably declined in importance, becoming of symbolic/representative value and less capable of impacting parties’ internal dynamics and decision-making. In this regard, Katz and Mair (1995, 2009, 2018) have examined the institution of the “cartel party” as a new form of organisation led by an elite and dominated by diverse parliamentary groups. With the onset of this cartelisation, elections become oligopolistic. State agencies

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have increasingly penetrated the political party’s vital nerve centres. Political parties are now increasingly dependent upon subsidies and public funding. They have developed organisations that are less firmly rooted in civil society, and have instead become semi-state or public utility agencies (Katz and Mair 1995, p. 23), with a procedural function rather than one of representation and recruitment (Bartolini and Mair 2001, p. 336). Rather than being a means of mass integration of citizens in political life, the new parties emerging from this transformation tend to assume a more professional, streamlined structure, employing the services of external experts specialised in public relations and market research when called for. The difficulty of retaining increasingly demanding and heterogeneous militants has led to a shift in the organisations’ barycentre, away from the membership towards an opinion-oriented electorate; from a direct, binding form of communication to a model in which, as we shall see in the following section, preference is given to the importance of the media, and where recourse to manipulative methods prevails in the effort to understand what the public thinks. Electoral campaigns, on the other hand, tend to focus increasingly on the personalisation of politics and on the competing candidates (Wattenberg 1991; Karvonen 2009). The decline of mass organisations, class voting and party membership, has meant a radical change in the relationship between citizens and politics. The reduction in political parties’ grassroots structures has been mirrored by the growing disaffection of the electorate (Klingemann and Fuchs 1995). Unlike during the preceding period (from the late 1970s onwards) and, increasingly so, in the subsequent decade, citizens became more and more dissatisfied with their political representatives, and they began to display clear signs of alienation, cynicism, apathy and disillusionment. This development emerged within the broader context of the legitimacy crisis affecting political institutions in general. Such a crisis was to lead to a widening of the gap between perceived democratic performances and public expectations (Klingemann and Fuchs 1995; Pharr and Putnam 2000; Dalton and Wattenberg 2002). Reduced participation in traditional channels led to a massive dealignment trend, affecting voters who had been deprived of their anchorage to political parties in both intensive and extensive terms (Schmitt and Holmberg 1995; Rose and McAllister 1986). The sense of belonging to a political party—the psychological attachment or party identification— is one of the key factors affecting the way in which people vote. It is something that guides voters, acting as a general framework within which

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judgements and evaluations are organised. At the same time, this party identification constitutes a marker of the development in time of the emotional relationship between the political parties and the citizens of a nation (Budge et al. 2010; Bartle and Bellucci 2014). In terms of this relationship, decline was intense and uninterrupted, as various studies have shown (Dalton and Wattenberg 2002; Dalton 2016). It concerned not only the number of electors identified with a given political party, but also the strongly partisan. The downward trend was significant in major European nations such as the UK, France, Germany and Italy. Pharr and Putnam (2000, p. 16) discovered similar, persistent downward trends in 17 different democracies. The diminishing degree of party identification was accompanied by a growing sense of frustration among the electorate. This took the form of mistrust and a feeling of political ineffectiveness, and was also accompanied by the emergence of forms of antiparty sentiment. Such developments have been systematically identified by the national surveys conducted during the 1990s in countries like Italy (Bardi 1996) and the UK (Curtice and Jowell 1995), as well as in Scandinavia (Strøm and Svåsand 1997). Negative feelings of detachment, nevertheless, did not result solely in the decline of political activity as such. Various scholars have also pointed to the emergence, particularly among the new generations, of a model of critical citizenship (Norris 1999, 2002) which shows less interest in forms of political action directed from outside, but a greater interest in individualised, unconventional forms of participation. These reflections centre around Inglehart’s well-known assumption regarding the changes in political cultural values and the transition to post-materialism. According to Inglehart, citizens in contemporary democratic societies are increasingly less likely to support institutional hierarchies and large organisations, such as political parties, that are founded on duty and exclusive membership: this is because they intend to participate directly in public issues through forms of spontaneous, self-centred action no longer governed by ideology (Inglehart 1990, pp. 339–340) The “cognitive mobilization” scenario portrayed by Russell Dalton (1984, 2007) sees a discontinuity between old and new forms of participation. Within western electorates there has been for some time now an increase in the number of educated young people oriented towards post-materialist values, and possessing growing knowledge of political matters, who are capable of acquiring information and using that information to judge a government’s performance. Close attention to the world of politics offers

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citizens the means by which they can participate in full and express clear, cogent choices. At the same time, however, it also feeds a kind of malaise which can be transformed into protest against the entire party system, or against specific political forces and their positions in regard to certain questions. This is why better educated, interested, well-informed citizens tend to be those most dissatisfied with the performance of governments, and the most inclined to protest against those governments. The wave of criticism against traditional politics has resulted in a gradual, generalised decline in turnout, and in the emergence of new parties, independent candidates and less highly organised collective actors. In terms of electoral preferences, on the other hand, there has been an increase in more individualised, volatile voting centred on specific issues (Budge and Farlie 1983; Thomassen 2005). Nevertheless, the dimension of turnout is the one that best indicates the change witnessed, in virtue of its significant decrease during the 1980s, and in particular during the 1990s. This decline in electoral participation has affected all European countries, and more generally the western democracies as a whole (Blais 2000; Wattenberg 2002; Franklin 2004). Data reported in Table 2.3 and Fig. 2.1 clearly reveal this trend. Average voter turnout in Europe (at Parliamentary elections) in the period 1970–1980 stood at around 85– 86%, which was the maximum value ever reached in the case of many of the countries concerned. This figure remained stable at 84% in the following decade, but fell further to 77% during the course of the 1990s. In the period 1980–1990, the decline in voter turnout was particularly pronounced in Portugal (−12.8 percentage points), Austria (−7.8), Germany (−7.7) and the Netherlands (−7.5); a significant increase was recorded in Spain alone. As far as regards elections for the European Parliament, the decline in voter turnout was of a similar entity (−5.6 p.p. compared with −6.5 in Parliamentary elections), despite the point of departure in (1979 European first elections) being considerably lower than that of the first-order elections of more than 20 percentage points. In addition to this downward trend characterising the EU-15 countries, as from the 1990s a similar negative trend was witnessed among the new democracies of Eastern Europe; this was to continue into the new millennium, in particular with regard to European elections (see Table 2.3 and Fig. 2.1). These profound changes, the main characteristics of which have been set out above, contributed towards redefining the very meaning of voting. Once a moral obligation—the expression of an ideological political culture

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Table 2.3 Turnout rates in EU-28 countries. Elections 1980–2000 Parliamentary elections

European elections

1980s

1990s Diff. p.p. 1990s–1980s

1980s

1990s

Diff. p.p. 1990s–1980s

Austria Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherland Poland Portugal Romania Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden United Kingdom

91.5 93.8 – – 95.2 – 87.2 – 73.9 71.8 87.3 83.2 – 72.7 88.9 – – 88.1 95.4 83.5 – 78.0 – – – 73.4 89.1 74.1

83.7 91.5 72.7 76.3 92.2 82.8 84.3 68.1 67.4 68.4 79.6 79.6 63.7 67.2 85.5 78.7 66.6 87.4 96.2 76.0 47.7 65.2 77.3 85.2 79.8 77.6 85.0 74.6

−7.8 −2.3 – – −3.0 − −2.9 – −6.5 −3.4 −7.7 −3.6 – −5.5 −3.4 – – −0.7 +0.8 −7.5 – −12.8 − − − +4.2 −4.1 +0.5

– 91.4 – – – – 49.3

58.6 90.9 – – – – 51.7

– −0.5 – – – – +2.4

– 52.8 59.5 80.3 – 57.9 81.8 – − 88.1 – 49.2 – 61.8 – – – 61.6 – 34.5

43.9 49.7 52.6 71.7 – 47.1 71.7 – – 87.9 – 32.9 – 37.7 – – – 61.1 40.2 30.2

– −3.1 −6.9 −8.6 – −10.8 −10.1 – – −0.2 – −16.3 – −24.1 – – – −0.5 − −4.3

Total

83.7

77.2

−6.5

58.7

53.1

−5.6

Note European elections 1980s: 1984 and 1989; 1990s: 1994 and 1999 Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)

binding upon the entire electorate—going to the polling stations became one of a variety of possible options available. With the declining presence of political parties in society, electors became more reluctant to exercise their voting rights, also because voting was seen as less of a duty than it had been before (Blais and Rubenson 2013, p. 112). At the same time,

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90.0 85.0 80.0 75.0 70.0 65.0 60.0

Eu15

PIIGS

EU-15 high-income

EU-28 late comers

EU-28

1945-49

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Fig. 2.1 Trends of turnout in Europe. Period 1945–recent elections (Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance [IDEA])

abstaining from voting has taken on the significance of a legitimate expression of personal convictions; it has become a means of flagging up the imperfect workings of the mechanism of representation, or more polemically, of showing a person’s hostility towards, or dissatisfaction with, the actions of politicians and institutions. The behaviour of the electorate during the phase of withdrawal of the mass parties can be read in a number of different ways. One particularly significant consequence of the decline in voter turnout is the increase in participatory inequality. Going back to the concerns expressed by Lijphart (1997) mentioned in Chapter 1, the section of the population that lost the most ground during the transitional phase was that comprising, in fact, those electors less well-equipped from a cognitive perspective to remain in touch with political developments; those persons whose participation was connected to political habits, symbols and traditional ideals, and who were unable to cope with the reduced input from the political parties concerned. For a large percentage of the working class, and for older voters in general, the end of the mass parties corresponded to a weakening of the stimuli received, of the social and political channels of identification by means of which they had managed to perform the simple act of voting. In the absence of adequate inner resources or a mobilising

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impetus from others, the manifestation of their dissatisfaction prevailed. Moreover, the question of the relationship between social centrality and voting behaviour has been examined at length in the literature, both in regard to the case of the USA (Milbrath and Goel 1977; Verba et al. 1995), and from a cross-national perspective (Verba et al. 1978). Nevertheless, subsequent studies have confirmed the existence of a significant, increasing turnout gap between different socio-economic categories, with an average difference between the highest income quintile and the lowest income quintile of as much as 20 percentage points.2 In addition to the image of increasing abstention as the consequence of the withdrawal from elections of groups previously integrated into politics, there is now another question concerning diverse social dynamics and classes. The ground lost by the weaker members of the electorate is a process that is compatible with certain changes to the political parties concerned; however, it alone does not account for the rise in voter abstention. With regard to this question, several years beforehand Richard Brody had pointed to the “puzzle of participation”, that is, to the unexpected fall in voter turnout despite improving education and other social conditions traditionally perceived as hindrances to access to the political sphere (Brody 1978, pp. 296–297). In order to overcome this paradox, a second category of abstaining electors needs to be taken into consideration, in addition to the hard core of peripheral, generally apathetic sections of the electorate. This second category is composed of socially central, integrated, politically aware individuals whose abstaining from voting is not the result of their incapacity to decide who to vote for (“I don’t know who to vote for and there’s nobody telling me who to choose”), but represents a deliberate choice not to go to vote (“I could vote but I’ve decided not to”). The underlying reason for this decision to abstain lies is that such electors do not identify with any of the parties concerned, and do not believe that politicians offer the kind of responses that would induce them to go and vote. These are electors driven by their dissatisfaction with the state of things: they are intent on using abstention as a means with which to punish those parties they feel closest to, but who are perceived as largely ineffective.

2 These studies, based on data from the CSES (Comparative Study of Electoral Systems), are contained in the numerous reports published by the OECD, entitled How’s Life? Measuring Well Being.

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The literature has interpreted these two aspects of abstention—apathy and protest—in terms of the distinction between the social conditionabstention of those “out of the game” (Blais 2000; Mayer and Cautres 2004; Muxel 2007), and the intermittent abstention/voting of those still “in the game” who act strategically. While habitual voters, as the term suggests, have formed a habit of going to the polling station, and remain faithful to this position, intermittent voters are more easily influenced by contingent factors, that is, by their specific views of political parties, of the electoral campaign and of the leaders concerned. Selective abstention can be seen as a weapon used by part of the electorate to punish one of the competing parties, depending on the circumstances, thus affecting the outcome of the election. This interpretation of the problem has led to the introduction, in analyses of voter turnout, of reflections on the protest vote, first of all in terms of the “vote with the boot” (Van der Eijk and Franklin 1996), and then in that of the populist vote, which shall be examined in greater detail later in the present work.

The Voters We Have Lost in a Global World Looking at the last two decades, and in particular at the period from the start of the economic recession in 2008 up until the present day, one can see the new, much more complex challenges that political parties have had to face, and the effects that these have had on citizens’ participation and choice of vote. The changes witnessed in this period have concerned various aspects of social and economic life, in addition to the political scenario. In some cases, we have witnessed the acceleration of ongoing processes, while in others there has been genuine discontinuity, leading to disruption, tension and stress for western democratic systems. With regard to this politically tumultuous period, certain scholars have introduced the concept of “post-democracy” in order to emphasise the transition to a completely new phase in history. This term “post-democracy” was first coined just before the end of the twentieth century, although it was not commonly used in mainstream scholarship until a decade later, following the publication of the work of the same name by Colin Crouch (2004). Post-democracy, understood as “government by experts” (Rancière 1995, 2005), refers to a trend marking the transition of modern democracies towards norms and practices similar to those that prevailed in pre-democratic times (Crouch 2004, p. 6). One of the characteristics of post-democracy is the decline of democratic processes which have

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traditionally operated within a national framework, but which are now situated in an indefinite space independent from popular sovereignty. Post-democracy coincides with the electors’ generalised feeling of a loss of control when they observe national governments struggling to manage resources that they had ably controlled in the past, to independently implement policies, and to safeguard public interests, in the presence of distant, not easily identifiable supranational entities (Crouch 2004). There is an underlying perception that citizens themselves count very little, and at the same time that politics has limited power and authority, and consequently bears increasingly less on everyday issues, insofar as it cannot deal with and resolve the questions concerned (Castells 2011). These critical observations regarding democracy have become increasingly significant since the onset of the recent economic crisis. However, the cultural background concerned goes back some way further, and is rooted in the reflections on what has been labelled the “risk society”. Ulrich Beck (1992) was one of the first scholars to use this expression when referring to the transition from a society ideally based on equality, to one preoccupied with safety. This transition has also impacted the political sphere. While in the past, political parties and institutions were capable of controlling the market, at present governments have given up their direct responsibility for the management of the majority of public services, by subcontracting such out to third-party providers. From this point onwards, citizens have failed to see their demands translated into political action, since the subject responsible for such is no longer immediately identifiable. A similar transition was identified by Zygmunt Bauman, according to whom contemporary political institutions have failed in their attempt to render people’s lives less uncertain, since they no longer possess the collective safety nets with which to counter instability. They merely adopt palliative measures dealing with uncertainty at the private level only, thus leaving more general concerns unresolved. Through this strategy politics gives the impression of actually doing something, by acting in regard to questions which it seems capable of governing (personal safety, the family, personal goods), rather than facing the more complex, deeper processes deriving from globalisation (Bauman 1999, pp. 5–8). In reflections on post-democracy, the absence of control is attributed to the fact that even though parliaments continue to operate, politics and government have fallen into the hands of elite groups and the financially powerful major corporations, resulting in a situation in which “liberal

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oligarchies” govern (Zolo 1992). According to Schedler, there are two types of antipolitics. The first type removes politics, considering them dispensable given that society does not exist, there are no public goods, and individuals cannot be subjected to restrictions. The second type is the one that colonises, imposing its rationality by placing technocrats in positions of power, treating the human world as a natural thing and politics as a game of strategies (Schedler 1997, pp. 2–14). In this scenario, nondemocratic institutions, experts of various kinds, and mass media, become increasingly powerful. The “mediatisation” of politics, in particular, has had a powerful impact on the way the messages of leaders and parties are produced and received. In regard to this process of transformation, various scholars, following Robinson (1976), have spoken of “videomalaise” (Holtz-Bacha 1990) to indicate the negative effects of exposure to news in which anti-institutional themes, the negative aspects of candidates (incompetence, gaffes), personal rivalries and corruption are to the fore, at the expense of real problems and factual information about events. The main effect of videomalaise is to generate disaffection, superficiality, the rejection of politics (Hall Jamieson 1993; Mutz and Reeves 2005; Avery 2009). While the most careful observers can manage to benefit from the various sources of information required to take advantage of the stimulus received, the contrary is true of the less committed who, faced with a media-driven electoral campaign, end up shunning any electoral messages, becoming demotivated and abstaining from voting (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Norris 2000). By representing elections as passive spectacles, the mass media offer the image of elections as arenas for advertising, gossip and calculations (Boggs 2001, pp. 82–83). A spectacle managed by professionals, who also choose the topics of debate, neglecting the interests of normal people (Crouch 2004, p. 4). The political system loses its credibility insofar as it is enclosed in a media bubble and forced to place its trust in a personalised leadership guided by the search for scandals (Castells 2011). In regard to this de-politicisation process, Rancière has spoken of the legitimisation of democracy after the people: the people have been removed from the equation, as democracy has now been reduced to a technical game of administration by the State (Rancière 1999, p. 102). In other words, what has emerged is a situation in which the democratic deficit impacts popular sovereignty, restricting opportunities for popular participation and decision-making (Canovan 2005; Laclau 2005). According to Crouch, the political class strives to obtain the passive

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support it needs to get elected, and undertakes to encourage the “maximum degree of minimum participation” (Crouch 2004, p. 126). This marginalisation of the people is claimed to reflect a shift from the political, as antagonism and rupture, to the post-political management of consensus (Katsambekis 2014). The other reaction witnessed in post-democracy is the superseding of politics as exclusively, or prevalently, electoral. In addition to dissatisfaction with a system that fails to resolve problems, and whose decisional processes are hermetically sealed, there is a growing need among citizens for a new form of mobilisation that goes beyond the existing representative institutions (Beck 1992). While many are totally deprived of opportunities for participation, others organise themselves into autonomous groups specialised in matters that no longer require party membership. This tendency to move away from conventional politics has grown in these first two decades of the twenty-first century, in virtue of the increasing importance given to the media aspect of political movements, and to the return of oppositional forms of action on the public stage (Kelly et al. 2018; Castells 2011). For the new generations, participation has shifted towards activities characterised by a considerable investment of knowledge. There are new forms of political activism, of critical consumption, of boycotting, of involvement in campaigns and of mobilisation via the Web. The changes in democracy outlined so far have accelerated considerably over the past decade or so of economic recession. The worsening of the working conditions and wages of one section of the population has resulted in an exacerbation of inequality and the strengthening of people’s feelings of insecurity and frustration. Within this scenario, the question of the economy and of the global impact of the economic crisis has affected the electorate’s expectations, and has created new cleavages. During this crisis, inequalities have also taken on a territorial dimension, and thus have emphasised the burden of the crisis and favoured the decline of traditional parties. Certain social groups have found themselves exposed to the negative effects of globalisation, such as the outsourcing of work at a lower cost. Other social groups—the global elites—have taken advantage of the changes on the other hand. Globalisation has increased political competition between states and supranational actors, creating a new cleavage between winners and losers (Kriesi et al. 2008; Bornschier 2010). During the prolonged recession over the course of the last decade, the deprived categories have increased in size and number, and the sense of being at

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risk has begun to also regard certain citizens previously unaffected by such concerns. This has shaped what is, to all effects and purposes, a true hierarchy of citizenship and participation. It is no surprise to discover that national surveys have begun to reveal an increase, in many European countries, in the percentage of families with a negative view of the economy, and sceptical about the future. These perceptions have helped create a political climate in which citizens first challenge, and then punish, outgoing governments and their leaders, who are held responsible for the difficulties the country is going through. The impact of the economic cycle on voting has been widely studied (Lewis-Beck 1990; Powell et al. 1993; Nadeau et al. 2002). The unsurprising conclusion reached by such studies is that the worsening of individual working conditions following unemployment or temporary working, can negatively impact workers’ identification with political parties. Citizens no longer feel protected by politicians due to uncontrollable processes affecting them and conditioning their existing living standards and future prospects, and the prospects for the country they live in. Nevertheless, the reactions to such changes vary. When faced with periods of economic adversity or uncertainty, electors may respond positively, acting in an attempt to attract greater attention, by changing their votes to punish those they hold responsible for their individual or collective malaise. However, it is more likely that they will be distracted from voting following a lengthy period of difficulty: they may well doubt the efficacy of political action. In a situation of economic adversity and unemployment, electors tend to shoulder responsibility for their own problems, and no longer feel the urgent need to participate and to punish the incumbent government. In Radcliff’s view (1992), an economic crisis can lead to a decline in voter turnout in the developed nations, particularly where the relationship between parties and citizens is already impaired, and their disaffection does not favour the opposition. In such cases, instead of opting for political action, the population tends to refrain from voting and reduce its own investment in the electoral process. People tend to become sceptical not only of the government, but also of the validity of the political system as a whole, and thus tend to favour the abstention option. As far as parliamentary elections are concerned, there has been a progressive fall in turnout during the new millennium: from an average figure of 77.2% for the period 1990–2000, voter turnout fell to 70.0%

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during the decade 2000–2010, and fell further to 66.9% in the subsequent decade (2010–2020). The downward trend was more pronounced in the decade 2000–2010, particularly in France and the UK among the Western countries. The following decade, from 2010 to 2020, was significantly affected by the economic crisis, and this influenced voters’ expectations especially in the Mediterranean area, where abstention grew faster than in the other countries. A similar downward trend was also witnessed in the case of the European elections, with an all-time minimum turnout of 43% recorded in 2009 and 2014. Furthermore, extremely low voter turnout was recorded in the new Eastern European democracies, although the figure rose once more, up to 51%, at the most recent elections held in 2019 (Table 2.4). As I will show more detailed in Chapter 5, during the years of the economic crisis the increase of abstentionism among the electorate coupled with a growing propensity to sanction the mainstream parties and/or the incumbent government. This has come about also in virtue of the difficulties encountered in attributing clear responsibility for the economic downturn. One of the reasons for this difficulty has been that in certain countries, the handling of the crisis has entailed having recourse to inclusive governments comprising both majority and opposition parties, generating considerable confusion among the citizens. In such cases, it is more difficult for disenchanted voters to vote against the government, due to the absence of any clear distinction between the roles played (Anderson and Hecht 2012), and to the fact that decisions are increasingly taken in situations of emergency and without going through Parliament. However, recent years have also seen a partial (albeit weak) trend reversal, with a slight improvement in voter turnout in certain countries and certain elections. Going back to what Kriesi (2012) notes in regard to the disruption of voting patterns, those same voters who were critical of the incumbent government (and the same goes for the poor or disadvantaged voter: our aside) find themselves faced with a wide range of options which are not only feasible but also potentially capable of proving successful or effective: to vote for the traditional opposition; to abstain without favouring either government or opposition; to channel one’s dissatisfaction with the elites into votes for the new challengers.

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Table 2.4 Turnout rates in EU-28 countries. Elections 2000–2020 Parliamentary elections

European elections

2000s

2010s

Diff. p.p 2010s–2000s

2000s

2010s

Diff. p.p 2010s–2000s

Austria Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherland Poland Portugal Romania Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden United Kingdom

80.5 91.3 61.0 60.6 90.4 61.2 86.1 60.1 65.9 60.1 75.8 72.0 69.0 64.8 81.9 66.1 47.3 91.3 94.5 79.8 46.9 62.3 48.9 62.4 61.9 75.5 81.0 60.4

76.8 89.0 52.5 53.6 72.7 61.0 86.1 63.8 67.6 53.0 73.8 61.4 65.3 65.9 74.1 59.4 50.5 90.4 92.5 77.3 53.9 54.1 37.8 60.9 56.7 70.9 85.9 67.2

−3.7 −2.3 −8.5 −7.0 −17.7 −0.2 +0.0 +3.7 +1.7 −7.1 −2.0 −10.6 −3.7 +1.1 −7.8 −6.7 +3.2 −0.9 −2.0 −2.5 +7.0 −8.2 −11.1 −1.5 −5.2 −4.6 +4.9 +6.8

44.2 90.6 34.1 – 66.0 28.3 53.7 35.4 39.0 41.7 43.1 57.9 37.4 58.6 69.1 47.5 34.7 91.1 80.6 38.0 22.7 37.7 28.6 18.3 28.4 45.0 41.7 36.6

52.6 89.1 34.2 27.5 44.5 23.5 61.2 37.1 40.0 46.3 54.7 59.3 36.2 51.1 55.9 31.9 50.4 84.9 73.8 39.6 34.8 32.2 41.8 17.9 26.7 52.3 53.2 36.4

+8.4 −1.5 +0.1 – −21.5 −4.8 +7.5 +1.7 +1.0 +4.6 +11.6 +1.4 −1.2 −7.5 −13.2 −15.6 +15.7 −6.2 −6.8 +1.6 +12.1 −5.5 +13.2 −0.4 −1.7 +7.3 +11.5 −0.2

Total

70.0

66.9

−3.1

44.2

46.6

+2.4

Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)

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Norris, Pippa. 2000. A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, Pippa. 2002. Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pateman, Carole. 1970. Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paxton, Pamela. 2000. “Women’s Suffrage in the Measurement of Democracy: Problems of Operationalization.” Studies in Comparative International Development 35 (3): 92–111. Pharr, Susan J., and Robert D. Putnam, eds. 2000. Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries ? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Piven, F. Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. 1977. Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed: How They Fail. New York Pantheon Books. Piven, F. Fox, and Richard A. Cloward. 1988. Why Americans Don’t Vote. New York: Pantheon Books. Pizzorno, Alessandro. 1993. La politica assoluta e altri saggi. Milano: Feltrinelli. Pizzorno, Alessandro. 2017. “Preface.” In Il concetto di rappresentanza, edited by Hanna F. Pitkin. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Pitkin, Hanna F. 2004. “Representation and Democracy: Uneasy Alliance.” Scandinavian Political Studies 27 (3): 335–342. Powell Jr, G. Bingham, and Guy D. Whitten. 1993. “A Cross-National Analysis of Economic Voting: Taking Account of the Political Context.” American Journal of Political Science 37 (2): 391–414. Radcliff, Benjamin. 1992. “The Welfare State, Turnout, and the Economy: A Comparative Analysis.” American Political Science Review 86 (2): 444–454. Rancière, Jacques. 1995. On the Shores of Politics. New York: Verso Books. Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rancière, Jacques. 2005. La haine de la démocratie. Paris: La Fabrique Editions. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rennwald, Line. 2020. Social Democratic Parties and the Working Class: New Voting Patterns. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Robinson, Michael J. 1976. “Public Affairs Television and the Growth of Political Malaise: The Case of ‘The Selling of the President.’” American Political Science Review 70 (3): 409–432. Rokkan, Stein. 1970. Citizens Elections Parties. Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Processes of Development. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Rose, Richard, and Ian McAllister. 1986. Voters Begin to Choose: From ClosedClass to Open Elections in Britain. London: Sage.

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Rosenstone, Steven J., and John M. Hansen. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. New York: Longman Publishing Group. Rubio-Marín, Ruth. 2104. “The Achievement of Female Suffrage in Europe: On Women’s Citizenship.” International Journal of Constitutional Law 12 (1): 4–34. Sartori, G. 1965. Democratic Theory. New York: Praeger. Särlvik, Bo, and Ivor Crewe. 1983. Decade of Dealignment: The Conservative Victory of 1979 and Electoral Trends in the 1970s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schedler, Andreas, ed. 1997. The End of Politics? Explorations into Modern Antipolitics. London: Palgrave McMillan. Schmitt, Hermann, and Sören Holmberg. 1995. “Political Parties in Decline?” In Citizens and the State, edited by Hans D. Klingemann, and Dieter Fuchs, 95–133. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper & Row. Skocpol, Theda, and Edwin Amenta. 1986. “States and Social Policies.” Annual Review of Sociology 12 (1): 131–157. Strøm, Kaare, and Lars Svåsand, eds. 1997. Challenges to Political Parties: The Case of Norway. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Teixeira, Ruy. 1992. The Disappearing American Voter. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Thomassen, Jacques, ed. 2005. The European Voter: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Urbinati N. 2006. Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy. Chicago: University Chicago Press. Urbinati, Nadia, and Mark E. Warren. 2008. “The Concept of Representation in Contemporary Democratic Theory.” Annual Review of Political Science 11: 387–412. Van Biezen, Ingrid, Peter Mair, and Thomas Poguntke. 2012. “Going, Going, … Gone? The Decline of Party Membership in Contemporary Europe.” European Journal of Political Research 51: 24–56. Verba, Sidney, Larry K. Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Verba, Sidney, Norman H. Nie, and Jae-on Kim. 1978. Participation and Political Equality: A Seven-Nation Comparison. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wattenberg, Martin P. 1991. The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics: Presidential Elections of the 1980s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wattenberg, Martin P. 2002. Where Have All the Voters Gone? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zolo, D. 1992. Democracy and Complexity: A Realist Approach. University Park: Penn State Press.

CHAPTER 3

Turnout and Socio-economic Inequality at the Individual Level

Abstract This chapter develops a detailed analysis of the differences in turnout rates determined by the individual characteristics of voters, and in particular by their socio-economic conditions. After introducing the strands of literature and the methodological debate over the Resource Model, I shall be discussing the role played by income, social class and education in the political mobilisation of the electorate. Following the numerous empirical studies on disparities in turnout rates across different groups of the electorate, the analysis shows whether, and to what degree, the most disadvantaged groups actually participate less. The chapter also considers the transformation of the labour market and its implications with regard to turnout. Increased unemployment, greater job instability and the growth in the number and variety of atypical jobs, have together made employment status more fluid, and this has impacted the link that voters establish with politics and voting. In a situation of ongoing recession and economic crisis, a growing number of citizens experience a relative or absolute decline in their social status, and this has a significant impact on public and political life. Keywords Resource model · Socio-economic status · Unemployment · Relative deprivation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Tuorto, Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0_3

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The Resource Theory of Political Participation and Beyond The foremost factors most frequently cited in studies of political participation are socio-economic resources. Regardless of any discrimination in access to citizenship rights which may persist in modern democracies, it is in the actual utilisation of opportunities that significant inequalities emerge (Dalton et al. 2003, p. 263). Those groups with greater resources take advantage of their privileged position in order to preserve the status quo. Underprivileged groups, on the other hand, are subject to limitations and struggle to have their say (Young 2000, p. 17). The key point is that this privileged position in society of the few creates a vicious circle whereby political and social inequalities reinforce one another (Verba 2003; Gallego 2007). For some time now, the literature has focused on the impact of resources. Debate has centred on establishing which aspects or individual characteristics condition the propensity to vote; on what differences exist, in terms of the impact that resources have, between voter turnout and other forms of political participation; on the ways in which the effects of resources manifest themselves in different national contexts, also in relation to the degree of equanimity with which resources are distributed. Underlying such questions is a simple, yet important, premise: political inclusion is more or less strictly related to social inclusion. People’s involvement in political activities, and in voting in particular, is directly connected to the availability of certain resources, both individual and within the family. The simplest formulation of this relationship is expressed by the socio-economic status (SES) model, the cornerstones of which being income, occupation and education. Verba and Nie’s classic study Participation in America. Political Democracy and Social Equality (1972) clearly shows that citizens with a high socio-economic status—that is, having a good job and being financially well-off and well-educated—are also those most likely to vote in an election. The reason for this is that in virtue of their status, they enjoy greater opportunities to interact with politically active and influential people, since they possess greater information and personal skills, which in turn enable them to grasp political arguments better (Verba and Nie 1972). This impact of resources on the degree of political participation has been expressed by Milbrath and Goel (1977) in the form of the “centre–periphery” distinction, a heuristic that allows to define, starting

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from the social position of an individual, his/her level of involvement or exclusion from political life. Those situated “at the centre”, unlike those “in the periphery”, are close to the political arenas, they are stimulated, influenced and receive support from the surrounding social environment, and they enjoy broader relational networks that encourage them to vote. What counts is the ability to decode political messages, and thus the likelihood of being attracted to politics. This reading of the resources model in terms of the centre–periphery distinction sees voting abstention as a physiological phenomenon, and those abstaining from voting as a marginal, inadequate section of the population in terms of the key aspects of social life. It is argued that the disconnection from the community has far-reaching political effects which impact not only those who are isolated both socially and relationally, but also those who are extremely mobile (such as young people looking for their first job) even if they are not stigmatised in a way that could account for their withdrawal from politics (Teixeira 1992). Two decades on from its original formulation, Verba and colleagues revised their model and placed it within a broader framework. It was now labelled the Civic Voluntarism Model (Verba et al. 1995; Brady et al. 1995). This new formulation identified the key resources for political participation as being the availability of time, money and civic skills (organisational requirements and communicative capacities, such as speaking and writing well). In addition to these resources, the model places great importance on political attitudes—an interest in politics, a sense of being effective—which impact a person’s relationship with voting. It also emphasises the importance of civic consciousness, which helps develop the idea of participation as an obligation. The roots of participation thus lie in non-political institutions and in social networks (family, neighbours, the workplace, the local community, collective organisations, etc.). The Civic Voluntarism Model offers three main reasons why people do not participate: because “they can’t”, because “they don’t want to”, or because “nobody asked”. Such general reasons are accompanied by others, such as a lack of resources, the absence of any involvement, and their isolation from recruitment networks (Brady et al. 1995, p. 271). These factors are interrelated, however. Citizens with low incomes have limited access to the skills and resources that favour participation, and at the same time they are less likely to be targeted for political mobilisation by parties and candidates (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993).

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While undoubtedly accounting for “who” participates (and to an extent “why” they participate), the resources model, even in its broader Civic Voluntarism form, has certain limitations, however. These limitations partly curb its explanatory capacity, the possibility of generalising, and the completeness of the explanations offered. First of all, it cannot be taken for granted that the aforementioned relationship between sociodemographic characteristics and political participation holds in the case of turnout as it does in regard to other forms of participation. The impact of resources, in particular education, has been widely documented in the case of activities such as signing petitions, boycotting or online participation (Norris 2001; Cain et al. 2006; Micheletti 2003). On the other hand, voting is seen as a simple activity that can be encouraged without citizens demanding it or getting involved in political experiences (Parry et al. 1992). A second limit to the explanation offered by the resources model concerns its generalisability. Verba and Nie claimed that social status and the other variables form the building blocks of a model of the causes and consequences of participation applicable to any nation (Verba and Nie 1972, pp. 89–90). With one or two exceptions, subsequent studies have not offered any clear evidence that this relationship works in the same manner in a significant number of countries. In fact, the comparative study carried out by Verba, Nie and Kim entitled Participation and Political Equality. A Seven-Nations Comparison (1978), had shown that the impact of socio-economic status was the strongest in the USA, and explained the differences between those nations with a greater or lesser presence of parties capable of fostering the political inclusion of the more disadvantaged groups of citizens, through representation, institutional mediation and recruitment, such that they nullify the negative impact of the lack of resources. Unlike in the case of the USA, in Europe no significant relationship has been identified between SES and voting (Topf 1995); or the impact of such has been circumscribed to just a few European countries and/or individual dimensions (Nevitte et al. 2009; Teorell et al. 2007). The model’s third significant limitation lies in its poor adaptability to change. If the relationship between individual resources and the propensity to participate holds true at a given moment in time, then this should be so diachronically: variations in a society’s stock of individual resources should result in a variation in the percentage of participants. This relationship was theorised in Tingsten’s “law of dispersion”, according to which

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participatory differences between groups increased if general turnout declined (Tingsten 1937, p. 230). This same argument was taken up again by other scholars, such as Rosenstone and Hansen (1993, p. 238), while in this regard Lijphart spoke of an “unresolved dilemma of democracy” (Lijphart 1997, p. 2). However, despite this sound theoretical framework, upon empirical investigation there has often been a discrepancy between turnout and participatory inequalities. The growth in electoral disenchantment largely came about regardless of the explanations offered by the resources model (Dassonneville and Hooghe 2017; Bhatti et al. 2019; Perrson et al. 2013). This difficulty in identifying the impact of social inequality in the field, has been accounted for by the changes involving those with socially disadvantaged roles in post-industrial and post-Fordist societies: demographic and/or social minorities, whose late participation ends up only marginally affecting the overall nature of turnout and of public debate on the problem. Widespread political disenchantment together with the political parties’ failure to strongly encourage participation, have meant that social differences within the population have affected participation to a greater extent than in the past (Armingeon and Schädel 2015).

Unbundling Socio-economic Status The relationship between socio-economic status and turnout is both complex and controversial. While on a theoretical level, there is a direct, easily explainable relationship between resources and participation, in empirical terms it has not always been backed up by clear evidence. This section is going to examine each of the three components of the socio-economic index individually, in order to analyse their contribution to the explanation of turnout and the turnout gap, and of spatial and time variations, taking Europe over the last two decades as our field of investigation. The first dimension examined is income. The reference to individual wealth is inevitable when studying participatory inequality. Unlike other variables, income provides sound arguments with which to assess the impact that resources have on turnout, and the use of this variable is preferable to that of others, such as job category, which do not always permit a correct ranking (Leighley and Nagler 1992, p. 727). Why is income important here? Going back to the arguments underpinning the resources model, the difference between rich and poor is

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significant with regard to voting, since the poor are less well integrated into the labour market and have less time to spend on non-vital activities such as participating in politics. The wealthy, on the other hand, manage to commit themselves to, and are more convinced of, their objectives, are more popular in society, and are better integrated into the system (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980, pp. 20–22). There are also instrumental reasons for political participation. Wealth offers people a further incentive for involvement in politics, namely that it can help further one’s own personal interests and offer a degree of influence over governmental policies. This is why the wealthy are more interested in participating, because of what they can gain or lose by (not) having their representatives in political institutions (Gilens 2005, p. 791). Likewise, the fact that policymakers tend to give priority to the wealthier sections of society, exacerbates poorer people’s disinterest in politics (Solt 2008, p. 57). The relationship between income and turnout at the individual level has been extensively studied. Starting with Wolfinger and Rosenstone’s study (1980) of voters and non-voters, numerous scholars have found a mainly positive correlation between the two (Anderson and Beramendi, 2008; Nevitte et al. 2009; Schlozman et al. 2018). The study conducted in the USA by Leigley and Nagler revealed a considerable difference in the likelihood of high-income earners voting compared to that of low-income earners (a difference of around 20% above and below the average turnout, respectively). The authors also found that the participatory gap had remained fairly stable over a period of more than thirty years (Leighley and Nagler 2013, pp. 40–42). The impact that income has on participation levels was found to be different at the extremities of the income range. This impact was particularly strong among the poorer sections of the population, while the participatory propensity of wealthier citizens was lower than expected given their social status (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980, pp. 33–34; Soss and Jacobs 2009, p. 104). As regards the differences between countries, while income does have a significant impact on political participation in Europe, there are other socio-demographic factors at play as well, and income is not always determinant (Anderson and Beramendi 2008; Horn 2011; Jensen and Jespersen 2017), Furthermore, the impact of the turnout gap appears to be greater in wealthier nations and in those characterised by wider inequality (Steinbrecher and Seeber 2011, p. 18). This finding was confirmed by my latest analysis, among others (see p. 56–61 and 104–105 in this book).

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In addition to income, socio-economic status also comprises individuals’ positions in the labour market. There has been much theoretical debate on the decline/persistence of social class as a relevant dimension when studying political behaviour. Labour market changes have had a significant impact on the entity and characteristics of the old and new social classes. In the empirical/methodological field, occupational groups have been classified on the basis of diverse criteria (Erikson et al. 1979; Oesch 2006, 2013). Social class reflects the opportunities individuals have to interact and engage politically, socially and economically, and the resources they possess enabling them to do so (Leighley and Nagler 2013, p. 23). While playing a key role in the study of participatory phenomena, relatively little recourse has been had to social class as an independent variable however (Smets and Van Ham 2013). This notwithstanding, its impact and causal importance are undeniable. Looking at the composition of employment, one would expect members of the upper (non-manual) classes to be the most likely voters, followed by white-collar workers, the self-employed and manual workers in that order, with greater differences in the low-paid jobs segment (Lahtinen et al. 2017). The degree of participation of members of the lower classes reflects their more limited economic resources and opportunities for interaction with people capable of providing political stimuli, and conveying civic values, to them (Milbrath and Goel 1977, pp. 92–102). Furthermore, the members of the lower social classes are less capable of deciding on whether or not to get involved in politics since they dispose of fewer independent resources, and thus are dependent upon the action of the social elites, organisations and networks capable of mobilising them. This would explain the selective abandonment of politics on the part of the working class when the mobilisation of workers by political parties either stopped altogether or became less intense (Burnham 1980; Teixeira 1987; Armigeon 2015). The transformation of the class structure of society has had an inevitable impact on the participatory behaviour of citizens, and this has continued to evolve, particularly in Europe. According to Evans and Tilley (2017), the diminished correlation between social class and voting behaviour led to a widening once again of the turnout gap (between manual and non-manual workers, that is, between blue-collar and whitecollar workers) from the late 1990s onwards, following two or three decades of the levelling of said gap. In regard to this dynamic, Heath has pointed out that “class is more important as a participatory cleavage than it is as an electoral cleavage” (Heath 2018, p. 1061). The lower classes’

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diminishing propensity to vote is thus believed to be the result of two convergent processes: one is a long-term process linked to the reduced presence of political parties in society, while the other is a more recent phenomenon connected to increasing inequality. The third and final dimension of socio-economic status is education. It is one of the principal predictors of individual political behaviour. Why is education so important? While it is true that voting is a relatively simple political activity, doing so in a reasoned manner requires certain information together with the capacity to appraise such information. An individual’s education helps in several ways in this regard: it permits the barriers to participation to be lowered or removed (Highton 2004), it helps people to understand politics better and to reinforce the belief that their actions are effective (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996). The positive impact of education also extends to the attributes of citizenship, insofar as well-educated people have a far greater understanding of democratic principles, are better able to identify political leaders and to tell the difference between diverse political options (Nie et al. 1996). While broadly established at the empirical level, the correlation between voting behaviour and education varies considerably from one nation to another. Bingham Powell studied 30 different countries and discovered that this correlation was very strong in the USA in particular (Powell 1986), where the effect of income and job status were also more marked, and where legal and administrative barriers to voting— in this case, mandatory voter registration—indirectly penalised the lower and low-educated classes. On the other hand, the fall in turnout among the low-educated has become less important also in virtue of the growth in the number of highly educated individuals abstaining from voting (Topf 1995). A more recent study by Gallego (2010) confirmed the existence of a widespread correlation, although the same study indicated that participatory inequalities had stabilised (or rather, that there was no clear upward trend in the gap between the highly educated and the low-educated). Other comparative researches have reached similar conclusions, as have studies of individual countries (see Armingeon and Schädel 2015; Bovens and Wille 2010). The complexity of the causal relationship between educational level and turnout has led certain scholars to conclude that a participatory paradox or “puzzle” exists here (Brody 1978; Dalton 1996). Since the end of the Second World War, educational levels in the West have constantly risen, and this should have fostered an increase in voter

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turnout. However, this has not happened. In the view of several scholars (Blais et al. 2004; Franklin 2004), the paradox of falling voter turnout occurring concurrently with increasing human capital, is the result of generational turnover. Despite the fact that educational levels have made the difference even among the younger generations, whereby those with a better education have tended to vote in greater numbers than those less well-educated, this has not been enough to maintain the overall turnout levels. This is because at any given level of education, older generations vote more frequently than do the younger generations; and since the cohort of the older generations gradually reduces in size, the overall effect is a reduction in turnout. Another interpretation of this apparent paradox involves the positional effect of education: in other words, it is not the absolute level of education achieved that favours political participation, but the relative level thereof resulting from the comparison with other members of society (Nie et al. 1996; Tenn 2005). In the pages that follow, those relationships examined in theoretical terms up until now shall be looked at from an empirical viewpoint. This analysis focuses on European countries and makes use of the European Social Survey (ESS) datasets covering the period 2002–2018 (2008– 2018 when income is taken into account).1 To calculate the turnout gap, each dimension has been re-aggregated, and opposing groups compared according to their high/low socio-economic status: the first income quintile vs the fifth income quintile, manual workers vs service class, the low-educated vs the high-educated. The measure of electoral bias adopted in the analysis expresses the disproportionate participation rates across opposing groups.2 1 Unlike other datasets such as those of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) or the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the ESS surveys are particularly well suited to an analysis of a large number of countries across a relatively short time span, with the help of a wealth of variables. The most obvious limitation to this approach is of course that it excludes non-European countries, first and foremost the USA, from its scope. The datasets contain information about electoral participation (whether the interviewee voted in the most recent general election), income (household’s total net income, subdivided into 10 classes), and level of education (according to the ISCED ranking). Social class is established on the basis of the Erikson-Goldthorpe-Portocarero class scheme (a classification comprising 7 different categories). 2 For my analysis I will use the relative risk (RR), also known as the risk ratio. This index compares the risk of the event “voting” among voters with low and high socioeconomic status. Relative risk is different from the odd ratio, which refers to the odd on an event (voting vs non voting) in a certain groups relative to that in another group.

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Table 3.1 summarises the turnout rates of the different groups defined on the basis of their socio-economic status. If we look at the general figure for all 28 EU countries,3 turnout in the case of the groups with the most limited resources was around 70% across all three dimensions of socio-economic status. This is lower than the percentage recorded for the population as a whole. As economic status rises, turnout rates also rise, reaching their highest values among the wealthiest groups. The entity of the turnout gap is considerable: 17.8 percentage points between the 1st and 5th quintiles of income, 14.9 p.p. between manual workers and service class, 15.0 p.p. between the low-educated and the highly educated. Taking the extreme categories, the voting probability of high-income individuals is 2.81 times higher than that of those on a low income; it is 2.41 times higher in the case of upper-class citizens compared to lower class citizens; and is 2.45 times higher in the case of highly educated voters compared to low-educated voters. The relative risk remains above 1, to the disadvantage of those individuals possessing limited resources (lower class, low income and low-educated). From this initial exploration, there can be no doubt that there are significant differences in voter turnout among different social classes. If we examine the three dimensions of socio-economic status in more detail, a number of specific trends emerge. The degree of penalisation due to income is particularly pronounced in the poorest group of individuals positioned in the 1st quintile, where turnout is more than 7 p.p. lower than that of the category immediately above it. In the case of education, the gap is considerable even between the intermediate level (upper secondary education) and the highest level (tertiary education). Finally, the trend in turnout based on social class reveals a progressive increase from the category of manual workers to the three intermediate categories of white-collar workers, petit bourgeoisie and service class. Of all the information gathered, the most interesting appears to be that for each country. The aggregate figures shown in Table 3.1 distinguish between three geographical macro-areas: “EU-15 high-income

The RR index measures the strength of association between the variables. A value of 1 indicates no association, whereas values other than 1 indicates an association: less than 1 equates to the minor probability that lower status groups will vote, while a value of more than 1 indicates the opposite. 3 United Kingdom is always considered as part of EU because all the analysis cover periods preceding the Brexit process.

Education Less than lower secondary

Diff. p.p. service class (1–2) − manual workers (6–7) Relative risk total vs manual workers (6–7) Relative risk service class (1–2) vs manual workers (6–7)

Social class Manual workers, semiskilled and unskilled (7) Manual workers, skilled (6) Low grade technicians, manual supervisors (5) Petite bourgoisie (4) Routine, non manual employees (3) Low service class (2) High service class (1)

68.8

76.6

+9.7 1.19 1.94

83.4 79.1 85.4 88.1

79.4 76.1 84.4 87.0 +15.8 1.53 2.55

76.3 78.2 81.2

+12.8 1.37 2.32

74.1 78.7 81.1 84.5 86.9

79.7

PIIGS

68.5 72.5 77.8

+20.6 1.77 3.39

66.4 75.4 79.5 83.1 87.0

Income 1st quintile 2nd quintile 3rd quintile 4th quintile 5th quintile

Diff. p.p. (5th–1st) Relative risk (total vs 1st) Relative risk (5th–1st)

77.8

EU-15 high-income countries

55.6

+15.9 1.26 2.24

72.9 69.5 77.5 83.5

63.5 65.7 71.4

+13.0 1.26 1.89

64.2 68.8 71.0 74.7 77.2

69.4

71.9

+14.9 1.42 2.41

79.4 75.6 83.6 86.7

69.2 71.8 77.6

+17.8 1.58 2.81

67.7 75.0 78.3 81.9 85.5

76.8

EU-28

TURNOUT AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITY …

(continued)

EU-28 late comers

Turnout rates by income, social class, education and relative risk. Period 2002–2018

Total

Table 3.1

3

53

(continued)

+16.9 1.51 2.83

70.7 77.8 86.8

EU-15 high-income countries

+9.9 1.29 1.89

73.9 80.2 85.2

PIIGS

+18.5 1.44 2.49

61.9 68.9 79.7

EU-28 late comers

+15.0 1.40 2.45

69.3 75.7 85.3

EU-28

Note Social class is calculated using EGP (Erikson, Goldthorpe and Portocarero) class scheme. Countries included in the analysis are those reported in each ESS round Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 (round 1–9). Data on income are available since 2008

Diff. p.p. (tertiary – lower secondary and less) Relative risk total vs lower secondary and less Relative risk (tertiary vs lower secondary and less)

Lower secondary Upper secondary Tertiary

Table 3.1

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3

EU-28, late comers

PIIGS

EU-15 high-income countries

0.0

TURNOUT AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITY … 1.0

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

6.0

55 7.0

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Netherland Sweden United Kingdom Greece Ireland Italy Portugal Spain Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Slovak Republic Slovenia Income

Class

Education

Fig. 3.1 Relative risk of voting in high and low socio-economic groups. EU-28 countries, 2002–2018 (Note Relative risk for income: period 2008–2018. Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9])

countries” (France, Germany, Austria, the (pre-Brexit) UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Sweden and Denmark), “PIIGS” (Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland), “EU-28 late-comers” (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia).4 Figure 3.1, on the other hand, provides a succinct picture of the gaps calculated for each country. The most significant finding is the existence of a larger turnout gap in the countries within the first group than in those of the second 4 The list of countries does not include Luxembourg among the “wealthiest EU-15 member states”, Romania and Malta among the “EU-28, late comers” due to the lack of information provided by the ESS datasets.

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group, despite the fact that the latter are characterised by lower levels of economic performance and higher levels of economic inequality than the former. This finding confirms the results of other studies (Steinbrecher and Seeber 2011). Manual, low-income, low-educated workers participate to a much lesser degree than other citizens in central-northern European countries—with gaps of 20 p.p. with regard to income, and 16–17 p.p. with regard to social class and education—than is the case in the PIIGS countries, where the gaps are of the order of 13 p.p. for income and 10 p.p. for the other two dimensions. These differences do not affect overall turnout levels, which remain similar in the two blocks of countries. Thus, it is not the participatory behaviour of the elites that makes the difference, but rather the greater gap of those groups at the bottom of the social hierarchy (Table 3.1). If we look at the figures for individual countries, Germany has the highest relative risk in relation to all three dimensions of socio-economic status: 5.9 for income, 4.0 for social class and 6.3 for education. Germany is then followed by the Scandinavian countries, Estonia (the second highest RR regarding education), and the Netherlands. The relative risk in the PIIGS countries remains around 2 and is only higher than 2 in Italy. The late-comer countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic area differ from the aforementioned countries in that despite displaying greater overall socio-economic disparity and poverty than the latter, their relative risks are consistently lower than those of these wealthier nations (and are also lower than those of the PIIGS nations in terms of income). It could be argued that the lower participatory inequality in said late-comer countries is the result not so much of any greater involvement of low-income groups, as of the behaviour of the groups at the top of the social ladder, in particular the wealthy, whose propensity to vote rises less than would be expected given their socio-economic status (Table 3.1 and Fig. 3.1). In considering the turnout gaps due to socio-economic status, account must also be taken of the general trend displayed by turnout. While there should be less disparity at higher levels of turnout, an increase in the gap when turnout is low is also likely, although not a foregone conclusion, since it is linked to the way in which a lower turnout is distributed among the population. It comes as no surprise that the findings in the literature vary considerably. Some scholars have reported the existence of gaps, in terms of income and educational qualifications, in elections where turnout was low (Persson et al. 2013), while others have found smaller gaps at low-turnout elections (Sinnott and Achen 2008). The figures shown in

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Fig. 3.2 would seem to indicate, in the European case, the inconsistency of Tingsten’s law (according to which there is an inverse relationship between turnout and turnout gap): the countries where turnout is higher are characterised by a greater, rather than a lower, disparity between the participation of low and high socio-economic status groups. The majority of central-northern European countries lie above the linear regression line (particularly Germany, where the turnout gaps are much higher than the expected values), while the PIIGS countries lie below that line (the turnout gap is lower in relation to the general level of turnout). Several considerations may be made in view of this result. If turnout reflects the system’s degree of inclusivity, then one would expect turnout to be similar among those groups possessing greater resources in the various countries concerned, but different at lower levels of socio-economic status, and it ought to be greater in those countries where the political system is more representative and welfare policies are more prevalent. Instead, the figures for the wealthy nations reveal the difficulty of those groups with limited resources (even when their numbers are low and they benefit from ample welfare provisions, as in the Scandinavian countries) in achieving political integration through, among other things, participation in elections. On the other hand, in the PIIGS countries peripheral groups are more widespread and clearly visible within society and have a less marginal socio-demographic characteristics. These peculiar traits are expected to influence the propensity to vote of the poor, making the difference with other participate profiles less pronounced. Finally, the challenging political parties’ impact on the turnout gap should not be underestimated, as they could feed into, and take advantage of, the disaffection of the working classes (this argument is specifically dealt with in Chapter 5 of the book). In addition to comparing different countries, it is also helpful to examine the trends displayed by the turnout gap over time (Fig. 3.3). The period taken into consideration here is not particularly long, but nevertheless is symbolically important due to the changes that took place during that period (the global recession, the advent of populist parties). The trends in question differ. On the one hand, class differences remain stable at intermediate levels (relative risks between 2 and 2.5). On the other hand, there was a trend reversal regarding the other two dimensions: while the turnout gap in terms of education gradually declined (until 2014 at least), the gap relating to income rose, peaking in those years when the effects of the economic crisis were most significant (it rose from 2.4 in 2008 to 3.2 in 2016). This result is attributable to a

% turnout

RR income

60.0

LT

CZ

LV

90.0

GR

60.0

LT

BE DK

SE

% turnout

0 50.0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

CY

ES

80.0

FRIE PT HU HR SI SK BG

PL

70.0

EE

IT AT

FINL

D

CZ

LV

% turnout

80.0

HU PLSK SI GB PT HR BG FR IE

0 50.0

70.0

EE

100.0

1

2

3

4

5 RR social class

CY

ES

NL IT AT FI

D

60.0

LT

CZ

SE DK

100.0

AT NL

FI

D

CY

IT ES

80.0

PL GB HU PT SIFR SK IE HR BG

70.0

BE

90.0

GR

LV

EE

BE

90.0

GR

DK SE

100.0

Fig. 3.2 Turnout rates and turnout socio-economic gap (relative risk). EU-28 countries. Period 2008–2018 (Source European Social Survey 2008–2018 [round 4–9])

0 50.0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

RR education

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3.5

Relative risk

3

2.5

2 Income

Class

Education

1.5 Year 1 2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

Fig. 3.3 Relative risk of voting in high and low socio-economic groups, over time. EU-28 countries, 2002–2018 (Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9]. Data on income are available since 2008)

strong polarisation of participation at the extreme ends of the spectrum, with a fall in turnout in the poorest quintile, accompanied by a rise in turnout in the wealthiest quintile. In order to provide further evidence of what has been shown so far, I carried out a multivariate analysis using a synthetic index of socioeconomic status as the independent variable.5 Taking the regression models, I calculated the predicted turnout percentages corresponding to the various levels of the index and analysed the trend separately for a given period and country. The estimates in Fig. 3.4 show that during the period 2010–2018, the SES’ impact was slightly more pronounced than it had been in the previous period 2002–2010. While the highstatus groups’ participation showed no variation, the low-status groups lost ground. Moreover, the turnout gaps due to socio-economic status,

5 The index was obtained by aggregating the variables income, social class and education into categories corresponding to the low, medium and high levels—the tertiles of the distribution. Subsequently a single measure of socio-economic status was obtained. Finally, the index was normalised (range 0–1).

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.7 .6

Pr(Vot)

.8

.9

60

.5

Index of SES (0-1) 0

.1

.2

.3

.4

.5

.6

.8

.9

1

2010-2018

.7 .6

Pr(Vot)

.8

.9

2002-2010

.7

.5

Index of SES (0-1) 0

.1

.2

.3

.4

.5

EU-15 high-income EU-28 late comers

.6

.7

.8

.9

1

PIIGS

Fig. 3.4 Predicted turnout by level of socio-economic status, period and group of countries (Note Regression models include “voted in previous Parliamentary election” as dependent variable, socioeconomic status [SES] as regressor and gender, age, marital status, year and country type as control variables [year and country type are moderators respectively in the graph on the top and the graph on the bottom]. Source European Social Survey 2008–2018 [round 4–9])

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although present, are less pronounced in the PIIGS countries. The difference between countries is minimal among the high-status groups but widens among the low-status groups (predicted turnout appeared as much as 12 p.p. lower in central-northern European countries among those citizens with the lowest SES). These results thus confirm the importance of considering socioeconomic status when studying voter turnout. What does not emerge clearly however, is the gaps’ tendency to widen, with only income apparently becoming more important during the years of the economic crisis. The differences between countries—with the wealthier ones also being the most unequal—are apparently counter-intuitive but in line with the results of other studies, and they open the way for various considerations concerning the composition of the poor population, and the nature of national contexts.

Unemployment, Insecurity and Turnout Who are the underprivileged voters? In order to answer this question fully, we need to distinguish between labour-market insiders and outsiders. Insiders include those regularly employed on standard employment contracts and entitled to social benefits. The outsiders, on the other hand, comprise a vast, rather more variegated universe: the unemployed in the strict sense of the term, or those seeking their first job; temporary workers and individuals in atypical employment; those working without a contract, who do not take full advantage of employment protection, or have no such protection. In all of the latter cases, the people concerned possess an uncertain political identity, and their participation is strictly dependent on the dynamics of employment. In fact, they pay the political price for their “outsiderness” (Mayer et al. 2015). Let us begin by looking at the penalties paid by those in search of employment. The term “condition-abstention” has been coined to describe the political disaffection of this category of elector. This term applies to those who are excluded from the political game as a result of socio-economic conditions attributable to job problems (Muxel 2007, p. 323; Delwit 2013, p. 44). In truth, the analysis of this problem falls within a broader framework characterised by the presence of two opposing positions, each of which bases its analysis of the correlation between economic difficulties and political participation on different specific theories (Kern et al. 2015). The first position looks to the theory

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of voter demobilisation, and can be linked to the aforementioned Civic Voluntarism Model. According to this interpretation of the problem, unemployment is a factor complicating political activism (Brady et al. 1995; Schlozman et al. 1999). This does not derive simply from the weakening of an individual’s available resources. The loss of a job and the difficulty in finding another constitute personal problems that require time and energy to resolve, meaning that there will be less time, energy and motivation to remain in touch with the political community (Brody and Sniderman 1977, p. 358). The stress resulting from the lack of work distracts unemployed individuals from political involvement, resulting in them being less politically active than those in regular employment (see: Bassoli and Monticelli 2018). Job insecurity is part of economic insecurity in general, and this is something that undermines an individual’s sense of well-being. Employment concerns can take various shapes: as well as regarding the risk of being out of work for a long period, they may also involve the fear of not finding another job that is paid the same as the one that has been lost, that offers the same level of security for one’s family, or a similar degree of overall well-being. During periods of crisis, even those in work (in particular manual workers) concentrate more on their jobs than at other times, resulting in a widening of participatory gaps. In the words of Rosenstone once again: “When a person experiences economic adversity his scarce resources are spent on holding body and soul together and surviving and not on remote concerns like politics” (Rosenstone 1982, p. 26). Problems of participation can be traced back to the psychological trauma of failure, or of a person’s loss of reputation within his/her social network. As Jahoda et colleagues point out in Marienthal : The Sociography of an Unemployed Community (1972), low self-esteem and a limited sense of purpose resulting from unemployment, contribute towards a general sense of discouragement and of the incapacity to make decisions regarding one’s own life. This, in turn, favours detachment from politics, starting with the exercise of one’s right to vote. All the studies indicating the greater frequency of political apathy among the unemployed, meaning lower voter turnout, point in this direction (Schlozman and Verba 1979; Feather 1989; Radcliff 1994). In other terms, outsiders are more likely to abstain from voting (Rovny and Rovny 2017). The hypothesis of mobilisation, on the other hand, takes the opposite stance. It is linked on the theoretical level with the Grievance Model (Gamson 1968; Wilkes 2004), which will be described more fully in

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the following section. According to this model, resentment channelled through political demands serves as a powerful incentive to protest; and unemployment, insofar as it expresses imbalance and frustration, becomes a key trigger for collective action (Piven and Cloward 1977; Demazière and Pignoni 1998). Employment problems can motivate not only the unemployed but also those in work who are worried about the worsening economic situation of the country (sociotropic voters ), and who decide to take action in an attempt to punish the incumbent government held responsible for said situation (Burden and Wichowsky 2014; Bartels 2010). One further factor that can lead the unemployed towards political involvement rather than demobilisation, is their inclusion in welfare programmes, which in turn enables them to interact with the representative institutions and receive vital feedback permitting them to stay in touch with politics (Incantalupo 2011).6 The existence of alternative frameworks with which to account for the participatory behaviour of the unemployed, could create problems at the interpretative level. However, both remain valid and are not mutually incompatible, since each analyses different social circumstances from the other (Kern et al. 2015, p. 484). While the resources model (and the explanation of demobilisation) works under normal conditions, the grievance model is better at accounting for the growth of unconventional participation at certain key moments in history, such as the post-2008 economic recession when the problems of the unemployed increased as a result of the crisis. In any case, the studies conducted into the question have failed to provide any clear indication of the direction of the relationship. In fact, it is not clear whether unemployment systematically leads to political alienation; and above all, there is no clear evidence that the unemployed vote less than the employed in all countries, once the effects of socio-demographic features have been taken into account (De Witte 1992; Anderson 2001). One potentially discriminating factor concerns the different situations of those without a job who are part of a mass of unemployed people, and those who have been excluded when everyone else, or nearly everyone else, is in fact employed. In this case, the focus moves to the life settings and the “social norms of unemployment” (Clark 2003). An unemployed 6 A third position present in the literature—the null hypothesis (Blais 2006; Kostadinova 2003; Fornos et al. 2004)—assumes the absence of any single direction taken as a consequence of a decline in financial well-being.

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individual’s frustration will be tempered by the fact that a great many other people are also unemployed, a situation which will render the question of unemployment a key social issue and help politicise that issue (Burden and Wichowsky 2014). On the other hand, losing one’s job in a situation where very few people are unemployed, will likely lead an individual to withdraw from political involvement. When unemployment is low, the loss of a job is a depressing experience, leading to the problem being seen as one that the government, rather than the individual, ought to try and remedy, with those individuals who have lost their jobs being more concerned with looking for work rather than with political participation (seen as a possible means of resolving the problem) (Incantalupo 2011). An analysis of the relationship between socio-economic conditions and voter turnout could not be complete without considering those situations in which there is work, but occupational conditions are irregular, atypical and not clearly defined. Over the past decade, studies of this matter have benefited from Guy Standing’s work (2011, 2014) on the emergence of temporary workers as a new global class. Standing points to the various aspects of temporary employment, ranging from a limited access to skills and a weak voice in the workplace, to the greater vulnerability of temporary workers to the effects of governmental policy. In virtue of the nature of temporary employment, it reflects the unequal distribution of the forms of protection that the society offers, which leads temporary workers to be recognised and integrated to a lesser degree than other workers (Alberti et al. 2018). The temporary workers thus constitute a further category in addition to that of those completely outside of the labour market (the unemployed) and that of the fully employed. Temporary workers are a rather heterogeneous group and differences in temporary status (e.g. working sector, contract duration, motives for accepting temporary work) are strongly related to diverging subjective unemployment risks, mobility expectations and perceived insecurity (Marx 2015). In virtue of the proximity to the principal labour market, and of the wealth of skills often involved in such work, studies of the question have concluded that temporary worker status results in a smaller participatory gap than that entailed by other forms of employment penalisation. In fact, the differences between regular and temporary workers are smaller than those between regular workers and the unemployed (Polavieja 1999; Corbetta and Colloca 2013). Temporary workers, in particular younger ones, do

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not share the political apathy affecting the unemployed. They tend to protest in a collective manner against the institutions, and these forms of protest are often of an unconventional nature (see Bassoli and Monticelli 2018). The different mobilisation capacities of temporary workers compared to the unemployed, are also affected by collective representation, that is, by the presence or otherwise of social stigmatisation (Bay and Blekesaune 2002). In the case of temporary workers, one factor that may dissuade them from political participation is the worry that they could become trapped as permanent temporary workers. In the case of the unemployed, on the other hand, the degree of political marginalisation will be affected by the social composition of the group they are a part of (whether it consists mainly of younger or older people, people with or without families, etc.), and more generally speaking, by the “unemployment welfare regimes” in place (Cinalli and Giugni 2014). How large is the turnout gap when seen from the occupational viewpoint? What specifically emerges in Table 3.2 is the evident difference between the various categories. Of the theories to be found in the literature, the prevalent one appears to point to the demobilisation of those groups outside of the labour market. Having a stable job (guaranteed by a permanent employment contract) correlates to much higher levels of participation (79.0%) than those recorded among the unemployed (60.7%), and this difference of almost 20 p.p. is one of the largest reported so far. The status of temporary worker, that is, of a person with a time-limited employment contract or without any employment contract— corresponds to intermediate turnout levels on the other hand (69.4%). Finally, the turnout levels of the other categories comprising positions outside of the labour market vary considerably: they range from 83% in the case of retired people (which is higher than that of those in permanent employment) to 59.6% in the case of students. As with socio-economic status, differences related to occupational status also vary significantly from one country to the next, in particular with regard to the unemployed. Those who are in the labour market but do temporary jobs, participate less than those in stable employment. The difference between the two is in the 8–10 p.p. range across all three of the macro-areas taken into consideration here. This means that having regular employment makes a difference, although there are no significant gaps in terms of participation rates between this category and that of workers doing atypical jobs. The situation changes with regard to the unemployed. The participatory gap between unemployed individuals and those in regular employment is considerable in central-northern Europe

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Table 3.2 Turnout rates by occupational condition, and relative risk EU-15 high-income countries

PIIGS

EU-28, late comers

EU-28

Total

77.8

79.7

69.4

76.8

Stable employees (unlimited contract) Precarious employees (limited contract + no contract) Unemployed Retired Student Housework Other

79.7

83.3

72.0

79.0

70.1

73.3

63.8

69.4

55.6 86.5 61.2 73.9 69.4

71.1 82.8 63.5 81.2 72.6

56.1 74.7 50.1 66.1 63.4

60.7 83.5 59.6 75.1 69.2

24.1

12.2

15.9

18.3

9.6

10.0

8.2

9.6

14.5

2.2

7.7

8.7

3.14

2.03

2.01

2.44

1.67

1.83

1.46

1.66

1.87

1.11

1.38

1.47

Diff. p.p. (stable vs unemployed) Diff. p.p. (stable vs precarious) Diff. p.p. (precarious vs unemployed) Relative risk (stable vs unemployed) Relative risk (stable vs precarious) Relative risk (precarious vs unemployed)

Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 (round 1–9)

(24 p.p. with a relative risk of 3.14), in particular in Denmark (3.94), Germany (3.82) and Sweden (3.78). On the contrary, turnout among the unemployed in the PIIGS countries is similar to that of temporary workers (71.1% compared to 73.3%). The unusual thing is the greater turnout of those without a job: the probability of stable employees voting is more than 3 times greater than that of the unemployed in those countries comprised in the first group, while this ratio falls to 2 in the Mediterranean area (and in Ireland), where also the participatory edge of temporary workers over the unemployed is nullified (RR of 1.11) (Fig. 3.5). This variegated situation is confirmed in Fig. 3.6, where I calculate the marginal effects of the occupational status on turnout in

3

EU-28, late comers

PIIGS

EU-15 high-income countries

0.00

TURNOUT AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITY …

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

4.00

67 4.50

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Netherland Sweden United Kingdom Greece Ireland Italy Portugal Spain Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Poland Slovak Republic Slovenia Stable vs unemployed

Stable vs precarious

Precarious vs unemployed

Fig. 3.5 Relative risk of voting in employed stable, precarious and unemployed. EU-28 countries (Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9])

different groups of European countries. If we take EU-15 high-income countries as reference category, the estimated percentage of turnout in the PIIGS countries is 3–4 p.p. lower for regular workers and temporary workers but is higher for the unemployed (around 2 p.p.). In the EU-28 late-comer nations, the aforesaid predicted percentages remain considerably lower (up to 15 p.p. lower for those in regular employment) (Fig. 3.6).

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0 -.05 -.1 -.15

Effects on Pr(Vot)

.05

68

stable

unstable EU-15 high-income countries EU-28 late comers

unemployed PIIGS

Fig. 3.6 Marginal effects of occupational status as predictor of turnout in different groups of European countries (Note Regression models include “voted in previous Parliamentary election” as dependent variable, occupational condition as regressor and gender, age, education, year and country type as control variables [country type as moderator in the procedure margins]. Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9])

This comparison within the European context thus reveals a clear ranking of participation headed by those in permanent jobs (the insiders). As regards temporary workers, their intermediate position in the ranking does not indicate whether they are closer to the insiders or to the outsiders. Their turnout, and the impact this has on overall turnout, probably depends on certain more general factors linked to their presence in the labour market (their numbers and rate of growth of atypical jobs) and to the sectors in which they are employed. From this viewpoint, account should be taken of the development of deregulation policies which, together with the general disappointment with such measures, can result in temporary workers following a similar path to the unemployed in terms of participation as well, particularly in those countries worst hit by the economic crisis. In any event, the condition of the unemployed offers the most interesting subject for reflection. The fact that the turnout gap is of a limited entity in PIIGS countries alone may depend on various factors. One is the very nature of unemployment itself, which is a mass phenomenon in all of

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the countries considered: this is true not only in terms of the percentage of unemployed individuals, but also from the point of view of their socio-demographic characteristics. In the Mediterranean area in particular, the profiles of the unemployed are similar to those of the rest of the population (Gallie and Paugam 2000; Saraceno et al. 2020). Unemployment is a widespread condition that lasts longer than elsewhere, involves “normal” people embedded in families and enjoying social relations with many people, even if such relations are often of a “poor” quality. These characteristics are not commensurate with the multiple forms of “discrimination” and/or problems afflicting the unemployed in central-northern Europe, where there are fewer unemployed who are however more clearly distinguished from the rest of the population. The last thing that ought to be taken into consideration here is the trend over time of the gaps. As Fig. 3.7 shows, at the start of the 2000s the gap between the unemployed and the employed was particularly significant (with a relative risk of more than 3). This gap gradually narrowed, reaching a minimum level in 2016 (relative risks of 2.1 in general and of 1.7 in the PIIGS countries). What has increased, however, is the turnout gap between temporary workers and regular workers. Consequently, unemployment has also become less of a discriminating factor in relation to precariousness. Overall, therefore, the occupational status of people continues to be a predictor of turnout, albeit one that points to less significant differences between the different groups concerned. 3.5

Stable vs unemployed

Stable vs precarious

Precarious vs unemployed

Stable vs unemployed (PIIGS)

3 2.5 2 1.5 1 2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

Fig. 3.7 Relative risk of voting in stable employees, precarious and unemployed groups, over time. EU-28 countries (Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 [round 1–9])

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Who Feels Underprivileged? Subjective Status Inconsistency and Relative Deprivation As an expression of the position occupied by individuals within society, socio-economic status comprises a combination of objective indices. However, there is one aspect that may clash with the empirically determined dimension to the point where this creates an imbalance. The factor in question is a person’s subjective socio-economic status, which involves “the level of social respect or esteem people believe is accorded them within the social order […] it embodies a person’s sense of where she stands in relation to the full social assembly and, in that respect, might be said to represent social integration, namely, whether or not the person feels herself to be a fully recognized member of society” (Gidron and Hall 2017, pp. 60–61). Compared to material conditions, people’s perception of their status also comprises certain cultural and psychological aspects, such as their degree of satisfaction with life (Singh-Manoux et al. 2003). These aspects may have significant effects on people’s political attitudes and behaviour (Brown-Iannuzzi et al. 2017). The question of subjective status is of importance when studying turnout because it is linked to the question of relative deprivation. The theory underlying the latter concept postulates that society’s value judgements are not based on absolute standards, but on a comparison with other individuals (Smith and Pettigrew 2015; Walker and Pettigrew 1984). The sense of relative deprivation arises when an individual feels that his/her social status is lower than that of the social groups he/she looks to (the salient others ) or is lower than what it was in the past. Deprivation exists when a discrepancy emerges between what a person feels fair to expect, and the degree to which that person thinks that such expectations are achievable and can be maintained (Gurr 1970). Theories of relative deprivation, which were originally formulated in the sociological field (Stouffer et al. 1949; Merton 1957; Davis 1959; Runciman 1966), have significantly contributed to the grievance-based theories of collective action (Gamson 1968; Gurr 1970). Such theories argue that status incongruence can give rise to frustration and anger, which become stronger when associated with downward mobility from a previously stable, safe economic and occupational situation. The impossibility of achieving pre-established goals results in dissatisfaction, which tends to bolster the critical attitudes of those concerned towards the political system deemed responsible for the unfavourable situation (Gidron

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and Hall 2017, 2020). Rather than resulting in people’s withdrawal from electoral involvement, people’s grievances produce a declining interest in conventional forms of political participation (in particular, voting), and act as an incentive to political protest and activism (Wilkes 2004). One key factor impacting the type of political response is the way in which people experience relative deprivation, in particular those groups with very limited resources that are subject to impoverishment. The difficulties concerned (a loss of security, of work, of one’s home) may be experienced on a personal level through a comparison with others (egoistic deprivation), or collectively (fraternalistic deprivation) when a certain number of members of a group are forced to renounce the pursuit of their own interests. These two situations can be attributed to different causes. Individual (egoistic) deprivation is often the result of personal characteristics and limits, and this leads individuals to choose subjective responses in an attempt to better their own lot. If, on the other hand, the same individuals consider the fact that other people share the same misfortune, then the tendency will be to attribute blame externally (Kern et al. 2015, p. 468). The feeling of dual deprivation—the feeling that the same personal experience is also affecting others—is believed to offer added motivation to those concerned to take action, even though, as the aforementioned study of Marienthal shows, the anger-protest dynamic may not be triggered if the economic situation is particularly difficult and if there is a generalised absence of future prospects. The economic crisis witnessed in the late 2000s, which affected southern-European countries in particular, is a good example with which to test the validity of the theory, since the difficult conditions, both subjective and objective, fostered a strong feeling of dissatisfaction which at the same time resulted in considerable alienation and protest (Grasso et al. 2019, pp. 401–402). As with the previously discussed dimensions, the European Social Surveys provide various ideas for an analysis of the impact that individuals’ own perception of their status has on their political participation. The first aspect considered when analysing such impact was the incongruity of socio-economic status: that is, the discrepancies in those dimensions that determine individuals’ socio-economic status. These discrepancies may range considerably in terms of income/occupation and education. The various resulting combinations include “over-rewarding”, that is, the situation of those with income and jobs at a higher level than that of their educational qualifications; and then there is “under-rewarding”, whereby a person’s income and occupation do not reward the investment

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made in their education as a consequence of their delayed entry into the labour market. This second type of situation clearly points to a detrimental mismatch which may negatively impact the inclination of those concerned to vote in elections. With regard to the imbalances present, the other combinations indicate individuals whose income/social class and educational rankings are congruent (both at low and high levels of status) or are mixed (when the incongruence concerns income and occupation as well as educational qualifications). The results set out in Table 3.3 would seem to confirm the hypothesis of the negative effect of a status imbalance. The lowest figures for turnout correspond to two patterns in particular: that of those with a low ranking across all dimensions (consistent, low status), and that of the under-rewarded (those with high educational qualifications but low income/occupational status). The latter are of particular importance here. A negative discrepancy between education and income/occupation results in a considerable reduction in participation: while the turnout of individuals with a medium–high level of education and similar position on income and class reaches around 85%, this figure falls to 65% among those with the same level of education but having a lower level of income and occupational status. The opposite is true of the over-rewarded: while the percentage of vote for individuals consistently low on income, class and education is 66.7%, this figure rises to 78% if their income and occupation is higher than their level of education. This participatory advantage is significant but is still smaller than the disadvantage of those whose income and jobs are not commensurate with their educational qualifications (Table 3.3). The figures also need to be considered on a country-by-country basis. The under-rewarded are penalised everywhere in terms of their political participation, although this is true to a lesser degree in the PIIGS countries than in northern Europe. This discrepancy may be accounted for by the differing performance of education in the two areas. While in the PIIGS countries, the lack of correspondence of job and income to education qualifications is the rule, and is particularly difficult to overcome, in northern European countries the difficulty of finding a job leads many highly educated people to take jobs that are below expectations. The widespread nature of this latter problem probably affects social expectations retroactively, and thus also the political participation of those concerned. Another indication of subjective status is that which derives from the question of a person’s own perception of his/her position in the social

79.4 77.1 75.0

66.3 64.1 61.4

66.3 70.4 61.0 71.8 70.2

78.8

69.0 67.9

62.2

61.4

EU-28 late comers

78.4 72.8 69.3

70.9 78.3 64.6 82.4 78.0

84.9

73.6 78.0

65.1

66.7

EU-28

Note Status incongruency: income low = 1st tertile, medium−high: 2nd + 3rd tertile; social class low: skilled and unskilled workers; medium–high: routine non manual petite bourgeoisie, low grade technicians, service classes; education low: lower secondary or less; medium−high: upper secondary + tertiary Subjective status: “There are people who tend to be towards the top of our society and people who tend to be towards the bottom. On this card there is a scale that runs from top to bottom. Where would you place yourself on this scale nowadays?” Relative deprivation: “Compared to yourself government treats new immigrants: much better, better, the same, a little worse, much worse. Low = the same + litte worse + worse; medium: better; high: much better Source European Social Survey 2002–2018 (round 4–9). For subjective status: round 7, 2012; relative deprivation; round 8, 2014

85.2 76.6 69.4

Relative deprivation Low Medium High

86.9

85.8

70.8 78.6 72.3 85.1 84.0

77.8 79.4

73.8 79.1

75.8 85.3 70.4 90.6 87.1

74.5

64.8

SES (income) and SS (subjective status) SES, bottom third SES, middle third Of which: SS bottom SES, top third Of which: SS bottom or middle

76.1

PIIGS

62.3

EU-15 high-income countries

Perceptions of social status and turnout, by group of countries

Status incongruency Low status, consistent (income, class, and education low) Under-rewarded (income and class low, education medium–high) Mixed status (inconsistent) Over-rewarded (income and class medium–high, education low) Medium–high status, consistent (income, class, and education medium–high)

Table 3.3

3 TURNOUT AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITY …

73

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D. TUORTO

ranking. The variable indicates how people see themselves vis-à-vis others (whether higher or lower, on the basis of the aforementioned overrewarding or under-rewarding logic), and this is not necessarily congruent with the information provided by their socio-economic status. Once again, the figures would seem to confirm the negative effect on participation of a status imbalance: when the comparison between objective status (established using the indicator of income) and subjective status is negative, then their political participation will suffer as a result. For example, the percentage of those voting in the middle tertile of income is 78.3%, but this figure falls to 64.6% if those people concerned have a low subjective status, that is, they come within the lowest tertile. Likewise, turnout among those in the highest tertile reaches 82.4%, but this figure falls to 78.0% in the case of under-rewarded individuals. In this case the disadvantage is less pronounced, which shows that the negative effect of a status imbalance on turnout is more pronounced among those segments of the middle-class population more exposed (or who feel that they are more exposed) to the risk of impoverishment. As in the previous case, the differences are much greater in central-northern European countries (all of 15 p.p. lower), where those who feel their status to be low despite being in the intermediate income group, tend to vote less frequently than those who are in fact in the low-income group. The last dimension concerned here is that of relative deprivation. This reveals positional inequality, that is, the perception that the group to which a person belongs has of being unfairly treated compared to other groups. In the case in question, the comparison that is made is with immigrants. Immigrants represent the group whose members are actually blamed for the economic difficulties they experience. The importance of this relationship is shown by the linear nature of participation: as the perception of deprivation grows, so turnout decreases, from 78.4% among those who do not feel they are deprived, to 72.8% among those who feel they are somewhat deprived, and to 69.3% among those who feel that they are severely disadvantaged. Differences between countries are important once again: the participatory gap between the most and the least relatively deprived groups is much greater in northern-central Europe than elsewhere (around 16 p.p. compared to 4–5 p.p. in the other countries examined). Finally, the multivariate analysis (Fig. 3.8) confirms the complexity of this phenomenon, as it indicates the presence of what would seem to be counter-intuitive elements. Compared to those who do not feel that they

TURNOUT AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITY …

75

-.04 -.06 -.08

Effects on Pr(Vot)

-.02

0

3

Index of SES (0-1) 0

.1

.2

.3

.4

Feel deprivation

.5

.6

.7

.8

.9

1

Feel no deprivation

Fig. 3.8 Marginal effect of socio-economic status (SES) as predictor of turnout by level of relative deprivation. EU-28 countries (Note Regression models include “voted in previous Parliamentary election” as dependent variable, occupational condition as regressor and gender, age, education, year and country type as control variables [level of relative deprivation as moderator in the procedure margins ]. Source European Social Survey 2014 [round 8])

are relatively deprived (the reference category here), the estimated probability of voting is always lower among those who feel, to a less or greater extent, that they are deprived, that is, treated worse than the others. The interesting aspect of this is that the negative effect on turnout does not only concern poorer individuals, but even more so those in the middleand high-income brackets. The impact of an individual’s perceived status on his/her political participation is therefore confirmed. This is in keeping with what emerges from the study of other phenomena, such as welfare chauvinism (Van Oorschot 2008), which has become widespread even in wealthier countries and is shared by broad sections of the population regardless of their social standing.

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CHAPTER 4

The Institutional Determinants of Turnout Inequalities

Abstract This chapter deals with the macro institutional and contextual factors that may encourage underprivileged groups to vote or discourage them from doing so. The focus in the present chapter is on those aspects that go beyond the individual resources or social status of those concerned. The institutional determinants of participation (or non-participation) embrace a vast array of factors, namely: voter registration processes, voting mechanisms, types of electoral and party system, elections, as well as the socio-economic characteristics of the nations concerned, the orientation of social policies, and the party mobilisation strategies employed. In this chapter I will show how these various dimensions impact, to a lesser or greater degree, the propensity of the electorate to go out and vote. In particular, I shall examine the affect they have on those individuals who are less well-equipped to participate in the political process, and who are thus more subject to forms of direct or indirect exclusion from voting. Keywords Non-eligible voters · Voter registration · Electoral system · Compulsory voting · Party mobilisation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Tuorto, Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0_4

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Excluded by Law: Non-eligible Voters as Neglected Categories Democracy is characterised by the considerable degree to which citizens are involved in the selection of a country’s political leaders and their policies, through regular, free elections. The inclusive nature of elections (all adults of a voting age being eligible to vote) is one of the principles of the democratic process identified by Dahl (2000, pp. 37–38). In order to meet this basic principle of modern democratic life, the definitions of participation and citizens’ rights have gradually been modified, also in virtue of the varying conditions of modern social and economic life, which have made it more difficult to establish the confines of a nation’s political community. Before the introduction of universal suffrage, there were many restrictions on people’s entitlement to vote. Some of these restrictions, such as gender, education and income, have gradually been overcome by law, even though various participatory gaps continue to emerge despite the existence of equal rights. In the case of other aspects, such as ethnic origin or nationality, the degree of political inclusion is based on legal systems that often differ from one nation to another, even within the same European context: said systems establish the principles according to which people are considered citizens from the electoral point of view, and the type of elections at which people may vote insofar as they are members of the national community. In a situation of universal suffrage, the right to vote is granted to people when they reach the established voting age. Nevertheless, there is always some difference between the number of individuals theoretically entitled to vote in virtue of their age, and the number of individuals who can actually vote, that is, who are authorised by law to participate in elections. What entitles a citizen to vote depends on government policy: it does not automatically follow that all adult natives are entitled to vote, as there may also be other, temporary, or permanent restrictions of a direct or indirect nature, that concern certain categories of person in relation to specific conditions or public conduct. The question of exclusion from voting in modern democracies thus regards the denominator of turnout rate. To what extent does the population entitled to vote correctly approximate the population of residents or of those people constituting a national community? Furthermore, on what grounds are people excluded from voting? For some time now, electoral studies have been animated by the debate over “non-eligible

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voters”. Evidence of this lies in the fact that official figures for voters vary, depending on whether they are calculated as the “voting-age population” (VAP) or as the “voting-eligible population” (VEP). The former measure, which includes all electors who have reached the minimum voting age, does not always accurately reflect the rate of participation, in that it may underestimate the frequency with which those entitled to vote actually do vote. On the contrary, the second, more restrictive measure, fails to provide any information about the size of the non-eligible population, that is, those persons who do not have a right to vote (Geys 2006). If we examine the EU countries, taking as our basis the elections of the last twenty years (2000–2020), the VEP turnout is on average 4 percentage points higher than the VAP turnout (Table 4.1). With regard to the situation in the USA, McDonald and Popkin (2001) wrote of the “myth of the vanishing voter”, meaning that the fall in voter turnout in recent decades is merely apparent, or in any case is less than the figures would seem to indicate. This depends, at least in part, on the fact that a certain share of non-eligible voters was taken into account, that is, people who cannot vote but who are nevertheless included in the figures, and whose numbers, the two authors suggest, have gradually increased over the years (ibid., p. 966). In addition to these cases of formal exclusion, there are also mechanisms by which certain people are dissuaded from going to vote. These include registration requirements, which affect the degree to which an election is open or closed (James and Garnett 2020; Blais 2006). For example, in those cases where registration is not automatic, as in the USA, it is up to individuals, rather than the government, to assume responsibility for registration. This additional requirement may entail additional costs in terms of time, the need to acquire information about when and where to register, and so on, and this in turn may render voting more difficult (Powell 1986; Rosenberg and Chen 2009). The people who have the most difficulty in registering, or in completing the procedure, tend to be those belonging to specific categories: minorities, social classes characterised by conditions of socio-economic disadvantage, and sections of the population more likely to move around the country (Teixeira 1987; Niemi and Weisberg 1993). On the other hand, in nearly all European countries, eligible voters are automatically registered for voting by the government, using national population databases or civil registers employed to trace citizens’ access to welfare system services. Public institutions usually take the electoral certificates around to people’s

Diff. p.p VEP-VAP population

+7.8 +5.6 −8.4 −6.7 +28.5 +0.2

+4.8 +8.3 −3.8 +8.3

+6.0 −8.2 −1.0 +2.6 +2.8

+9.0 +0.2 +37.6

Austria Belgium Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic

Denmark Estonia Finland France

Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy

Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg

16 (18) 18 (18) 18 (21) 18 (18) 18 (35) 18 (21/40 Senate) 18 (18) 18 (21) 18 (18) 18 (18/24 Senate) 18 (18) 18 (25) 18 (18) 18 (21) 18/25 Senate (25/40 Senate) 18 (21) 18 (25) 18 (18)

Age threshold voting (candidacy)

but but

but but but

No, but No, but Yes, but

Yes, but No, but No Yes No, but

Yes No, but Yes Yes, but

Yes, Yes. No, Yes Yes, Yes,

Franchise of criminal offenders

but but

but but

No, but No, but No, but

No, but No, but No, but Yes Yes

No, but No but, Yes, but No, but

Yes No, No, Yes Yes, Yes,

Franchise of mentally disabled restricted restricted restricted restricted restricted restricted

Non restricted Non restricted Non restricted

Restricted Non restricted Non restricted Non restricted Non restricted

Restricted Non restricted Non restricted Non restricted

Non Non Non Non Non Non

Voting right for citizens non-residents

Degree of electoral inclusion among different categories of voters. EU-28 countries

Country

Table 4.1

Restricted Non restricted Non restricted

Restricted Restricted Non restricted Non restricted Restricted

Non restricted Non restricted Non restricted Restricted

Restricted Non restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted Restricted

Voting right for residents non-citizens

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n.a +3.4 +0.4

−6.7 −0.9

−0.1 −1.7 +4.3 +2.8 +4.5

Malta Netherland Poland

Portugal Romania

Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden United Kingdom

16 (18) 18 (18) 18 (21/30 Senate) 18 (18) 18 (25/33 Senate) 18 (21) 18 (18) 18 (18) 18 (18) 18 (18)

Age threshold voting (candidacy)

No Yes No, but Yes No, but

Yes, but No, but

Yes, but Yes, but No

Franchise of criminal offenders

No, No, No, Yes No, but

but but but

No, but No, but

No, but No, but No, but

Franchise of mentally disabled

Non restricted Non restricted Non restricted Restricted Restricted

Non restricted Non restricted

Non restricted Non restricted Non restricted

Voting right for citizens non-residents

Non restricted Non restricted Restricted Non restricted Restricted

Restricted Restricted

Restricted Non restricted Restricted

Voting right for residents non-citizens

Note Turnout calculated for Voting Age Population (and differences Voting Age Population – Voting Eligible Population) refers to Parliamentary elections held in the period 2000–2020 (for France and Portugal, Presidential elections) Motivations for restrictions based on criminal offence: “Yes, but”: disenfranchised only for candidacy; only if the person has been convicted for an act which makes him or her unworthy; only for a limited period; only with long sentence of imprisonment. “No, but”: disenfranchised if convicted of a criminal offence by a court and serving a prison sentence; the regaining of electoral rights needs court approval; automatic exclusion in the case of imprisonment or specific crimes Motivation of restrictions based on mentally disabilities “Yes, but”: disenfranchisement only for those fully deprived of legal capacity; mentally disabled individuals are disenfranchised, but the law is no longer applied, except in the case of an individual placed in a psychiatric institution; disenfranchisement only for candidacy. “No, but” disenfranchisement as a consequence of a decision by a court or judge; if they are put under guardianship, if they live in psychiatric hospital; if the individual cannot comprehend the relevance, purpose and effect of elections Year: 2015 Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA); EUI Global Citizenship Observatory

Diff. p.p VEP-VAP population

Country

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homes or send them out by mail. The capacity to intercept and inform voters within specific social contexts such as those of migrant workers or ethnic minorities may nevertheless be limited (Purdam et al. 2002; Brouard and Tiberj 2008). Furthermore, in the French case there is an official obligation to register for voting (in person or by mail), together with more restrictive procedures, although the law does not specify any penalties for non-compliance.1 There has been broad discussion in the literature of the effect that the presence or absence of restrictions has on voter registration. One common view is that the existence of legal and administrative barriers has less of an effect on the wealthy and on well-educated electors than it does on poor, less well-educated individuals (Piven and Cloward 2000, pp. 42–43), and clearly distorts the representativeness of voting (Delwit 2013). The reason for this is the discouragement resulting from the difficulties in finding out where registration takes place and the deadline for such, together with the need to periodically renew registration (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Jackson et al. 1998; Avery and Peffley 2005). On the other hand, the simplification of procedures can result in increased turnout among the residentially mobile sections of the population (Highton and Wolfinger 1998) and among poorer people (Jackson et al. 1998; Brown et al. 1999), even though certain scholars believe such electors are little inclined to vote despite having the opportunity to do so (Wattenberg 2002, pp. 56–57). Apart from registration procedures, there are other limitations to voting that apply to certain specific categories of citizen. Age is one of them. In order to grant people the opportunity to express themselves electorally, all modern democracies require the reaching of a minimum age which generally, but not always, corresponds to the age at which the law considers a person to be an adult. The exclusion of non-adults is justified on the grounds that only mature people can make reasoned choices, and age is deemed to represent the simplest, most direct proxy of this characteristic (Blais et al. 2001). Notwithstanding this, some countries have decided in recent years to grant minors the right to vote. The voting age was lowered to 16 years in Austria in 2007, and more recently in Malta (in 2018). In other countries (Germany, Switzerland, Estonia and Scotland) minors may vote in local elections in certain cities or states (including Scottish parliamentary elections, for example). A much 1 General information on voting requirements and registration methods in different countries can be found at: https://aceproject.org/.

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commoner occurrence, however, is the setting of the voting age at a higher age, depending on the type of vote concerned or the type of electorate (with active and/or passive suffrage). Within Europe, young people may vote and stand for election at the age of 18 in sixteen different countries. This opportunity is only granted to those aged 21 for candidacy in a further 5 countries, and in another 7 countries it is only granted at a later age. In six of those the lower age limit for citizens wishing to stand for election to the Senate (the higher house of parliament) is between 30 and 40 (Arrighi et al. 2013) (Table 4.1). While the exclusion of non-adults is in keeping with an objectively justifiable principle, any evaluation is more difficult with regard to disabled persons, in particular to those suffering from mental illness (intellectually disabled persons). In this case, the grounds given for the suspension or removal of voting rights are the inability of such persons to make an independent judgement and to express an anonymous vote, as well as the difficulty of arranging polling booths and guaranteeing voting procedures inside care homes or institutes for the disabled (Blais et al. 2001). The fact that a person’s incapacity may be considered a sufficient condition for the disenfranchisement of that person, or that the decision to deprive a person of the right to vote can be made based on the severity of that person’s disability, is highly debatable. Even though in recent years greater attention has been paid to the rights of disabled persons, the legal systems of numerous European countries provide for the automatic exclusion from voting of those persons requiring total protection (e.g. those living with full time assistance in a psychiatric hospital or nursing home/residence). Such measures are usually set out in ordinary legislation, and on occasion in a country’s constitution. Limitations on voting rights may also apply to persons with a physical disability, if such disability hinders or complicates access to the voting booth or voting as such (illhealth, blindness, incapacity to use one’s hands: see Theuns 2019). In the majority of legal systems (20 cases out of 28 EU countries), the mentally disabled are somehow disenfranchised: if found legally incapacitated by a court decision; if they are under guardianship or live in psychiatric hospital; if the individual cannot comprehend the relevance, purpose and effect of elections. In other 3 cases restrictions are partial (only those fully deprived or in asylums, only for candidacy), while in 5 states (Austria, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Sweden), under no circumstances are people with a disability deprived of their right to vote (Table 4.1).

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In addition to age and disability, another condition which may permit states to impose legal limitations on the right to vote is that of having committed criminal offences. The justification given for disenfranchising criminals derives from the widely shared idea that government and the electoral process must be protected against persons considered dangerous, who are this not deemed worthy of contributing towards the selection of their country’s political representatives. There is less agreement, however, in regard to which situations are to be considered worthy of disenfranchisement: in other words, should only those serving their sentence in prison be included, or should those found guilty of crimes but not serving a prison sentence also be disenfranchised? Should the decision to take away a person’s voting rights depend on the seriousness and/or type of the crime, and should their disenfranchisement for crimes committed continue once they have served their sentence (Blais et al. 2001)? Once again, a comparison of different European countries portrays a variegated picture. Of all EU countries, only 6 do not restrict the voting rights of convicted criminals and continue to grant them the same right regardless of the seriousness of the crimes they have committed (Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Slovenia and Sweden). On the opposite side, 3 countries give no chance to vote for felons (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) and apply restrictions to all convicted prisoners in any elections. The remaining countries are equally divided among the “yes but” (10 cases) and “no but” option (9 cases). The former case of soft limitations concerns disenfranchisement only for candidacy; only for a limited period; only for acts which make unworthy or long sentence of imprisonment. “No, but” includes cases of felons serving a prison sentence, or it implies automatic exclusion in the case of imprisonment or specific crimes, or when the regaining of electoral rights needs court approval (Table 4.1). The exclusion from the electoral process of those persons who have committed crimes, poses the problem for all countries, of social and racial bias. This manifests itself in the form of the underrepresentation in the electoral process of those with greater numbers led into committing crimes and/or who have been identified as “deviant” by the agencies of social control (Manza and Uggen 2004, 2008; Hout et al. 1995). In addition to those cases described above, other social groups possess uncertain status in electoral terms, including immigrants, students, military personnel, public officials and diplomats. The general question regarding the electoral status of such persons concerns what legitimises

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their right to vote: formal citizenship based on membership, or the residence in a political community based on territorial location (Katz 1997). According to Caramani and Grotz (2015), the various combinations of these two dimensions give rise to 4 different types of electorate: (i) the national-resident electorate, which is the most restrictive, insofar as it includes a nation’s citizens present in the country, and excludes those who have emigrated abroad as well as any foreign immigrants to the country; (ii) the national electorate, which includes all citizens comprising the people (the demos ); (iii) the resident electorate, that is, the electorate of residents regardless of their citizenship; (iv) the national and resident electorate, which includes all citizens in the country or abroad, together with all residents of the country (be they citizens or not) (ibid., pp. 803–804). The first case is that of non-resident citizens, that is, of those who live either permanently or temporarily outside of their country of origin, which they continue to vote in. Their ties may be weakened by the distance separating them from their country of origin; but likewise, they may also persist, since geographical mobility is not definitive, or because they continue to keep family and social networks alive, or because they have maintained a strong interest in their country of origin. Whereas in the past, resident status was considered a prerequisite for the entitlement to vote, nowadays there are a great many people who have the right to vote in their country of origin despite residing elsewhere. From the 1970s on, emigrants have increasingly been perceived as a resource and a source of political influence, and this has laid the ground for the extension of electoral rights (Pogonyi 2014) and the establishment of a transnational model of citizenship (Bauböck 2003).2 The commonest situation in Europe is where expats are entitled to vote (Arrighi and Bauböck 2017). This voting right is granted for national elections (parliamentary/presidential and European), but very rarely for local elections. Nearly all the member states (24 out of 28) also grant the vote to their national citizens who have lived all their lives abroad. Some countries impose certain conditions. For example, there are those that require people to have previously resided in the country itself (in Sweden, for example, this period must be continuous), or registration in a home 2 In a Eurobarometer survey conducted in 2018, the majority of respondents declared that they thought it was wrong for people resident in another country to lose the right to vote in their country of origin. See: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/ CRE-8-2018-10-02-ITM-018_EN.html.

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constituency (within the last 15 years in the UK), or the intention to return (Denmark). Others limit such voting rights to specific categories, such as military personnel and diplomats (Cyprus, Ireland, and Malta) (see Table 4.1 and also: Arrighi et al. 2013, pp. 21–22; 2019, p. 25). Regardless of the possibility of voting, the turnout rate for nonresident citizens is strongly influenced by the electoral procedures in place. That is, whether only remote voting is permitted, or whether voting in person is allowed as well, in the case of those citizens living abroad (and whether or not the country of origin contributes towards the costs of returning to vote); the manner of voting and the voting channels and venues available (at consulates, by post, by e-mail, using e-voting procedures, and so on); whether national citizens resident abroad enjoy any specific forms of representation in parliament. Generally speaking, the turnout rates of non-resident citizens tend to be much lower than those of national citizens. In addition to the dissuasive effect of remoteness, there are also other hindrances represented by the difficulty in reaching the designated polling station, the absence of information, problems of voter registration or the non-delivery of voting forms (Arrighi et al. 2013). Moving on now to the second category, that of non-citizen residents, more restrictions apply, and these are related to the provisions of law governing entitlement based on length of residency, nationality and legal status (Bauböck 2005). This more complex situation is the result of the interweaving of the immigration issue, and thus of the question of the rights and duties of the other communities participating in the political process in the country they live in (Cheneval 2011). The limitations imposed on European citizens living abroad tend to be of a lesser entity than those placed on non-European citizens. On average, the former spends less time outside of their countries of origin, and when they integrate into the host community, they acquire the entitlement to vote more rapidly because they are granted citizenship sooner than their non-European counterparts. Moreover, in addition to the difficulties encountered by non-Europeans in participating in the political life of the host nation, such individuals also experience the loosening or breaking off ties with the political community in their country of origin, due to the great distance now separating them from their home country, and their limited financial resources. Non-citizens’ right to vote is a crucial issue for representative democracy. One argument in favour of enfranchising this group is that fewer restrictions can help overcome political discrimination against those who,

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despite paying taxes and observing the law, are prevented from expressing their own political opinions through the ballot box. The opponents of any extension of voting rights, on the other hand, base their case on the conviction that non-citizens, especially those who have only just arrived in the country, are not at all familiar with the local political context, are less informed, and thus are at greater risk of being manipulated (Blais et al. 2001). For non-citizen residents, the lack of any entitlement to vote has more to do with the procedures governing the granting of full citizenship. In this regard, Arrighi et al. (2013) distinguish between two groups of countries. In those with a citizenship-based regime (including France and Germany), a person wishing to exercise the right to vote must first of all become a citizen of that country: citizenship is not a step towards integration, but the endpoint at which integration can be considered achieved. On the contrary, in those countries with a denizenship-based regime, noncitizen residents may enjoy the benefit of social, political and civil rights without being citizens, and voting plays a compensatory role. The general situation at European level in regard to non-resident citizens is highly diversified, with 16 countries out of 28 in which voting rights are somehow restricted (Table 4.1). Around a half of EU countries have extended the right to vote in local elections to all long-term residents; in the Scandinavian countries, this voting right is granted to foreign residents after a minimum period of residence (2–3 years). The broadening of voting entitlement favours political integration at all levels, and in such countries, there are often significant numbers of politicians who originally migrated to that country. In the UK, there are certain differences between non-national citizens: for example, those from Commonwealth countries may also vote in national elections and may stand for election to parliament. In Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, the voting rights of non-national citizens are subject to the requirement of reciprocity, or to bilateral agreements. In those countries where the ius sanguinis principle prevails (specifically, in Italy, Austria and Germany), but also in France, non-citizens’ eligibility to vote is limited to a greater degree however, as certain rules persist governing citizenship eligibility that reflect the nation’s reluctance to accept immigrants as political subjects. Finally, in a substantial number of countries (mainly in Eastern Europe), all non-European citizens are excluded from voting, and in some cases, there are also restrictions in this regard placed on foreign European citizens, in terms of the length of time they have resided in the country concerned. As with electors living abroad, the possibility of

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immigrants voting at local elections does not automatically correspond to their doing so. In fact, the few studies carried out to date reveal a significant difference between “native born” and “foreign born” citizens, but also a difference between first and second generations, with the latter more involved in the electoral process and influenced by the institutions and environment of the country of destination (André et al. 2014, p. 17).

The Impact of Political Institutions and the Nature of Elections The act of voting, more than any other form of mobilisation, is conditioned by rules that establish the electoral context, the incentives to vote, and the costs involved. In this section we shall examine three different factors, namely: institutional arrangements, party systems and the nature of elections. The institutional arrangements refer to the characteristics of national political systems that are relatively stable over time, but which underlie cross-country differences in turnout. A first factor to be considered here is the existence or otherwise of compulsory voting, that is, of forms of constriction deriving from sanctions or penalties imposed on those citizens who fail to vote. In some countries, voting is not only a right but also a duty, and in those countries where this duty is (or was) in force, voter turnout is (was) systematically higher than elsewhere (Blais 2000; Birch 2009). Although difficult to separate from other concomitant factors, the effect of compulsory voting has been confirmed in diverse countries and at different times (Jackman 1987; Lijphart 1997; Blais and Dobrzynska 1998). Furthermore, the differences between those countries where voting is mandatory and those where it is not, have increased over time (Delwit 2013). Compulsory voting for all citizens is an exception to the rule, however. At the European level, certain countries impose legal obligations of a more or less binding nature. In Belgium, for example, failure to vote needs to be justified, and should an elector not provide such justification then he/she will be fined and may even be removed from the electoral register for a certain period. In Greece, on the other hand, the obligation to vote is applied in a rather flexible manner, and the abstention of those over the age of 70 is always tolerated. In Switzerland, compulsory voting only applies to one canton (and in Austria, to certain regions up until

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2004), while in Cyprus compulsory voting was abolished in 2017.3 Italy is one of the countries where voting was seen as a civic duty in the past; in fact, up until 1993 the fact that a citizen had not voted could have been recorded on that person’s identity papers, with possible employment or other repercussions, even though the penalties were not applied (Mannheimer and Sani 2001; Tuorto 2006). Finally, the Netherlands had compulsory voting until 1970, when it was abolished, after which there was a noticeable decrease in voter turnout at subsequent elections (Franklin 2004; Katz 1997). The greater turnout during implementation of the aforesaid voting obligations has been accounted for in terms of the financial cost of not voting, and of the loss of social prestige that such abstention implied (Blais 2006; Blais et al. 2003). However, it has also been established that formal constrictions do not actually raise citizens’ sense of civic duty if, in a given area, there is a high degree of social cohesion, or there are political cultures that promote the importance of voting (Achen 2002; Bilodeau and Blais 2005). In helping to raise general turnout at elections, compulsory voting acts on the equity of electoral participation and helps reduce representation biases. This levelling effect has been widely confirmed by a number of studies. In countries where voting is compulsory, the level of inequality associated with individuals’ socio-economic status is actually lower (Gallego 2010; Jaitman 2013; Singh 2015). Moreover, in such countries, the elderly vote in greater numbers (Quintelier et al. 2011). By rendering voting a less costly exercise, individuals are more likely to get out and vote, and this favours the participation of low-income voters, and of less well-educated, less politically informed citizens (Fowler 2013; Bechtel et al. 2016) who take advantage of this procedure, particularly in those voting systems where all votes are counted, that is, in proportional voting systems (Katz 1997, p. 244). The fact remains that compulsory voting is an imperfect indicator of the quality of the democratic process; it does not necessarily improve the accuracy or representativeness of voting, as it tends to force those less well-informed, less motivated electors to go to the polling stations (Kouba and Mysicka 2019), and such electors could

3 https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout/compulsory-voting. For more details on Electoral Data in Europe see also: https://www.coe.int/en/web/electoral-ass istance/elecdata.

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cast their votes in a more random fashion than other, better-informed voters (Selb and Lachat 2009). In addition to the compulsory nature of voting, account must also be taken of the electoral system in question. The positive effect on voter turnout of the proportional representation system (PR), compared to majoritarian/plurality/mixed systems, has been established by various studies over the years (Powell 1986; Jackman 1987; Blais and Carty 1990). There are several reasons for its relative advantage. Proportional representation systems allow voters to choose the parties they feel closest to, without any individual’s vote being wasted. Furthermore, the electorate has more chance of being duly represented, and this renders local elections competitive. Blais and Dobrzynska (1998) believe that proportional representation (PR) produces a greater number of parties, and thus electors are more likely to find a party that they believe can defend their interests. The parties, on the other hand, are encouraged to maximise their results in all constituencies, and thus to conduct electoral campaigns throughout the country, which in turn has a significant effect on participation. In the case of majority electoral systems, on the contrary, the simplicity of choice and the direct relationship with candidates are compromised by the lack of any direct correlation between votes and seats (Jackman 1987; Jackman and Miller 1995; Ladner and Milner 1999). In fact, majority systems offer little incentive to vote in those electoral districts where the results of the election are a foregone conclusion and there is little competition among candidates (Selb 2009). Following the classification drawn up by Jackman, one further institutional feature capable of impacting turnout is that of unicameralism: in other words, the degree to which the first legislative body is constrained or checked by other institutions (Jackman 1987, p. 408). Unicameralism should foster turnout, insofar as it gives electors the impression that their votes produce results that are not hindered or invalidated by parliamentary game-playing (Fornos et al., 2004). Another factor that may prove decisive is the electoral law establishing how votes equate to seats. In this case, the more that the existing law disproportionately favours larger parties, the more likely it is that votes will be wasted, and thus the greater the likelihood that parties will invest less in the election and fewer people will turn out to vote (Gallego et al. 2012). Finally, account should be taken of average district magnitude, to the degree that this affects the ways that parties mobilise their forces (in the case of single national constituencies, they mobilise their forces nationwide, whereas under the

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uninominal system, parties will only mobilise in those districts where they have a greater chance of winning (Jackman and Miller 1995; Stockemer 2015). As far as regards the second category of factors—those relating to the party system—one important thing to consider is the number of parties standing for election. However, the literature fails to agree on the type of effect that this number has on voter turnout. Some scholars believe that the presence of a large number of parties standing for election can facilitate voter participation, since this increases the competitiveness of the vote and the probability that voters will be able to find at least one party capable of representing their (Bühlmann and Freitag 2006; Karp et al. 2008). At the same time, however, an excessive number of parties could complicate voters’ decisions and make the formation of possible coalitions more difficult, thus rendering voters’ impact on the outcome of the vote more indirect and less incisive (Jackman 1987; Blais and Dobrzynska 1998). In addition to the number of parties standing for election, account should also be taken of the degree of party polarisation. Party systems characterised by a considerable degree of ideological polarisation permit electors to find the party that best represents their interests, and thus to express their own political positions along the left–right spectrum. In systems where ideological polarisation is limited on the other hand, and a great number of parties stand for election, there will be few clear choices available. Consequently, parties will tend to converge along ideological lines, and as a consequence, voters may tend not to bother to vote (Delwit 2013). A third and final series of factors are related to the political context, and they concern electoral outcomes. Although it may seem obvious that the moment in which an election is held generally impacts voter turnout, this requires further clarification. In addition to the impact of largely invariable institutional factors, voter turnout is also affected by certain characteristics of the electoral round. These include, for example, the importance or decisiveness of the election, and the stakes involved as perceived by the electorate itself. The degree of competitiveness may derive, for example, from whether the elections are of first or second-order status (Reif and Schmitt 1980; Van der Eijk and Franklin 1996), even though the importance of the latter depends on the existing level of decentralisation and local autonomy, and on the transfer of power from central government to regional governments, which can make even subnational elections meaningful (Schakel and Jeffery 2013; Gendzwill 2021). The closeness of the

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race between the leading and second candidates/parties is also important (Matsusaka 1993; Franklin 2004). If the gap between the two is narrow, then it is more likely that the vote of an individual will count. Uncertainty generally leads to the parties and candidates concerned trying to convince undecided voters to vote for them, and this in turn generates a greater degree of interest, more political debate and social pressure on people to cast their votes. These considerations point to the impact that perceptive factors and normative aspects may have on voter turnout. People’s civic mindedness in particular may lead people to vote regardless of their perceptions of the importance of their own votes, or of whether or not their voting can influence the outcome of the election. The duty to vote derives from the belief that a good citizen has a moral obligation to vote, and thus not voting is to be deemed ethically wrong. This moral duty, in turn, is linked to the trust people have in democracy, to their strong attachment to the community and to their respect for authority (Blais and Galais 2016, p. 61). As I have shown, the political-institutional context plays a key role in determining the average level of voter turnout. It accounts both for the persistence over time of differences between countries with diverse electoral systems and political parties, and for the contingent variations due to the characteristics of the elections themselves. Nevertheless, if we exclude the case of compulsory voting, scholars have been relatively unconcerned with establishing a correlation with turnout gap trends. The greater or lesser participation of the economically underprivileged classes of voters may only depend indirectly on those characteristics set out in this section of the present work. To the extent that they discourage people from voting, the effect of such characteristics is reflected in the turnout gap: having fewer voters as a whole also means that those with fewer resources will be under-represented, which is in keeping with what Lijphart had argued (1997, p. 2). Moreover, there are no sound reasons justifying the widening of the gap in the presence of certain contingent conditions. This is confirmed by the analysis, set out in Table 4.2, of the relationship between socio-economic status and turnout in countries with different political and institutional assets. If we consider the figure for the entire population (column 1), turnout is significantly higher in those countries with a proportional electoral system (than in those with a plurality/majority system), and where there is a lesser degree of disproportionality (the difference between votes received and seats allotted in a legislature). On the contrary, there are no significant turnout gaps in

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Table 4.2 Turnout rates by SES, turnout gap and strength of relationship (beta coefficient) in countries with different political and electoral characteristics. EU28 countries Turnout gap

β coefficient

62.6

−18.0

1.68

71.3

−18.0

1.88

Disproportionality of electoral system Low 80.4 70.7 High 73.8 67.3

−19.9 −16.4

2.04 1.40

District magnitude Low High

77.5 76.2

69.5 68.5

−18.1 −18.7

1.74 1.67

Number of parties Low High

76.1 77.6

70.0 67.8

−16.2 −20.6

1.55 1.89

N

56,893

13,003

Electoral system Single member, simple plurality system Proportional representation (PR)

Total

Lowest quintile SES

70.1 79.4

Note Beta coefficients derive from logistic regression models with vote as dependent, SES as regressor and sex, age, occupational condition, country and year as covariates. All the political variables are recoded into low–high (below/above the median). Disproportionality: index of absolute disproportionality. The index shows the differences between the effective number of parties in elections and parliaments without taking the fractionalization of the party system into account (see Gallagher 1991). District magnitude: the average number of members to be elected in each electoral district. Number of parties: effective number of parties on the votes level according to the formula proposed by Laakso and Taagepera (1979) Source ESS, 2012–2018 (round 6–9) merged with contextual variables

relation to the district magnitude variable (which indicates the number of members to be elected in each electoral district) and to the variable indicating the effective number of parties (an indicator of party system fragmentation). These trends, even if concentrated in a limited number of countries and in a short period, are reflected in the findings of the great majority of studies dealing with such question. However, if we now turn to the effect that the political-institutional variables have on the turnout gap, then the results of my analysis are less clear-cut. As regards the dimension of disproportionality, the degree of participatory inequality (rich vs. poor) is higher, not lower, in less disproportional countries (−19.9 p.p. compared to −16.4 p.p.), and the values of the beta

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coefficients confirm this relationship. The impact of a further two variables—the electoral system and district magnitude—is much more limited however, with no differences in turnout gap and the same relationship attested by the multivariate analysis. Finally, the degree of electoral system fragmentation (indicated by the number of parties present) has a certain impact on the participatory opportunities of low-class voters, and there will be a larger turnout gap the greater the number of parties standing for election. Ultimately, the mixed results shown in the table do not enable us to establish any clear connection between turnout gap and politicalinstitutional factors. Overall, the characteristics of the political system set out here, which in certain cases are decisive in mobilising the electorate, are not always capable, nevertheless, of correcting the imbalances deriving from the lower turnout rate of the poorer sections of the population compared to that of wealthier individuals. In the absence of external signs reassuring voters of the equal importance of each individual vote (each vote having the same weight and being translated proportionately into political representation, and thus influencing the way the government works), the decision to vote or otherwise is left up to the unequal individual ability to be informed, to express personal views at the ballot box, to find the necessary motivation to vote, and to display a certain degree of political understanding.

Socio-economic Considerations and the Turnout Gap Economic indicators such as the level of growth, the degree of competitiveness and labour market dynamism, have become extremely important for political scientific studies in recent years. In Chapter 3, I analysed the correlation between turnout and socio-economic class at the individual level. The question remains as to what happens at aggregate level, however. In what way is the turnout rate of a given area affected by an economic downturn, by the fact of living within a period of poverty and/or crisis? What relationship is established between individual and aggregate dimensions? Are socially disadvantaged people living in poorer areas more likely not to vote than other people are? Experiencing personal financial difficulties within an economically disadvantaged context certainly does not help matters. Classical studies of

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collective unemployment—in particular, the aforementioned study Marienthal : The sociography of an unemployed community—have shown that socio-economic difficulties are often accompanied by a lack of stimuli to participate in the electoral process, widespread apathy towards public matters, and the overall weakening of local political culture and political party dynamism. Looking at such matters from a more recent viewpoint, the fragmentation of the unity of the vote, of social class and of the local community due to the crisis of the mass parties, has exacerbated the sense of abandonment among citizens who, if trapped in a spiral of degradation, feel powerless in the face of the increasingly rapid changes impacting the contemporary world. All of this can have significant electoral effects. Studies of economic voting and of the role that the economy plays in electoral matters, have for some time now also considered their effects on turnout, albeit without reaching any unanimous conclusions in this regard (Lewis-Beck and Lockerbie 1989). As previously discussed, a decline in financial well-being can be seen as an accelerator of electoral demobilisation or, otherwise, a collector of unheard grievances which translate into participation. If at the individual level, people’s propensity to vote is correlated to their employment status and socio-economic resources, then it follows that similar variations can be expected whether one examines countries as a whole or subnational units. Moreover, while withdrawal or participation starts with individuals, their effects are felt by the community as a whole. The indicators pointed to by the literature include, in particular, GDP (per capita)—indicating the level of economic development—which is positively correlated to the level of turnout net of other variables (Blais and Dobrzynska 1998; Blais 2006). This is true to a lesser degree, however, in well-established democracies where economic disparities can be tempered by the welfare state, as we shall see in the next section. The nature of the labour market, or the level of literacy of a population, may also play a key role. Those constituencies with a higher proportion of poor, socially deprived and unemployed areas display lower turnouts (Whiteley et al. 2001). Similarly, the concentration of poorly educated people also affects electoral participation, despite the fact that voting is not a particularly demanding activity (Verba et al. 1995). Finally, individuals who are similarly disadvantaged in terms of their education can be excluded to a greater degree in those regions where average income is lower and inequality higher (Scervini and Segatti 2012).

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In addition to the absolute level of wealth, another factor to be taken into consideration is that of the differences in wealth and income among different areas of the same country. Studies of this question offer a variegated series of conclusions, some of which support the idea of a negative correlation (a high level of inequality equates to low-turnout levels: Lister 2007; Bartle et al. 2017), while others point to the mobilising effect of poverty (Oliver 2001), and others still see no correlation (Horn 2011). The outcome depends on the methods adopted, the variables taken into consideration, and the specific comparisons conducted between countries (Stockemer and Scruggs 2012). Solt’s study (2008) is one that sustains the theory of withdrawal. His cross-country multilevel analysis of 22 democracies reveals a correlation between a greater concentration of wealth and income on the one hand, and both lower turnout levels and a larger turnout class gap on the other. The relationship between inequalities at both micro and macro levels means that poorer voters vote less than wealthier ones do, and as the gap between the two widens, so does this difference. Solt formulated his relative power theory of political engagement starting from the earlier works by Schattschneider (1960). According to this theory, in situations of considerable inequality, poor people’s failure to cast their votes reflects the belief that their votes count for little and that their concerns are likely to be neglected. This derives from the fact that during electoral campaigns, the questions discussed tend to be monopolised by the wealthier members of the community, who are capable of putting questions on the political agenda, or removing them from it, and of convincing poorer people that the election is a waste of their time (Solt 2010, p. 58). In Solt’s view, the battle has historically been one between the universalisation of suffrage and the attempt to render voting meaningless. Regardless of the individual resources available to people, strong unequal contexts may discourage people from voting, thus transforming economic inequality into political inequality. In egalitarian countries, in contrast, the odds of having an impact are more equally distributed, and thus more citizens will participate. This correlation, which was discovered to exist in the USA, has also been identified in other countries, including European ones (Mahler 2002; Gallego 2015; Schäfer and Schwander 2019). However, the relationship between economic inequality and the turnout gap between rich and poor, has also been interpreted differently. Just as at individual level,

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also at countrywide level the presence and persistence of economic difficulties can, under certain circumstances, lead to a reaction in the form of voter mobilisation. Large differences in individual income and wealth may increase (rather than reduce) the earning opportunities of poorer people, as well as the risk of the rich making losses, thus providing people with an incentive to vote. Several studies have pointed to the existence of a smaller turnout gap in the presence of economic inequalities (Steinbrecher and Seeber 2011). According to Brady (2004), there is increasing conflict between those in favour of redistributional policies, and those who are against them. When poor people discover that the system is operating against them, they react by seeking greater public visibility. In the presence of considerable inequality, there is greater motivation to vote, since what is at stake —the redistribution of wealth—is particularly significant, and thus it is rational that people should express their preferences (Meltzer and Richard 1981; Oliver 2001). The idea of the political mobilisation of the poor has become particularly trenchant in recent years as a result of the economic crisis (Filetti and Janmaat 2018). During this period, people have had to deal with various economic problems and have realised that they are no longer going to get what they feel they are due. This sense of relative deprivation is thus believed to have acted as a trigger for voter participation (Klandermans et al. 2008). Instead of opting for a generalised reading of the relationship between inequality and turnout, certain other scholars have identified specific conditions that may lead to different outcomes. Jaime-Castillo (2009) and Horn (2011) have studied European countries and have focused on the differences between the groups within the socio-economic stratification. If there is a considerable gap between the middle classes and the upper classes, this may lead to them mobilising together with the working classes. On the other hand, if the inequalities are the result of the loss of standing of the working classes rather than of the middle classes, the prevailing scenario is one of disaffection. Jensen and Jespersen (2017), on the other hand, have observed that the mobilisation of the working classes is more likely in those countries that are rich but significantly unequal; in other words, in those countries where the disadvantaged classes are relatively better off than those in poorer countries also characterised by inequality. Finally, in the view of Polacko et al. (2021), if income inequality is particularly strong, then the political parties will play a key role: if depolarising positions prevail, electoral participation tends to

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decline, whereas if policy options become clearly differentiated, then this will have a positive impact on the turnout of poor voters as well. In Table 4.3 I have examined how the relationship between SES and turnout changes depending on certain contextual economic factors, namely: the level of GDP; the degree of income inequality measured using the Gini index; the population’s overall unemployment rate; and the ratio of social expenditure to GDP expressed as a percentage. If we consider the turnout rate of the entire population, then the relationships all follow the expected direction: the highest percentages are to be found in those countries with the highest pro-capita income levels, lower rates of economic disparity, a more efficient labour market, and a greater propensity to fund the welfare state. As we found in the previous section, once again in this case the same factors favouring turnout do not help reduce the participatory gap. Table 4.3 shows that the differences between lower and higher status groups is higher, rather than lower, in the wealthier countries (−18.0 p.p. compared to −14.2 in the poorer countries), and Table 4.3 Turnout rates by SES, turnout gap and strength of relationship (beta coefficient) in countries with different economic condition. EU-28 countries Turnout gap

β coefficient

66.1 73.2

−14.2 −18.0

1.60 2.11

70.0 68.1

−19.3 −17.1

1.94 1.44

68.8 68.2

−20.7 −16.5

2.08 1.48

Social expenditure on GDP Low 72.1 64.1 High 83.0 73.9

−17.9 −19.0

1.68 2.06

Total

Lowest quintile SES

GDP Low High

70.6 83.0

Gini index Low High

79.4 74.7

Unemployment rate Low 79.0 High 75.1

N

56,893

13,003

Note Beta coefficients derive from logistic regression models with vote as dependent, SES as regressor and sex, age, occupational condition, country and year as covariates. Low and high GDP, Ginicoefficent, unemployment rate and social expenditure correspond to values below and above the media for each dimension. All beta coefficients are statistically significant (p-value < 0.0001) Source ESS, 2012–2018 (round 6–9) merged with contextual variables

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similar differences are to be found with regard to the level of income inequality (−19.3 in countries with lower Gini-index p.p. compared to −17.1 p.p. in countries where the index results higher), unemployment (−20.7 p.p. with high rates compared to −16.5 p.p. with low rates), and also social expenditure. The values of the beta coefficients (measuring the strength of the correlation between SES and turnout confirm such trends. The investigation conducted reveals the complex nature of participatory inequalities: the same contextual factors that help explain the differences in turnout, operate to the contrary in the case of the turnout gap.

Welfare State Systems and Cultural Norms as Barriers to Voting Another set of variables potentially related to turnout concern the characteristics of welfare systems, that is, the capacity they have to promote forms of inclusiveness for the more disadvantaged sectors of the population. While it is true that the actions and interests of wealthier groups are reflected in policy directions, it is also true that the wealthy are not necessarily the only ones to be represented politically, if religious, political and union activism manages to promote the least represented groups (Piven and Cloward 1988), or when middle-class mobilisation helps to reduce the impact of unequal representation (Enns 2015; Branham et al. 2017; Gilens 2005, 2012). The responsibility of government in regard to the economy, can potentially impact voters’ electoral preferences and decisions to vote. An important factor in this sense is a country’s level of welfare spending (Radcliff 1992; Pacek and Radcliff 1995). The key issue is the interconnection between welfare spending, socio-economic status and turnout. In order to account for the fact that in countries with high welfare spending (and specific policy directions), the most disadvantaged citizens are driven to vote, reference needs to be made to the nature of social citizenship rights. As Marshall (1950) famously pointed out, political citizenship is influenced by social citizenship. Welfare state institutions shape citizens’ expectations and norms, as well as their political behaviour (Lister 2007, p. 25). Certain forms of extended solidarity may favour participation (Rothstein 1998) and provide legitimation for the representation of institutions as fair entities that treat people equally and place them in a position to be independent. Through the promotion of social security, the welfare system acts in regard to the differences in socio-economic

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status and reduces the impact of such in terms of participation, giving the more disadvantaged groups the opportunity to be politically visible (Solt 2008; Dalton 2017), by promoting the responsiveness of legislators in regard to social welfare policy (Piven and Cloward 1988; Jusko 2017). Not only do welfare policies favour greater equality, but the relationship also works the other way round: high turnout and a reduced class bias in voting have been associated with greater government expenditure (Fumagalli and Narciso 2012). It is a circular mechanism: participation influences policies, policies influence economic status and economic status influences participation (Pacheco and Plutzer 2008). Low-wage earners’ endeavours to vote result in their interests being represented to a greater extent, and in a reduction in the income gap (Avery and Peffley 2005). However, the opposite can also be argued: governments and political parties represent the opinions of poorer constituents to a lesser degree than they do those of wealthier citizens and are not able or inclined to offset the gap in the wealth, resources and capacities of the individuals concerned. According to Lister (2007), it is not the welfare state itself that mobilises or demobilises the citizens, but the experience of certain types of welfare state. It is the manner in which government implements policies that impacts the level and nature of political-electoral participation. In his study of 15 different countries across a broad period of time (between the 1960s and 1990s), Lister found that there was a substantial difference between diverse welfare systems. Individuals exposed to universalistic welfare policies tend to develop a greater degree of social trust compared to those who experience selective, residual welfare policies (Kumlin and Rothstein 2005). By promoting the equal treatment of all citizens, universalism helps overcome social inequalities and the stigma associated with measures designed exclusively for the poor (Baldwin 1990, p. 52). A generalised public welfare approach, together with strong institutional intervention, favours the expansion of social rights and sustains the rules of solidarity that are key to voter turnout. On the contrary, residual welfare regimes based on means-tested measures are likely to have the opposite effect: they have a powerful impact on the lives of the poor and can result in discretionary decisions which the beneficiaries have little say in (Radcliff 1992), and thus reinforce those beneficiaries’ isolation (Mettler and Stonecash 2008). Various studies have compared the response capacity, in terms of participation, and the political behaviour of populations who have had different experiences of access to social welfare programmes. With regard to the

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USA, Soss (1999) has shown that the clients of a means-tested public assistance programme participated less, were hostile towards, and generally mistrusted the government, and felt a limited sense of their own political efficacy. In Soss’ view it was the means-tested welfare system experience that discouraged people from participating in the electoral process, since it results in an indirect relationship with public institutions centred on social control rather than on rendering citizens genuinely independent. On the other hand, welfare programmes that in addition to the services they provide, also guarantee interaction with governmental agencies, can become opportunities for political learning, thus partially offsetting the low level of education among the population concerned. Such observations have also emerged from other studies, such as that conducted by Kumlin (2004) in Sweden. This study revealed the difference between welfare institutions promoting a broad form of citizenship through universal, well-funded programmes and others based on restrictions and bureaucracy, which discourage people from participating and exacerbate social divisions. One further reflection is the impact of clientelism on individuals with very limited socio-economic resources, particularly those in countries where the welfare system is underdeveloped, dysfunctional and only controlled to a limited extent by the State. In the literature, the question of corruption is generally associated with its negative effects on turnout, insofar as people tend to refrain from voting due to their disgust and disenchantment with the system. Corruption is seen as contributing towards the delegitimising of the political-institutional system (Kostadinova 2009; McCann and Dominguez 1998; Simpser 2005). Its role in facilitating the modernisation of countries hampered by slow, inefficient bureaucracies is more rarely pointed out. The offer of selective incentives and bribes for special interests may lead to voters favouring certain candidates, to the detriment of the latter’s rivals. In underdeveloped contexts, where universalistic principles operate to a very limited extent, and where the market struggles to counter existing imbalances, clientelism is potentially capable of reducing and overcoming forms of inequality that cannot be eliminated otherwise. However, this can have distortive effects on society as a whole. Preferential channels offer access to resources, enable socially significant results to be achieved, and permit individuals to improve their economic standing. The access to such resources thus becomes an instrumental form of political participation, in which electors are called upon to express personal, preferential votes.

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So far we have seen how turnout class bias is linked to the level of existing inequalities and to the type of redistributive policies adopted. What happens, however, if we look at this relationship from the opposite point of view? Can it be argued that the policies themselves are impacted by the presence of poor people? In other words, we need to consider the consequences of the disenchantment of disadvantaged groups in terms of public policies. The argument was raised by Piven and Cloward (1988), who maintained that since poor people vote less, policymakers tend to be less interested in their claims, particularly those concerning welfare issues. The reduced presence of poor people among those who vote determines less pressure on governments, which in turn leads to policies that are biased towards certain social groups (Hill and Leighley 1992; Schäfer 2012). A wider turnout gap corresponds to policies that increase inequalities and reduce the level of social welfare protection (Franko et al. 2016; Mueller and Stratmann 2003). On the other hand, in those cases where the turnout gap narrows, poor people vote more, and less restrictive welfare policies are adopted (Hill et al. 1995). One further thing to be taken into account here is the concentration of poor people. Where they are widely distributed across the country, their electoral power remains limited. On the contrary, in those areas with a strong presence of disadvantaged people, this factor may be decisive in their getting their voices across (Jusko 2017), insofar as it acts on the mechanisms by which political consensus is built. As Avery and Peffley (2005) point out however, in those places where a stigmatised group is in the majority, or is in any case numerically strong, this may also encourage the wealthier classes to get involved in politics, to behave in a hostile manner, and to react negatively to redistributive policies by calling for more restrictive measures.

The Enduring Effect of Political Mobilisation Together with institutional and socio-economic factors, mobilisation through political parties and other social intermediaries (i.e., associations, lobbies, religious denominations) completes this framework of explanations for turnout and the turnout gap. As several schools of politicalsociological thought have pointed out, one decisive factor leading to electors going to vote is the fact that someone has asked them to do so (Verba et al. 1995). This is also true of the more deprived social classes. The actions of parties and intermediary groups can, in fact, offset the lack of resources, through a combination of legal duty, incentives and

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informal pressure such that voting becomes an accepted practice even among those who would otherwise be hindered from doing so by their lack of resources. One seminal study of the effect of mobilisation in politics is that of Rosenstone and Hansen, which states that “mobilization is the process by which candidates, parties, activists, and groups induce other people to participate” (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993, pp. 25–26). Canvassing is believed to be fruitful particularly in the event of an election, since this form of participation is less affected than others by the recipient’s lack of economic resources. Through the process of mobilisation, citizens are able to reduce the costs of participation, since they take advantage of selective incentives (deriving from their constituting the target of a mobilisation programme). When candidates contact electors, they provide them with information about voting methods, the questions covered by the electoral campaign, and the positions of the parties concerned. They display responsiveness and they reinforce the electors’ impression that voters’ opinions count, that politicians are concerned with the electorate’s interests, and as such are worthy of voters’ trust. This is particularly true for those with fewer resources and a lower propensity to get involved (Goldstein and Ridout 2002). From the parties’ viewpoint, the mobilisation campaigns enable them to get closer to the electorate, to hear what those they contact have to say and to discover their needs and desires (Ross 2018). A key role in the mobilisation process is played by family networks, neighbours, colleagues and other people associated with voters’ social identities, all of whom help to create a sense of duty to vote. Citizens vote because other people encourage them to do so. The influence of others derives from their social roots, that is, from the degree of connection they have within social networks and associations that determine the social capital collectively available (Putnam 1995). These networks of relations put pressure on individuals to act as members of a group rather than as isolated individuals. At the same time, these social networks represent the context within which the messages sent out by electoral campaigns are informally replicated. Rosenstone and Hansen’s study reveals the negative impact on turnout of the transition from a situation of close contact with voters to one in which people interact less with parties, candidates and those intermediate groups filtering political messages (Kernell and Jacobson 2000, p. 358). This trend has been affected, as Chapter 1 shows, by the weakening of the relationship

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between left-wing parties and the electorate, as these are the parties that in the past played a major role in the mobilisation of the working classes. Studies of electoral campaigning in different periods and countries, have systematically shown how parties’ mobilisation efforts encourage people to vote, regardless of the type of political system in place (Karp and Banducci 2007; Magalhães et al. 2016). In order to understand how the mobilisation process operates, we need, however, to consider the impact that various different forms of political contacting can have. Such forms include door-to-door calling, as well as more impersonal forms (contact by phone, direct mailing, and television advertisements) (Dale and Strauss 2009; Nickerson 2007). One important distinguishing factor with regard to the effectiveness of messages, is the presence or otherwise of direct personal contact. Some scholars (Gerber and Green 2000; Gerber et al. 2003; Green et al. 2013) have demonstrated that face-to-face canvassing, based on grassroot activity (specifically, the Get-out-the-Vote (GOTV) field experiments) is more effective than indirect contact. Other studies (John and Brannan 2008; Fieldhouse et al. 2013) have reiterated the importance of face-to-face contacting by extending the experimental setting to the UK. Despite the fact that it cannot reach the same number of people as other strategies, personal canvassing is capable of producing significantly better results (Bhatti et al. 2018). This also holds true for the substantial, widespread digital campaigns (Vaccari 2017), whose effects on voting are not always evident, nevertheless (Aldrich et al. 2016). Indeed, personal contacting has proven extremely effective not only during national electoral campaigns, but also in the case of local campaigns conducted in regard to low-salience elections (Enos et al. 2014), when parties’ local organisations and activists come into play, and the likelihood of their impacting electoral results is considerable (Green et al. 2003). The interest in discovering more about the effect of mobilisation on turnout derives from the fact that mobilisation can call into question the impact of resources. Reducing the structural barriers to voting and strengthening the amount or quality of mobilisation may bring more people to the polls, especially those with fewer resources and a lower propensity to be involved (Goldstein and Ridout 2002). While it is true that those in higher socio-economic positions enjoy greater interpersonal influence, which leads them to become involved (Green and SchwamBaird 2016), it is also true that “peripheral” voters’ opportunities to participate can also be encouraged through mobilisation (Pacek and

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Radcliff 1995). Moreover, large parties, trade unions and other organisations have traditionally encouraged workers to get out and vote, by means of contacting, education on voting, and encouragement to do so prior to election day. As argued by Verba et al. (1978) “lower status groups ‘need a group-based process of political mobilization if they are to catch up to the upper-status groups in terms of political activity. They need a selfconscious ideology as motivation and need organization as a resource’” (Verba et al. 1978, p. 14). Also in recent years, there has been a boom in electoral campaigns, many of which explicitly targeting working-class voters, such as those of Bernie Sanders in the USA, Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and also those of right-wing populist politicians such as Marine Le Pen in France and Donald Trump in the USA. GOTV-type mobilisation campaigns not only get more people to vote, but also offset the turnout gap by encouraging the participation of lower wage earners through simple, economic measures (Spencer and Ross II 2019). The advantage of these campaigns addressed to low-income voters is that compared to other social classes, they are often spatially concentrated and thus large numbers of them can be contacted together (Gimpel et al. 2007). However, campaigns do not necessarily target low-income citizens in particular. Studies of door-to-door canvassing experiments reveal, in fact, that the preferred targets of such campaigns are those individuals already contacted in the past (Arceneaux and Nickerson 2009), or individuals who live alone (Nickerson and Rogers 2010), or those who voted in previous elections (Green and Gerber 2008). In other words, GOTV-style campaigns could attract citizens who are already represented. Electors who have been contacted once will more likely feel that they are being addressed by the campaign and will go to vote. Panagopoulos (2016) spoke of “preaching to the converted”, that is, of electoral campaigns that always mobilise the same people, and as such end up exacerbating, rather than diminishing, the differences among the electorate (Gershtenson 2003; Karp et al. 2008; Goldstein and Ridout 2002). This comes about because the aim of parties and candidates is not that of increasing the number of people who go to vote, but of winning the election. They want to raise the interest of constituents who already make up their own constituency, rather than attracting peripheral voters whose behaviour they do not know and who could decide to vote for rival parties and candidates (Gimpel et al. 2007).

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CHAPTER 5

Voting in Times of Crisis: From Opting Out to Regaining a Voice

Abstract This chapter examines the current debate on the political changes leading to the emergence of new “challenger parties” in many Western democracies. The interest in this field derives from the desire to place the question of participatory inequalities within a broader interpretative framework: this framework considers not only the institutional and individual determinants of turnout, but also the evolution of the party supply and the voting choice in years of economic crisis characterised by rising scepticism of the capacities of national governments. The chapter aims to ascertain whether the increasing presence of anti-establishment parties has curbed the decline in turnout, accentuated by the crisis, and if this is the case, whether it has done so by getting the most deprived social groups to vote once again, thus reducing the existing participatory gaps. Keywords Populism · Anti-establishment parties · Economic crisis · Protest vote

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Tuorto, Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0_5

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The Political Consequences of the Economic Downturn So far I have underlined the importance of the effects that individual and contextual factors may have on turnout, pointing out both the persistent effects and the sometimes rather surprising absence of any correlation. The ways in which the diverse dimensions affect one another take on even greater importance when associated with the profound changes witnessed over the last decade. If we look at the European scenario, the initial economic crisis and the consequent social emergency have altered the composition of national governments, the structuration of political conflict in national party systems (Hutter and Kriesi 2019) and has even affected voting behaviour and turnout. The background to the advent of such changes is that of the major downturn beginning in 2008, the effects of which were felt for many years thereafter in several countries and have been freshly exacerbated by the recent Covid-19 pandemic. On the one hand, the downturn accentuated the existing negative dynamics inherent in the relationship between citizens and institutional politics (Crouch 2004, 2020); on the other hand, it resulted in fresh political solutions being proposed which have also impacted participatory inequalities. The crisis was characterised by a number of distinctive traits: its timescale; the speed with which it spread; the global interdependence of the phenomena it produced; its asymmetric intensity which led to certain countries suffering more than others; and finally, its destructive impact on the political community (Morlino and Raniolo 2017). According to official statistics, between 2008 and 2013 a significant part of Europe suffered the severe effects of the economic downturn. Whereas the previous period (2000–2007) had witnessed a generalised growth in GDP throughout Europe (of around 2–3%), as from 2008 GDP collapsed in numerous countries, and this economic downturn lasted for several years thereafter. Overall, the variation in GDP in the EU was null in 2008, −4.3% in 2009 and still negative in the subsequent two years. Economic recovery did not occur until 2013, while another economic downturn was witnessed in 2020 (−5.9%). The global dimension of the economic crisis is clearly demonstrated by the evolution of foreign trade in goods and services, which grew faster than GDP in the 28-member EU from 2002 to the beginning of 2008, whereas from 2008 it shrank even more than GDP did. One immediate

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effect of this was the sovereign debt (national debt-to-GDP ratio) crisis of member states. This ratio rose on average from 60.1 (as a % of GDP) to 82.7 during the period 2014–2019. The recession also resulted in negative job market trends, with unemployment hitting the 10% mark (peaking at 11.2% in 2013). The rising budget deficit and higher levels of public debt forced governments into guaranteeing financial stability through the introduction of cost-cutting policies and the establishment, as from 2008, of a model of austerity and fiscal constraints. One of the most extraordinary effects of the intensifying crisis was the formation of two separate clusters of countries with opposed interests: on the one hand, the debtor countries, and on the other those with a credit surplus. The PIIGS countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) were particularly hard hit. For several years, economic stagnation, growing unemployment and public debt characterised in particular the Mediterranean area, and this worsened the overall situation. GDP fell by 4.3% in 2009, by 2.0% in the period 2008–2013, and in 2013 it was still falling by 1.1% (while in Greece it continued to fall until 2016). Unemployment in this area rose from 8% in 2008 to 19.2% by 2013 and had still not returned to pre-crisis levels by 2019 (14.1% in the period 2014–2019). The figure relating to nations’ indebtedness is particularly significant. This continued to grow even after the acute phase of the downturn, up from 78.7% of GDP initially to 139.6% in the most recent period (Table 5.1). The persistent negative performance underlines the greater complexity of PIIGS countries’ problems compared to those seen in Central-Eastern Europe. The latter nations, after dealing with the difficulties accompanying their transition to market economies, recovered from the 2008 crisis faster than others (Hernández and Kriesi 2016). Notwithstanding these differences, the interconnections between phenomena produced chain effects throughout the continent, affecting even the stronger economies of Central-Northern Europe which, despite handling the changes in the economic cycle better than others, nevertheless had to deal with the impact of a loss of trust in the solvency of debtor countries (Muro and Lorda 2014; Giuliani 2019). The growth in inequality among states was accompanied by a widening of the gaps existing within each state as a result of the interruption of the process of convergence between different regions and provinces. The areas with fewer resources, infrastructures and services, suffering from an ageing population or demographic marginalisation, were the hardest

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Table 5.1 Socio-economic and political indicators of crisis in EU-28 and PIIGS countries EU-28

PIIGS

T1

T2

T3

T1

T2

T3

Economic indicators Unemployment rates GDP growth rate Sovereign debt (in % on GDP)

8.1 +4.1 53.1

9.6 −0.1 68.5

8.2 +3.1 81.0

7.8 +3.0 78.7

14.3 −2.0 111.5

14.1 +3.3 139.6

Political indicators a Effective number of parties Total Volatility Index Index of electoral disproportionality

4.8 11.2 5.1

4.8 14.9 6.3

5.6 16.0 6.3

3.8 10.8 5.5

3.8 18.2 9.0

4.9 19.3 6.3

Note T1: Before the crisis (2002–2007); T2: During the crisis (2008–2013); T3: after the crisis (2014–2019) Effective number of parties: Casal Bértoa and Enydi (2022). Total Index of Volatility: only EU-15 countries. Index of disproportionality: see Table 4.2, Chapter 4 Source Eurostat; OECD a WHO GOVERNS in Europe and beyond, PSGo

hit. The loss of stable jobs in the developed countries following the delocalisation of industry and services, had a dramatic impact on those with modest skill levels, who in many cases were forced to accept less remunerative, casual employment (Oesch 2013; Kriesi et al. 2008). This problem does not only concern the typical marginalised classes, but also affect those who see themselves as impoverished because of their exposure to a process of de-qualification and degradation. The prolonged socio-economic emergency has had diverse effects in political terms. The first of these concerns the so-called crisis of national political authority. The EU itself, from being a useful external constraint and source of solutions, has rapidly become part of the problem as a result of the imposition of wage-cutting policies designed to offset the loss of economic competitiveness (Giuliani and Massari 2019; Armingeon and Baccaro 2012). These measures have gradually undermined the idea of national sovereignty and the political system’s capacity to furnish public goods, thus fostering popular discontent. In fact, during the entire course of the crisis, governments (socialist governments included) had very limited room for manoeuver. The growing tension between responsibility and responsiveness, and between supranational authorities and voters’ demands, led to governments’ effectiveness being called into question and to a genuine institutional accountability crisis (Morlino and

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Raniolo 2017). This has impacted not so much democracy as such, as the legitimacy of political parties and governing elites (Torcal et al. 2002). There are various indicators of the political instability seen during the years of the Great Recession. Firstly, the countries involved held elections more frequently during that period: Greece held a total of 5 elections between 2009 and 2016; Spain held 4 between 2008 and 2016; while Portugal saw 3 elections held between 2009 and 2015. In Italy, on the other hand, the period from 2008 to 2018 witnessed 5 different governments in power. Another indicator is the decline in support for the mainstream parties. Again, this phenomenon was more evident in the Mediterranean countries than elsewhere. During the crisis years, the percentage of votes obtained by the Spanish socialist and popular parties fell from 83 to 55%, while their Greek equivalents’ share of the votes fell from two-thirds to one-third (Bosco and Verney 2016), and a similar trend was also witnessed in Italy (Emanuele and Chiaramonte 2020; Schwander et al. 2020). External measures adopted by supranational institutions such as the IMF and the ECB further increased voters’ disaffection with their respective national governments, and this had negative consequences for the incumbent parties of various countries (see Lobo and Pannico 2020). Such a changing scenario led to a rise in electoral volatility (i.e., the degree of change in voting behaviour between elections, calculated as total electoral volatility: see Pedersen 1979). Volatility peaked at the elections held between 2008 and 2013, before stabilising at subsequent elections. Electoral fragmentation saw an increase in the effective number of parties, from an average of 4.8 to one of 5.6, together with the emergence of a three-party system in many countries. One further development witnessed during the crisis years was an increase in electoral disproportionality (the index measuring the ratio of each party’s share of votes to its share of seats gained: Gallagher 1991), this variation being greater in the PIIGS countries than elsewhere (Table 5.1). The transformation of politics and political parties brought on by the recession inevitably affected the dynamics of economic voting. As a rule, people tend to reward the incumbent parties if economic conditions are healthy, and to punish them—through a vote for the mainstream opposition—when the economy is struggling (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2000). Underlying this dynamic is the evaluation of the impact of objective factors, such as inflation or unemployment, on people’s personal finances (the pocketbook or egotropic explanation) on the one hand, and on the state of the national economy (the sociotropic explanation) on the other.

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Voters essentially base their decisions on judgements they make regarding the past performance of the economy (retrospective voting) rather than on their prospective evaluations regarding what they think will happen (Anderson 2007; see also Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2000). This account of voters’ decisions, however, regards ordinary situations, whereas the Great Recession in Europe has led scholars to reassess the situation (Lewis-Beck and Lobo 2017), and to question not so much economic voting as such, but certain consolidated dynamics relating to the reward-punishment mechanism. Some scholars argue that there is no evidence that the national government’s “limited room for manoeuvre” during the crisis has reduced the impact of the economy on the vote. The Eurozone crisis and the greater public availability of information on the situation have probably increased the overall impact of economic perceptions on voting, favouring in any case the triggering of the “punishment of the incumbent” mechanism (Giuliani and Massari 2019; Dassonneville and Lewis-Beck 2018; Lobo and Pannico 2020). This dynamic is believed to have regarded not only that section of the electorate most directly penalised, but also those voters worried about the country’s situation who thus voted accordingly (Hobolt and De Vries 2016). During the 2008 crisis however, the specific nature of economic voting was characterised by the dynamics of the reward: in other words, the punishment of the incumbent did not result in the opposition gaining a clear advantage. The left-wing parties with an interest in social protection and critical of austerity measures, should have been the ones to benefit from the crisis. This did not prove the case, however, as these parties, whether in government or not, were judged incapable of dealing with the exceptional situation by offering alternative responses clearly different from those of other parties (Colomer and Magalhaes 2012). This made it more difficult for voters to distinguish between incumbent and opposition. The loss of sovereignty over certain important sectors of national economies, and the lack of resources with which to offset the risks resulting from economic upheaval, led to parties from opposing sides of the political spectrum converging towards similar policies. The shifting of fiscal and monetary policy from the national to the supranational level reinforced people’s perception of a “blurring of responsibility” (Gabel 2000). Voters do not easily attribute responsibility because of the characteristics of the crisis (uncontrollable forces against whom governments are impotent), but also because of the political solutions adopted to address the effects of the crisis, as in the case of large alliances between

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opposing parties experimented in some European countries. Governments composed of two opposing coalitions ruling together affect voters’ ability to clearly identify a party’s contribution to policy outcomes, and consequently to punish those governing parties by voting for new ones (Anderson and Hecht 2012). The absence of clear alternatives generated and fuelled confusion, particularly in those countries most significantly affected by the recession (Kriesi 2012; Bellucci et al. 2012). The mainstream opposition’s incapacity to offer alternative solutions to dissatisfied voters (Sen and Barry 2020) thus fostered the belief that only the “challenger” parties could represent a solution to the problem in hand (Hobolt and Tilley 2016). Voters’ views of the economy and of governments’ capacity to deal with difficulties, changed significantly as a result of the economic crisis. If we look at the different periods prior to, accompanying and subsequent to the crisis (Table 5.2), we see that both egocentric and sociotropic assessments, as well as retrospective vs. prospective evaluations, confirm a general tendency towards the greater attribution of blame with regard to how incumbent governments and political institutions handled the Table 5.2 Economic evaluations, blame attributions and negative political attitudes. EU-28 and PIIGS countries

Dissatisfaction with present state of economy in country Dissatisfaction with national government Dissatisfaction with the way democracy works in country General economic situation in the country getting worsea General economic situation in the country will get worsea European membership bad thinga None of the parties able to face the most important problem/issuea

Pre-crisis Crisis EU-28 (PIIGS countries)

Post-crisis

68.6 (66.5)

75.0 (91.3)

59.8 (77.6)

73.7 (69.2) 55.2 (49.6)

75.1 (85.4) 56.4 (66.3)

70.2 (76.9) 54.5 (63.1)

39.0 (42.2)

77.2 (73.9)

29.0 (25.9)

27.2 (30.0)

39.0 (36.7)

34.4 (30.8)

12.7 (4.6) 20.5 (15.2)

11.0 (6.1) 26.0 (36.6)

13.8 (13.2) 22.8 (24.2)

Note Pre-crisis: 2002–2007; Crisis: 2008–2013; Post-crisis: 2014–2019. Dissatisfaction with present state of economy in country: score 0–5, scale 0–10. Dissatisfaction with national government: score 0–5, scale 0–10. Dissatisfaction with the way democracy works in country: score 0–5, scale 0–10 Source European Social Survey, round 1–9 (2002–2018) a European Election Study, Voter Study 2004, 2009, 2019

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economy and the crisis itself. Direct responsibility was ascribed when the national economy was the object of voters’ evaluation. Negative judgements increased during the years of instability particularly in terms of voters’ dissatisfaction with the existing state of the economy (up from 68.6 to 75.0%) and as regards the perception of a worsening of the economic situation (up from 39.0 to 77.2%), while the percentages of those who expressed a negative view of the nation’s future also grew (from 27.2 to 39.0%). The impact of such critical judgements was greater in the PIIGS countries, particularly during the crisis years, while the extremely high level of dissatisfaction persisted well beyond the end of the crisis. Hostility towards the national government only partly resulted in a generalised criticism of the workings of democracy and a questioning of EU membership. What did emerge was a broad segment of voters alienated from, and lacking any trust in, the political system. Despite the large number of parties standing for election, approximately half of the electorate expressed their concern or disaffection. During the most difficult phase of the economic crisis, 36.6% of voters in the PIIGS countries believed “none of the parties [are] able to face the most important problems/issues” (compared to an average of 26% in all 28 EU countries). There was also growing criticism of European membership, deemed a “bad thing” by 13.8% of the electorate in the more recent period, a figure that had more than doubled after the crisis in the PIIGS countries (while remaining basically stable in the other countries). Regardless of the degree to which individuals’ political views of the economy have changed over time, the decision to vote or not reflects this trend. A prolonged period of economic crisis affects people’s expectations and can also influence their decision to vote or otherwise. This scenario emerged in particular in the PIIGS countries where the turnout curves declined more rapidly than elsewhere. If we compare the voting trends in the PIIGS countries with those of the remaining EU-15 countries (Fig. 5.1), we notice that at general elections the gap has gradually widened from the crisis years onwards, increasing from 4 p.p. in 2007 to more than 13 p.p. in 2019–2020, and this has had a prolonged depressive effect. In all of the Mediterranean countries in particular, those elections held at the time of, or immediately subsequent to, the economic crisis saw a sharp reduction in turnout. This effect was first seen in Greece, where turnout feel from 74.0% in 2007 to 62.5% in 2012. In Italy, Spain, and Portugal the decline in turnout was less dramatic, at around 5–6 p.p. over

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80.0 75.0 70.0 65.0 60.0 55.0 50.0 45.0 1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

PIIGS Parl

PIIGS Eur

EU-15 high income, Parl

EU-15 high income, Eur

Fig. 5.1 Turnout evolution in PIIGS countries and EU-15 high-income countries in Parliamentary and European elections. 2000–2020 (Source ParlGov)

the electoral period 2008–2013. As regards European elections, the trend reversal was more evident: while in 2004 turnout in the PIIGS countries was higher than that in the other EU-15 countries (+4 p.p.), by 2009 the percentages were similar, before falling below that of the latter countries in 2014 (−3.7 p.p.) and 2019 (−7.6 p.p.). A number of different factors impacted the turnout trend from the beginning of the recession onwards. Those sectors of the population most exposed to the negative consequences of international competition turned to their respective governments in seek of protection. However, when the crisis became global and public resources dwindled, they began to change their voting behaviour. Diverse ways of expressing their voices gradually led to part of the disaffected, alienated or angry electorate channelling their feelings towards a broader range of electoral options. Following Kriesi (2012), disaffected voters now had several options. First, they could turn to the established opposition parties that habitually blame the incumbent government for the ongoing situation. However, this option was quickly shadowed by the decision to either abstain from voting altogether, or to express their disillusionment and anger by voting for one of the populist or euro-sceptic political parties who were riding the wave of protest against, and within, the political system.

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The Rise of Populism and the Claim of Representing the Poor The electoral advancement of the challenger parties is one of the most significant indicators of the political consequences of the Great Recession. Since the 1990s, party politics scholars have pointed to a rise in extremism and populism (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017; Müller 2016). More recently, populist parties have increased their share of the vote in many European democracies, and in some cases have become members of governing coalitions (Norris and Inglehart 2019). Consequently, recent international literature has placed a considerable emphasis on this question. Surveys and studies have been conducted on voters, political parties, and political-institutional frameworks. As Mudde’s minimalist definition states, populism may be framed as a “thin-centred ideology” that considers society to be separated into two relatively homogeneous and antagonistic groups. On the one hand there are “the pure people”, and on the other “the corrupt elite that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups”. Popular sovereignty is seen as the sole legitimate source of political power, insofar as it is an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people (Mudde 2004). From a theoretical perspective, populism has been conceptualised as a rhetoric, a political style (Canovan 1999; Laclau 2005; Mouffe 2005), or a type of organisation characterised by the presence of a charismatic leadership (Taggart 2000; see Caiani and della Porta 2011). It has also been argued that populism represents a corrective to democracy when the latter’s processes produce poor performances (Mény and Surel 2000; see also Huber and Ruth 2017), and a means of reproaching political parties and getting them to act in the people’s interests (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). However, the question remains as to whether the presence of populists as a party force and/or members of government actually results in a broadening of the representation of those citizens and political demands that generally remain rather neglected (Ruth and Hawkins 2017). This doubt derives from the multifaceted, chameleon-like nature of populism (Taggart 2000), and from the indeterminate character of its ideology (Fella and Ruzza 2009). One example of this is its ambivalent stance on social policies, whereby populist parties tend to oppose universalistic welfare state models, while supporting targeted programmes for the relief of the poor. According to populist rhetoric, the mechanism of redistribution is, by definition, complex and non-transparent insofar

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as it requires high levels of taxation and the concentration of power in the hands of governmental elites who transfer resources from productive citizens to the “undeserving” receivers of social benefits (Derks 2006). Various keys to interpretation have been proposed in the attempt to account for the emergence of populist voting in Europe. The first of these is an economic one based on the “modernisation losers” thesis (Betz 1993; Kriesi et al. 2006; Lachat and Kriesi 2003), according to which the weakening of the link between voting, social class and community has left people exposed to the loss of good jobs (Gidron and Hall 2017). Over the last 30 years, technological innovation has produced a dramatic reduction in the number of manufacturing jobs and of low-skill white-collar jobs; in other words, there has been a decline in jobs among those workers who represent the traditional base of the trade unions and of left-wing parties. Economic insecurity of certain groups, such as those without a college education, the unemployed, and in general poorer native-born populations, has fuelled resentment against the political classes and establishment elites (Gros 2016), as well as against the traditional political parties who are deemed incapable of responding to people’s concerns over growing inequality and the risk of exclusion. The polarisation of globalisation’s winners and losers has thus been channelled into anti-establishment movements led by new organisations extremely capable of exploiting the rhetoric of those “left behind” (Mudde 2007; Rydgren 2018). Various authors believe that these populist parties, particularly those on the far right, have attracted the votes above all of low-skilled, or unskilled, people, as well as of a number of skilled workers (and of those tasked with routine operations) who feel that their own jobs and social status have been negatively affected (Oesch 2006, pp. 95–105; Gidron and Hall 2017, p. 63). The shrinking size of the working class has made it increasingly difficult for its members to receive their perceived just rewards: the imbalance that has emerged fosters a mechanism whereby people’s expectations are not met, leading to growing frustration and feelings of injustice (Schneider 2019). This would explain why those people and regions that have lost more in the process of global outsourcing and skill-biased technological change (Oesch, 2013), or that have experienced positional deprivation, display greater bitterness towards the political system, and consequently tend to vote for anti-system candidates at elections (Burgoon et al. 2019; Han 2016). The appeal of the populists is felt particularly by those people orphaned by the demise of the mass parties; specifically, the socialist parties, who are

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accused of having abandoned the manual working class to transfer their attentions to the constituency of salaried professionals employed in the socio-cultural service sector (Kriesi et al. 2008; Evans and Tilley 2017; Rennwald and Evans 2014). In order to mobilise the disadvantaged citizens, the populist parties— in particular those on the far right—have changed their position on economic questions, abandoning the initial neoliberal tendencies of the 1980s in order to attract broader support (De Lange 2007; Kitschelt and Kselman 2013; Rovny 2013). Their out-and-out support for the market economy and free competition has been gradually replaced by a line more sympathetic to protectionism, favouring national production and forms of welfare chauvinism aimed at safeguarding the jobs of national workers, as part of an explanation stressing ethnic competition for scarce resources (Van der Bruug and Fennema 2009; Kurella and Rosset 2018). Voting has become an expression of a grievance: this manifests itself as discontentment and dissatisfaction with the economic plight of one’s own country; that is, a sort of sociotropic concern about the direction society is going in compared to an imagined better past (Taggart 2000; Gidron and Hall 2020). Notwithstanding the appeal of this idea of their increasing proletarisation, diverse studies have pointed out that, on the contrary, the populist parties have reached out to all sectors of society. This transversal nature of their appeal is designed both to maintain a broad bourgeois base and to increase their votes among blue-collar workers (Oesch 2008; Rydgren 2013; Adorf 2018), as well as to reconcile free-market and state intervention. The electoral base of these parties would not be composed predominantly of “losers of modernisation”, but rather of manual workers, voters with an average education and a passing interest in politics, who fear for the future (Burgoon et al. 2019; Schwander and Manow 2017; Schwander et al. 2020). A second explanation for the advance of the challenger parties regards the cultural aspects of the question. Although socio-economic marginalisation and job insecurity play an important role, according to several authors the rejection of mainstream parties has also manifested itself in the form of a radical challenging of the universalistic, progressive values promoted by cultural liberalism, which are perceived as a threat to more traditional values (Mudde 2007; Rooduijn et al. 2017). In recent decades, the electoral space has become increasingly fragmented, and this has led to the emergence of a new culturally based dividing line (Bornschier 2010; Kitschelt 1994; Kriesi et al. 2008). At one end of this axis there are the

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so-called TAN (traditional-authoritarian-nationalist) parties of the radical right, who promote closure; at the other extreme of the axis there are the GAL (Green-alternative-libertarian) parties who are in favour of openness (Hooghe et al. 2002). The resulting political-ideological opposition is between libertarian, transnational values on the one hand, and nationalistic, particularistic values on the other (Bornschier and Kriesi 2012). The transition to a more complex political space has meant that decisions regarding cultural questions no longer depend automatically on the position taken concerning economic matters (Kriesi et al. 2006), and that cultural questions of identity are more important than economic concerns. It is this very misalignment of questions that in part accounts for the phenomenon of the “unnatural” voting behaviour of manual workers. The populist vote, particularly that of the radical right populism, is claimed to be attributable to single issues such as immigration, globalisation and European integration. These are issues of strategic importance when attempting to reach out to those voters having no ideological allegiances (Van der Bruug and Fennema 2003; Werts et al. 2013; Dennison and Geddes 2019). In particular, Euroscepticism, that is, opposition to the EU and to the process of European integration (Taggart 1998; Kopecký and Mudde 2002), represents one of the drivers of populism. Anti-European sentiments derive from the progressive shift of economic decision-making to the supranational level, thus bypassing national parliaments. Euroscepticism can be seen as an expression of the disapproval of European integration, and as such it combines expressions of opposition to the austerity measures with the strongly anti-immigrant feelings characteristic of far-right parties. In populist rhetoric, immigrants represent the most tangible group that can be blamed for a nation’s “malaise”, since not only are they seen as competing with a nation’s citizens in the labour market and for access to welfare provisions (Van Oorschot 2008; Spiering and Zaslove 2015), but they also embody values and characteristics that are not considered part of a nation’s identity. Cultural grievances thus represent an easy way out of a situation of deprivation; that is, a means through which to channel economic anxiety into opposition to a social group with different cultural and religious identities (Bornschier 2010; De Lange 2007; Oesch 2008). The emergence of a cleavage over cultural issues also explains why populist parties have grown even in more egalitarian states, such as Scandinavian countries.

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Another explanation for the rise of populism focuses on the antipolitical protest, that is, the venting of voters’ frustrations, resentment, and anger with traditional parties. This protest has taken aim at the political elites that in many countries have been involved in corruption scandals, which understandably have undermined people’s trust in the political class as a whole (Della Porta and Mény 1997). These feelings of hostility towards, and disillusionment with, politics have led to popular mobilisation, without those involved necessarily sharing the populist right’s policies. The protest vote does not derive from any preference for a specific political party or the sharing of any particular ideology, but rather from people’s dissatisfaction with all (or nearly all) mainstream political parties. The populists have taken advantage of the anti-elite sentiments resulting from an unresponsive political class, by presenting themselves as challengers to the “political establishment”, that is as “political outsiders” (Akkerman et al. 2016; Krause and Wagner 2021). In this sense, the protest vote signals to the other parties that they have done something wrong and are being punished accordingly (Franklin 2004; Hooghe et al. 2011). The conceptual complexity of defining “populism” and of establishing the causes of its emergence, is reflected in the multiplicity of existing classifications which broaden or narrow the field to strictly populist parties, Eurosceptic parties, right and left radical parties or parties that embrace the protest vote regardless of their ideological beliefs (Rooduijn 2018; Schwander et al. 2020). For the empirical analysis contained in this chapter, we use the datasets collected through the PopuList Project (Rooduijn et al. 2019). These datasets follow the evolution of the populist vote in European countries, allowing us to compare the information with that contained in the ParlGov dataset regarding party vote shares in national parliamentary elections and ideological placement on left–right scale over time (Döring and Manow 2019).1 The electoral results for the past 15–20 years (see Table 5.3) show how populism has become firmly established in Europe now. Even if we

1 The PopuList classification includes parties that have either won at least 1 seat or

2% of the votes in general elections since 1989. The list has been peer-reviewed by more than 80 academics and includes four, not mutually exclusive, categories of political parties: populist, far right, far left, Eurosceptic. For my analysis, I have selected those classified as populist or Eurosceptic (excluding those, a minority, resulting only far right or far left). For a more detailed classification of political parties, see Appendix.

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Table 5.3 Percentages of votes for populist and Eurosceptic parties in different groups of EU-28 countries and different periods Pre-crisis

Crisis

Post-crisis

Populist Eu-15 high-income countries PIIGS Eu-28 late comers Total

8.9 9.1 20.7 14.2

12.6 15.5 26.8 19.5

15.8 27.5 31.0 24.7

Eurosceptic Eu-15 high-income countries PIIGS Eu-28 late comers Total

15.4 10.0 17.5 15.3

19.5 16.3 17.9 18.2

24.5 31.4 22.9 25.1

Far-right (populist/Eurosceptic) Eu-15 high-income countries PIIGS Eu-28 late comers Total

5.7 1.4 12.9 8.1

9.1 3.0 13.6 10.1

12.3 5.1 17.7 13.4

Far-left (populist/Eurosceptic) Eu-15 high-income countries PIIGS Eu-28 late comers Total

5.4 8.9 5.8 6.2

6.5 11.0 6.1 7.2

6.9 20.5 5.3 8.7

Note Category of non-classified not reported Parliamentary elections, means value. For a complete classification of political parties, see Appendix. Pre-crisis: 2002–2007; Crisis: 2008–2014; Post-crisis: 2015–2020 Source ParlGov + PopuList

limit our analysis to first-order elections, that is, to the type of election where the expression of a protest vote is less likely than in a second-order election like the European vote, the upward trajectory of the populist parties is clear, nevertheless. In the years prior to 2008 (2002–2007), the percentage vote for populist parties and Eurosceptic parties was already close to 15%. Those parties’ share of the vote progressively increased, reaching 18–19% during the peak of the crisis, and continued to rise in the years thereafter (after 2014), hovering around the 25% mark. If we also take into account the overall category of populist and/or Eurosceptic, then the percentage exceeds 32%, that is, almost one-third of all votes cast by European voters. The main beneficiaries of this shift in voting

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have been the far-right parties, who have seen their overall share rise from 8% prior to the crisis to 13% during the period thereafter. These figures are much higher than those achieved by the far-left parties, who in the past had prevailed over the far right in electoral terms, with the far right gradually catching and then overtaking the far left in terms of overall votes obtained. Within Europe, there is extensive electoral, albeit differentiated, support for the challenger parties. The rise of populism and Euroscepticism has been most evident in Eastern Europe (in particular in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia), where over a half of the electorate votes for such parties. However, the greatest increase in the populist vote has been seen in the PIIGS countries. In the transition from the pre-crisis years to the more recent years, their share of the vote has trebled, up from 9.1 to 27.5%, while the Eurosceptic parties’ share of the vote has increased from 10.0 to 31.4%. Unlike elsewhere, in the PIIGS countries popular discontent has not manifested itself in the form of votes for farright parties, but rather for those parties on the far left. In recent years they have passed the 20% (compared to less than 10% in the other two groups of countries). The results of the elections in Greece and Spain have been the principal drivers of this change, where new parties such as Syriza and Podemos have been extremely successful in riding the wave of antiausterity feelings among their respective countries’ populations. In Italy, on the other hand, the populist, Eurosceptic front has been of a more heterogeneous kind, with existing parties such as Salvini’s League benefiting together with new parties such as the Five Star Movement (Passarelli and Tuorto 2018; Tronconi 2015). Finally, within the group of the EU15 high-income countries, the growth of populism and Euroscepticism has been slower, results have varied less than in the PIIGS countries, but there has also been a significant growth in the far-right vote (12.3% during the period 2015–2020 compared to 5.1% in the PIIGS countries) (Table 5.3).

Economic Adversity, Populist Supply and Turnout: An Uncertain Relationship In view of the aforementioned significant growth of populist parties, and more importantly of the increasing challenge they represent for the socialist parties, how has this affected participation during the same period? The results that have emerged to date indicate that in the elections held since the beginning of the crisis, the non-voting (abstention)

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option has gained momentum together with the voters’ increasingly critical assessment of the economy. In other words, there has been a kind of economic non-voting dynamic in operation. Abstention has functioned as a relief valve for the discontented electorate with which to express their resentment. As reported in Chapter 3, the rise in abstention has exacerbated participatory divides, although not primarily in those nations hardest hit by the economic crisis. Nevertheless, in those elections held during the second decade of the millennium, when more options (in addition to abstention) have been available to voters wishing to voice their critical views collectively, the question has become increasingly complex. Support for populist parties first emerged in the European elections, and subsequently in national elections, and this has affected the relationship between economic disadvantage and voting behaviour. The belief grew in various quarters that in order to fight the fire of political inequality, it might be necessary to “heat up the fire of populism” (see: Schwander et al. 2020). The underlying assumption here is that populism may be capable not only of intercepting the votes of those disillusioned with the mainstream parties, but also of recouping the previously estranged/alienated sections of the electorate and getting them to go out and vote, thus combatting the process of political marginalisation (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, pp. 51, 83). In such circumstances, the challenger parties act in such a way as to reduce voter abstention by convincing those voters with few socio-economic resources to go to the polls who would normally, in the absence of such parties, not bother to vote. A different interpretation that has been advanced, on the other hand, is that the populist parties are able to favour a recovery in voter turnout, not so much among the more deprived sections of the population as among citizens more critical of, and hostile towards, institutional politics. According to this reading, the relationship between socio-economic status and turnout is growing stronger rather than weaker, insofar as the abstention camp is in fact losing those individuals who are more politically aware and are not economically disadvantaged. Finally, as third possibility, the increase in votes for populist parties may not be reflected in any change in turnout, insofar as it may only entail a shift in votes from one party to another, without actually involving those who normally abstain from voting. The literature concerning this issue has so far provided contrasting conclusions due, among other things, to the variability of results between

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elections of one kind and another. The evidence in favour of the mobilisation theory is circumscribed to specific conditions, countries or periods. De Vries and Hobolt (2020, pp. 204–233), for example, show that the presence of populist radical right party in Germany, namely Alternative für Deutschland, boosted the turnout, especially among right-wing voters. Likewise, Schulte-Cloos and Leininger (2021) find that the populist right benefits from increased participation in communities characterised by high pre-existing levels of political disaffection. In a comparative study, Anduiza and colleagues (2019) show that populist attitudes can potentially encourage different forms of political participation, but not voter turnout (except in France). Euroscepticism has been deemed a strong driver of the turnout—due to the growing politicisation of European elections and to the emergence of a negative European public sphere—of voters who disapprove of the way the EU acted during the crisis (Pfetsch et al. 2008; Hobolt and De Vries 2016). On the other hand, other scholars have found that the effects of populist parties on turnout is mostly inconclusive. One sign of the difficulty of mobilising the electorate is that the populist parties receive votes mainly from people who previously voted for other parties, but not from those who generally desert the ballot box (Immerzeel and Pickup 2015). The capacity to attract those who had previously abstained from voting depends on the characteristics of the parties concerned. A study by Huber and Ruth (2017) reveals that right-wing populist parties, unlike their left-wing equivalents, have a stronger impact on turnout equality, but despite being able to mobilise the less privileged classes, they do so by means of a negative action consisting in their criticism of the political elite, rather than by bringing citizens closer to their party representatives (Huber and Ruth 2017). More recently, Schwander et al. (2020) assessed that there is neither a direct nor an indirect effect of populism on voter turnout, and that neither variety of populism (left wing/right wing) alters the relationship between inequality and turnout. Account must also be taken of the different types of country concerned. Leininger and Meijers (2021) find robust empirical support for a positive effect of the parliamentary presence of populist parties on turnout in Central-Eastern European countries which had previously seen a strongly negative participative trend at elections held following the period of transition to democracy. On the contrary, no significant effect was established in the case of Western European countries.

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If we examine the parallel development of turnout and populism in Europe at the general elections held over the last 20 years (Fig. 5.2), we see that the relationship between the two remains rather weak. The advance of populist parties is evident all over Europe and has been particularly strong over the course of the last 5–10 years, although these parties have grown at a different pace in each country concerned. At the same time, voter turnout has continued to follow the long-term trends established well before the onset of the economic crisis. In Central-Northern Europe turnout has remained essentially stable at around the 80% mark, while the populist parties’ share of votes has increased significantly, up from 16% in 2000 to 20% in 2010, and subsequently to approximately 25% ten years later. Thus, one can deduce that at least in these countries which were affected less dramatically by the economic crisis, there has been a certain degree of mobilisation which has helped curb any fall in turnout. In the PIIGS countries, however, the more pronounced crisis of the political system (as well as that of the socio-economic system) has had a dual effect in the post-recession years: a decline in participation on the one hand, and an increase in the votes cast for challenger parties on the other. While voter turnout fell considerably between 2010 and 90.0

45.0

80.0

40.0

70.0

35.0

60.0

30.0

50.0

25.0

40.0

20.0

30.0

15.0

20.0 10.0

Turnout EU-15 welthiest

Turnout PIIGS

Turnout EU-28 late comers

Popul/Eurosc EU-15 welthiest

Popul/Eurosc PIIGS

Popul/Eurosc EU-28 late comers

10.0

0.0

5.0 0.0

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

Fig. 5.2 Turnout rates (left axis) and percentages of votes for populist/Eurosceptic parties (right axis) in different groups of EU-28 countries, period 2000–2020 (Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance [IDEA]; ParlGov + PopuList)

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2020 (−6 p.p.), the votes cast for populist/Eurosceptic parties reached a highly significant level (over 35%), in particular from 2015 onwards. Finally, in the remaining countries (mainly Eastern European), the destabilising impact of low turnout accompanied by a rise in populism was seen even prior to the crisis and remained settled over the course of successive periods. The fact that there is no clear correlation between the two phenomena is also apparent from Fig. 5.3 which presents a scatterplot of the average variation in turnout and in the populist/Eurosceptic vote between 2000– 2009 and 2010–2019. The strenghthening of the antiestablishment option, as shown by the concentration of points in the upper part of the Y axis, did not produce any stabilisation or increase in the electoral participation. In around one half of the countries concnerned, the fall in turnout was accompanied by a growth in the populist/Eurosceptict vote, while both phenomena increased in 6 countries only. The extreme variability of the results obtained is expressed by the extremely low value of the R 2 coefficient shown on the regression line. Even if the changes in voting choices have had no positive effect on turnout, this does not mean that they do not contribute towards inducing 35.0 GRC

SVK

30.0

Var. p.p populist vote

CZE 25.0 HUN

20.0

ITA BGR

10.0 NLD DEU AUT ESP

HRV

DNK

5.0LTU

FRA PRT CYP

-20.0

-15.0

15.0 FIN

R² = 0.0004

SVN -10.0LVA

0.0 -5.0

ROU

BEL

-5.0

POL GBR IRL SWE

LUX

0.0

5.0

10.0

-10.0 -15.0

EST

Var. p.p. turnout

Fig. 5.3 Variation (percentage points) in turnout rates and votes for populist/Eurosceptic parties. Period 2000–2009 vs 2010–2019. EU-28 countries (Source International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA); ParlGov + PopuList)

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the greater participation of specific sections of the population, such as the low-educated, the unemployed and blue-collar workers. However, the findings reported in the literature nevertheless propend towards a limited and unclear effect. Young, white, male members of the working class are more likely to turn out and vote for the populist parties (Norris 2005; Betz and Meret 2013), whereas female, non-white and immigrant voters remain more inclined to abstain than to vote for populist parties (Spierings and Zaslove 2015; Malkopoulou 2020). The limited capacity of changing voting behaviour to reduce the turnout gap is believed to also depend on the fact that the success of new parties, particularly those on the radical right, has encouraged the propensity to vote also among highly educated individuals with an interest in politics, who in fact have reacted to what they perceive as a threat, namely the success of the populists (Immerzeel and Pickup 2015). It is very important to understand exactly what distinguishes abstainers from those who decide to vote for challenger parties, particularly in terms of economic hardship and anti-politics. Are those who abstain fundamentally different from those who protest? Who are the voters experiencing difficulty—those who abstain from voting or those who vote against the political establishment? The importance of this analysis lies in the dynamics that regulate the exit/voice options, and above all in the consequences of detachment from politics in the presence of an opposing force that attracts many discouraged voters into the electoral arena. Table 5.4 analyses the socio-economic and political profiles of nonvoters and those of voters for populist parties, and for the purposes of a more general comparison also those of people who vote for other parties. The literature points out the existence of certain very clear differences between the various categories. Poor people, manual workers and the loweducated are largely overrepresented among the category of non-voters (around 10 p.p. higher than in the electorate as a whole). Conversely, the socio-economic characteristics of populist party voters tend to be indistinguishable from those of the electorate as a whole. This finding does not support the idea of challenger parties with a strong capacity to mobilise the more disadvantaged sections of the electorate. As far as regards employment status, the differences between the various groups are less marked although they do confirm such dynamic. Non-voters include a significantly smaller proportion of individuals in stable employment (31.9%, compared with 38.1% within the category of voters for populist parties). Likewise, the category of non-voters includes

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Table 5.4 Profiles of abstainers and voters for populist/Eurosceptic parties on demographic, socioeconomic dimensions and political attitudes. EU-28 countries Non-vote

Vote for populist/Eurosceptic party

Vote for other parties

All voters

Income Low Medium High Tot

39.9 41.0 19.1 100.0

29.1 44.5 26.4 100.0

25,2 42,5 32,3 100.0

29.4 42.4 28.2 100.0

Social class Manual workers Middle classes High-service classes Tot

40.1 34.4 25.5 100.0

31.5 32.5 36.0 100.0

24.7 32,1 43,3 100.0

29.4 32.7 37.9 100.0

41.3

30.8

37.8

31.8

39.8

41.9

36.4

38.1

18.8 100.0

27.2 100.0

35.8 100.0

30.1 100.0

31.9 10.7 11.5 45.9 100.0

38.1 8,9 7.1 45.9 100.0

37.7 7.3 4.9 50.1 100.0

36.2 8.4 6.9 48.4 100.0

Satisfaction with present state of economy Low 75.6 68.7 High 24.4 31.3 Tot 100.0 100.0

63.9 36.1 100.0

67.5 32.5 100.0

Political trust Low High Tot

64.9 35.1 100.0

54.2 45.8 100.0

45.3 54.7 100.0

51.4 48.6 100.0

Political interest Low High Tot

74.2 25.8 100.0

55.1 44.9 100.0

41.9 58.1 100.0

50.8 49.2 100.0

N

35,114

21,075

87,569

143,758

Education Low (less than upper secondary) Medium (upper secondary) High (tertiary) Total Occupational position Employed, stable Employed, unstable Unemployed Other

Note Political trust is an additive index including four dimensions: trust in national Parliament, political parties, government, European Parliament. The index is dichotomized into low–high (below vs above median). Low political interest: not much interested/not at all interested; high interest: very interested/somewhat interested. Low satisfaction with economy: 0–5 score; high satisfaction: 6–10 Source ESS, round 4–9 (2008–2018)

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a greater share of unemployed individuals and temporary workers than does the category of those who voted for populist parties, or that of those who voted for other parties. Thus in this case, once again, there does not appear to be any evidence of the populist parties’ prominent capacity to attract the votes of the most socially marginalised sections of the population, or of those having no stable employment. The aforesaid profiles can also be clearly distinguished in terms of people’s general attitudes and evaluations such as their degree of satisfaction with the present state of economy, their political trust or their interest in politics in general. Over the course of time, the incidence of low-status voters has always remained higher among abstainers than among other groups, with values of more than 50% compared to an average of 30–35% in the latter cases. The presence of underprivileged voters among those voting for the populist parties increased during the 2008–2012 period (that is, during the most critical phase of the economic crisis), getting close to that of the non-voters before declining in subsequent years. Finally, the lowstatus electorate was represented to a much lesser degree among those voting for the other parties (Fig. 5.4). Thus, while we can affirm that 60 55 50 45 40 35

Non vote Vote for populists/Eurosceptic

30

Vote for other parties All voters

25 2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

Fig. 5.4 Percentage of low socio-economic status voters among abstainers, voters for populist/Eurosceptic parties and other voters. EU-28 countries, 2008–2018 (Source ESS, round 4–9 [2008–2018])

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the populist parties have played a certain part in intercepting the votes of the more disadvantaged sections of the electorate, this has not been decisive, particularly in more recent years when voting has become extremely heterogeneous once again. In Table 5.5 I tested the impact of economic dimensions and political attitudes on voting behaviour using a multivariate analysis. An accurate procedure for the correct evaluation of various voting options is a multinomial logistic regression. For this purpose, I have created a polytomous Table 5.5 Impact of personal economic conditions, evaluation on the state of economy and political trust on the probability of non-voting, voting for populist/Eurosceptic parties vs. voting for other parties. Multinomial logistic regressions, EU-28 countries. Beta coefficients (standard errors in parentheses)

Sex: female (ref: male) Age (scale) Education (scale) Socioeconomic status (scale: low–high) Temporary workers (ref. stable job) Unemployed (ref. stable job) Other (ref. stable job) Country: PIIGS (ref. wealthiest EU-15) Country: Other EU-28 (ref. wealthiest EU-15) Period, 2014–2018 (ref. 2008–2012) Satisfaction with the economy: high (ref. low) Political trust: high (ref: low) Constant Pseudo R2 N

Non-vote (ref. cat.: vote for other parties)

Vote for populist/Eurosceptic (ref. cat.: vote for other parties)

0.034*** (0.024) −0.025** (0.002) −0.040 (0.028) −1.769*** (0.067)

−0.211*** (0.024) −0.002** (0.000) −0.071** (0.027) −0.535*** (0.070)

0.249*** (0.045)

0.061 (0.049)

0.484*** (0.051)

0.202** (0.061)

−0.055 (0.041) −0.265*** (0.034)

−0.069 (0.030) 0.529*** (0.039)

0.722*** (0.026)

1.521*** (0.027)

0.366*** (0.025)

0.637*** (0.026)

−0.370*** (0.028)

−0.097*** (0.027)

−0.532*** (0.025)

−0.310*** (0.026)

1.196*** (0.156) 0.0857 128,290

−1.092*** (0.075)

Note: p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001 Source ESS, round 4–9 (2008–2018)

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dependent variable composed of the following categories: (a) vote for the populist parties2 ; (b) non-voting; (c) vote for other parties (reference category). A positive coefficient indicates that a given predictor is more likely to be associated with abstention or a populist vote rather than any other kind of vote; the opposite occurs in the case of a negative coefficient. The regression confirms what has been shown so far. Having taken other factors into account, socio-economic penalisation has stronger effects among non-voters than among those who vote for populist parties. This holds true for both SES dimension and the occupational status, with a higher probability of being low status, temporary worker, or unemployed. As regards other dimensions included in the model, negative evaluations on the economy, as well as political distrust, increase the probability of either not voting or of voting for challenger parties and also in this case the regression coefficients are more relevant in the former case (Table 5.5). Starting from the parameters of the regression, I have calculated the predicted probability of non-vote and vote for populist/Eurosceptic parties, producing different estimations for groups of high and low socioeconomic status as well as country type (Fig. 5.5). The consequent results are clear: the probability of abstaining diminishes linearly with rising socio-economic status. On average, an expected abstention rate of 43% at the lowest socio-economic status (SES) level plummets to 11% at the highest SES (that is, roughly four times lower). On the contrary, in the case of the populist vote, a low SES is not correlated to higher levels of the probability of such a vote, which is estimated to be around 14–16% and varies only slightly between the various levels of SES. These general relations do vary between one country and another, but not to any great degree. As regards the non-vote option, the negative effect of SES is more pronounced in Central-Northern Europe and late-comer countries than in the PIIGS countries. In the latter, the ratio of the abstention rate among the wealthiest and the poorest section of the population is less than 3, whereas in the other countries it is greater than 4. As far as voting for populist parties is concerned, there is no, or hardly any, correlation to SES. The final aspect I have examined here is the interactive effects, namely how the relationship between voting behaviour and socio-economic status 2 The categories of populist parties includes here both “populist” and “eurosceptic” parties in the ParlGov + PopuList datasets.

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Fig. 5.5 Predicted probabilities of non-voting and voting for populist/Eurosceptic parties by SES level in different EU countries (Note Predicted probabilities derive from multinomial regressions where dependent variable has three categories: “vote for populist/Eurosceptic party”, “non-vote”, “vote for other parties”. Figure in the left-hand panel contrast “vote for populist/Eurosceptic” vs “vote for other parties”, while comparison in the right-hand panel is between “non-vote” vs “vote for other parties”. Source ESS, round 4–9 [2008–2018])

change according with both economic evaluations and political attitudes. The literature suggests high levels of disaffection, together with negative perceptions, can foster political protest, and consequently the vote for non-mainstream parties. What we need to establish is whether this also holds true especially for those individuals lacking socio-economic resources. As with the preceding analysis, once again the data (Fig. 5.6) provide a partially negative response. In other words, the differences in the probability of voting for the challenger parties remain relatively small, ranging between 14 and 16%. That is, there is no evidence to show that underprivileged voters with low satisfaction with economy or low trust in politics are more likely to vote for populist/Eurosceptic parties than those with positive evaluations and attitudes. In the case of abstention, on the other hand, the trend is different. The estimated probability of

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Satisfaction with economy

Political trust

Fig. 5.6 Predicted probabilities of voting for populist/Eurosceptic parties and non-voting by level of socio-economic status among voters with different economic evaluations and political attitudes (Source ESS, round 4–9 [2008– 2018])

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low-status voters abstaining is significantly greater among those who are critical on economy or unwilling to believe politicians (around 7–10 p.p. higher), and the probability of abstaining falls sharply from low-status to high-status groups of voters. What general conclusions can be drawn from these findings? Following the challenger parties bursting onto the political scene, the characteristics of voter turnout have inevitably changed. The options available to people to express their political voice have multiplied. The critical, detached and angry sections of the electorate now have a wider range of alternatives from which to choose when going to vote. As the literature also suggested, the expectation was that a share of the political content expressed in the decision not to vote would have been redirected towards a vote for the populists. However, with regard to the capacity to impact the turnout gap, the empirical findings fail to indicate any clear conclusion. My analysis has basically confirmed the existing doubts about abstention being replaced by the protest vote. On the one hand it seems likely that given the increasingly electoral success of the new parties, the decision not to vote on the part of the more critical sections of the electorate has to a degree been transformed into votes for such challenger parties. This result confirms the findings of Hernández and Kreisi (2016) who maintain that in the absence of populist parties, abstention tends to reflect alienation, whereas in their presence it reflects indifference more than anything else. While not having used all of the attitudinal variables to examine this distinction, the findings seem to show that low SES individuals continue to be concentrated in the non-voting category, despite the many options open for voting for new challenger parties. Above all, what is not fulfilled is the populists’ expectation of getting the less privileged to vote. What appears more likely is that abstention is becoming the residual option, that is, an almost inevitable decision on the part of those individuals who do not embrace the protest vote approach.

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CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

The main purpose of this book is to explore the question of contemporary turnout inequality, the socio-economic reasons underlying that inequality, and its nature in relation to the institutional constraints regulating access to the electoral arena. At the same time, the book reflects on the effects that the intensification of these processes could have, if uncontrolled, on the stability of the democratic system and on the individual lives of those voters deprived of institutional representation and left with the alternatives of the protest vote or detachment from politics. The starting point of my reflection was Lijphart’s well-known democratic dilemma of how to make democracy more inclusive. His argument has appeared particularly meaningful given that in recent years economic inequalities have increased while political institutions have been deemed unresponsive to citizens’ needs because of their declining ability to resolve collective problems (Pharr and Putnam 2000; Norris 2011; Torcal 2017). Historically speaking, voting has served to offset, democratically, the participatory inequalities that have arisen, with other forms of political activism implying the greater role and participation of those concerned (Dalton 2017). During the twentieth century political parties offered the more marginal section of the population great opportunities to be included in the political system and to have their instances represented within the State. However, from the late 1970s onwards the decline © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Tuorto, Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0_6

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of mass organisations, class voting, and party membership have altered the relationship between citizens and political representatives. For a large percentage of the working class, as well as for older voters, the weakening of the stimuli received from the usual socio-political environments has widened their distance from the ballot box and, as consequence, voting no longer managed to play a democratising role. Reflecting on the underlying reasons for the low level of participatory agency, Brady et al. (1995) identified “I can’t”, “I don’t want to” and “nobody asked” as the three commonest responses to the question “why don’t you participate?”. Let us try to apply this approach to turnout in regard to the condition of underprivileged voters in contemporary societies. The first response concerns the possibility of participating and emphasises the importance that tangible and intangible resources (time, civic skills, money) currently have when establishing or maintaining a connection with the political-institutional sphere. It almost goes without saying that a lack of such resources will have a decisive impact in terms of the failure to develop reflexive capacities, indicating forms of exclusion that are difficult to combat. Put simply, if voters dispose of fewer independent resources, they will be less autonomous (and more externally influenced) when deciding on whether or not to participate. This argument could be countered by the not altogether unfounded claim that voting is a simple act potentially performed by anyone without the need for any specific capacity (Parry et al. 1992). Therefore, in order to understand what Evans and Tilley (2017) and Heath (2018) have recognised as class-based abstention, we may wish to examine the various social and economic changes which, even more than the political ones, have led old and new categories of people to lose ground and to increasingly count for less in society, and indeed to risk becoming invisible altogether. It was above all during the Great recession of 2008, when political disaffection reached its peak, that we saw how the non-vote has become a dramatic option. However, the figures analysed in this volume (more specifically, those in Chapter 3), offer a more nuanced interpretation of the situation. On the one hand, manual, low-income, low-educated workers vote to a much lesser degree than other citizens. On the other hand, the participation gap is narrower, rather than wider, in those countries characterised by worse economic performances and higher economic inequalities. This unexpected relationship is mainly due to the electoral behaviour of the groups at the bottom of the social hierarchy, which could reflect peculiarities in the social composition of the poor: peripheral groups seem to

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be less penalised where they are more widespread and undistinguished from the rest of the population. Another significant result that confirms the multifaceted aspect of inequality is that concerning the occupational condition. As was to be expected, having a stable job correlates with higher levels of participation than those recorded among the unemployed. Temporary workers, on the other hand, exhibit an intermediate position in the participative ranking, but only in PIIGS countries are they much closer to the outsiders (unemployed) than the insiders. Electoral participation that becomes unequal almost always implies an unequal influence in the public sphere. As has been clearly shown in Chapter 4, where the macro determinants of turnout inequalities are widely examined, the substantial absence at polling booths of those members of the population possessing fewer socio-economic resources inevitably leads to the under-representation of their interests on the political agenda. In a democracy where participation is a privilege of the upper or middle classes, voting risks becoming meaningless and discouraging for the poor (Solt 2010) insofar as it contributes to the decline of policies and tendencies in support of the redistribution of wealth. Similarly, the exposure to welfare state model based on residual (means-tested) measures instead of strong public intervention is expected to undermine the social trust and exacerbate the demobilisation of those citizens with less resources. The connection with the question of public policy is a reminder of the fact that the turnout gap is not only a question of a lack of economic resources, but also of institutional constraints that systematically keep certain categories of the population out of the game. There are still people in contemporary democracies who have difficulty registering to vote (where such registration is mandatory), and there are still adult members of the population who are not deemed eligible to vote. This is the case, for example, of mentally disabled or convicted criminals partially or totally disenfranchised in many European countries. Another crucial issue for representative democracy is the battle for non-citizens’ right to vote, which brings us on to the general question of whether citizenship or residency ought to be what determines membership of a political community (Katz 1997). Our empirical studies show that, while expats (non-residents citizens) are generally entitled to vote, more restrictions are applied to immigrants, with the majority of European countries where voting rights (for local elections) are not granted, are restricted or strongly conditioned by the length of residency, nationality and legal status.

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D. TUORTO

The political institutions may provide several solutions to participatory inequalities. An example is the introduction of compulsory vote. This has proven a successful strategy, at least in terms of the numbers, since it can impact the equity of electoral participation and help reduce representation biases. Regardless of its very limited diffusion in Europe and elsewhere, compulsory voting is however imperfect insofar as it bases the attempted improvement of the democratic process on forcing the electorate to go out and vote. Awareness rarely results from obligation, particularly in the case of those voters who find it more difficult to weigh up the political options on offer. As well as imposing compulsory voting, the institutions could also start to remove all the formal obstacles hindering political participation, through more inclusive electoral laws, a better circulation of information, and targeted messages addressed to specific categories of voters. Such measures are potentially capable of improving participation rates, but they do have one weakness: their effectiveness remains limited when not accompanied by measures designed to combat the more patent, penalising socio-economic inequalities that affect the time and opportunities that voters have to utilise the instruments made available to them in order that they may choose who to vote for. The analyses reported in Chapter 4 clearly indicate that the interventions at the level of political system can be, at the same time, useful for a mobilisation of the whole electorate but not always efficacious in reducing the participatory gaps. The second response to the question of why people do not participate—namely “they don’t want to”—relates to apathy, that is, to their lack of interest in public affairs. This apathy results in a failure to develop any political awareness or sense of belonging to a community. While on the one hand, those who abstain through indifference represent, in theory, the category most easily encouraged to go out and vote, in practice they remain more difficult to contact and to motivate since they are more isolated from the information available (Sani 2000, p. 846). In this case, exclusion from the voting process can be read, in part at least, as a subjective choice made by those concerned. It is the driver and result of a conscious decision not to be part of a political system deemed inadequate, hostile and distant that fails to encourage the construction of positive relations; or, on the other hand, of a political system that is too difficult to understand for those who believe they do not possess the necessary instruments to do something as apparently simple as voting. Verba and colleagues had already remarked that political interest matters more than resources. However, does this also hold in the case of low-status citizens?

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Undoubtedly the lack of wealth fosters disinterest and detachment in a vicious cycle in which it is difficult to distinguish the effect of a lack of resources from that of limited motivation to participate in the electoral process. Finally, the type of detachment from political participation indicated by the response “nobody asked me”, assumes that the main problem is the lack of incentives. In other words, it concerns those networks tasked with engaging voters, and when these networks are either absent, weak or incapable of connecting to individuals or groups in the public sphere, then this can result in the latter’s political isolation. At the same time, this aspect focuses attention on the key question of recognition and of what results in the absence thereof, that is, the feeling of not being called upon to participate: in other words, rendering individuals and their condition invisible. If we focus on the political parties, the problem of mobilisation lies in its weakness and its incapacity to offset the absence of resources and the lack of motivation of the more marginal groups. The end of the mass parties corresponded not only to the weakening of the stimulus (the call to vote) but also to its transformation. In the attempt to combat voter abstention, political parties generally aim to win over that part of the electorate that is disenchanted but has no clear political allegiances, while giving up on the more marginal section of the population. This approach has its own underlying logic: in an era of mediatised politics, the main aim is to win the elections rather than recouping those who generally do not vote. The parties do not appeal to those excluded from voting. They are not interested in gaining such voters’ allegiances because they do not know them, they do not know how to identify them, to relate to them and to encourage them to turn out. Even more effective actions such as door-to-door canvassing have shown that the easiest people to encourage to vote are generally the more responsive individuals (young people, individuals previously contacted or who voted in earlier elections), rather than the more socially marginalised. Furthermore, this limitation of political parties reflects the difficulty they have in embracing the interests of the poor and in updating their political agendas and their local representatives, in order to offer greater space and representation to the lower classes and their social demands. However, an apparently strong response does exist, in the form of the populist short-cut. In recent years this has emerged, or rather re-emerged, as a way of rebuilding the previously broken relationship between the represented and their representatives, and thus of revitalising political

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participation and voter turnout. During the years of the economic crisis, the electorate demanded a radical solution be found. The emergence of anti-establishment parties on the political scene reflected a more nuanced political “way out” that was supported by many voters responsive to (and ready to vote for) an alternative to abstention. What does it mean if the populists manage to attract the votes of those who had previously abstained from voting? Should we expect (hope for) further embodiments of populism in order to reverse electoral disaffection? Empirical evidence reported in Chapter 5 calls for a certain caution in this regard. First, the relationship between the two phenomena remains weak: in many European countries the increase of vote for challenging parties has not significantly reversed the decline in turnout. As second point, populist and Eurosceptic parties exhibit a limited capacity to attract the votes of the low-educated, the unemployed and blue-collar workers. The more these parties grow in the electorate, the more heterogeneous the socioeconomic profile of their voters become. In sum, our analyses highlight a limited capacity of these new parties to either curb voter abstention or to rescue the more marginal sections of society from their political apathy. The growth of populism is perhaps proving to be useful in encouraging the more critical, angry voters—those with at least a minimum interest in, and awareness of, politics—to return to the electoral arena. In this case, however, it remains to be seen exactly how sound and lasting relationships can be forged when such are based on resentment and fail to bring people any closer to their political representatives. If this proves not to be the case, then we can expect a return to the type of abstention where apathetic and peripheral voters constitute the great majority of the electorate: an electorate that does not want, or rather is not able, to jump on the “bandwagon of change”, and is also excluded from the dynamics of protest.

References Brady, Henry E., Sidney Verba, and Kay L. Schlozman. 1995. “Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation.” The American Political Science Review 89 (2): 271–294. Dalton, Russell J. 2017. The Participation Gap: Social Status and Political Inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, Geoffrey, and James Tilley. 2017. The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Heath, Oliver. 2018. “Policy Alienation, Social Alienation and Working-Class Abstention in Britain, 1964–2010.” British Journal of Political Science 48 (4): 1053–1073. Katz, Richard S. 1997. Democracy and Elections. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norris, Pippa. 2011. Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parry, Geraint, George Moyser, and Neil Day. 1992. Political Participation and Democracy in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pharr, Susan J., and Robert D. Putnam, eds. 2000 [2018]. Disaffected Democracies: What’s Troubling the Trilateral Countries? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sani, Giacomo. 2000. “Consenso Negato?” Il Mulino 49 (5): 836–846. Solt, F., 2010. “Does Economic Inequality Depress Electoral Participation? Testing the Schattschneider Hypothesis.” Political Behavior 32 (2): 285–301. Torcal, Mariano. 2017. “Political Trust in Western and Southern Europe.” In Handbook on Political Trust, edited by Sonja Zmerli, and Tom W. Van der Meer, 418–439. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Appendix

Classification of populist, far-right, far-left and Eurosceptic parties in PopuList dataset since 1989. EU-28 countries Party name (in English)

Populist

Far-right

Far-left

Eurosceptic

Austria Alliance for the Future of Austria Freedom Party of Austria Hans-Peter Martin’s List Team Stronach

1 1 1 1

1 1 0 0

0 0 0 0

1 1 1 1

Belgium National Front Libertarian, Direct, Democratic People’s Party Workers’ Party of Belgium Flemish Interest

1 1 1 0 1

1 0 1 0 1

0 0 0 1 0

1 0 1 1 1

1 1

1 0

0 0

1 1

1 1

0 0

0 0

0 0

Bulgaria Attack Reload Bulgaria/Bulgaria Without Censorship Bulgarian Business Bloc Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria

(continued)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Tuorto, Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0

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168

APPENDIX

(continued) Party name (in English) National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria National Movement Simeon II Order, Law and Justice IMRO—National Bulgarian Movement Will Croatia Croatian Civic Party Croatian Party of Rights Croatian Party of Rights—Dr. Ante Starcevic Croatian Democratic Alliance of Slavonia and Baranja Croatian Labourists—Labour Party Croatian Growth Bridge of Independent Lists Human Shield

Populist

Far-right

Far-left

Eurosceptic

1

1

0

1

1 1 1 1

0 1 1 1

0 0 0 0

0 0 1 1

1 0 0

0 1 1

0 0 0

0 1 1

1

1

0

0

1 0 1 1

0 1 0 0

1 0 0 0

0 1 0 1

0 0 1

0 1 0

1 0 1

1 1 0

1 0

0 0

0 1

0 1

0 1

0 1

1 0

1 1

Cyprus Progressive Party of Working People National Popular Front Citizens’ Alliance Czech Republic Action of Dissatisfied Citizens Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Coalition for Republic—Republican Party of Czechoslovakia Party of Free Citizens Sovereignty—Jana Bobosikova Bloc Freedom and Direct Democracy—Tomio Okamura Dawn-National Coalition Public Affairs

0 1 1

0 1 1

0 0 0

1 1 1

1 1

1 0

0 0

1 0

Denmark Danish People’s Party Red-Green Alliance Progress Party The New Right Socialist People’s Party Republic (Faroe Islands)

1 0 1 1 0 0

1 0 1 1 0 0

0 1 0 0 1 1

1 1 1 1 0 0 (continued)

169

APPENDIX

(continued) Party name (in English)

Populist

Far-right

Far-left

Eurosceptic

Estonia Estonian Citizens Estonian Conservative People’s Party Res Publica Independent Royalists

1 1 0 1

1 1 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 1 0 0

Finland Left Alliance Blue Reform Finns Party

0 1 1

0 0 1

1 0 0

1 1 1

France Republic Arise | France Arise National Front/Rally France Unbowed Movement for France French Communist Party/Left Front Rally for France

1 1 1 0 0 0

1 1 0 0 0 1

0 0 1 0 1 0

1 1 1 1 1 1

Germany Alternative for Germany The Left (Germany)

1 1

1 0

0 1

1 1

1 1 1 1

0 0 1 0

0 1 0 1

1 1 1 1

0 1 0 0 1 1 1

0 1 1 0 1 0 0

1 0 0 1 0 1 1

1 1 1 0 0 1 1

1 1

1 1

0 0

1 1

1

1

0

1

0

1

0

Greece Independent Greeks Democratic Social Movement Greek Solution European Realistic Disobedience Front [MeRa25] Comnunist Party of Greece Popular Orthodox Rally Golden Dawn Alternative Ecologists Political Spring Syriza—The Coalition of the Radical Left Synaspismos—The Coalition of the Left Hungary Fidesz—Hungarian Civic Alliance Fidesz—Hungarian Civic Party/Christian Democratic People’s Party Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary Christian Democratic People’s Party

1 (continued)

170

APPENDIX

(continued) Party name (in English)

Populist

Far-right

Far-left

Eurosceptic

Hungarian Justice and Life Party Hungarian Workers’ Party Our Homeland Movement

1 0 1

1 0 1

0 1 0

1 1 1

Ireland Democratic Left People Before Profit Alliance Sinn Fein Sinn Fein The Workers’ Party Socialist Party (Ireland)

0 0 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

1 1 1 1 1

0 1 1 1 1

Italy Tricolor Flame Social Movement The People of Freedom/Forza Italia (FI) Brothers of Italy The People of Freedom/Forza Italia (FI) (Northern) League Southern Action League Venetian League Five Star Movement Italian Social Movement Party of the Italian Communists Communist Refoundation Party Civil Revolution Left Ecology Freedom/Left

0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0

1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1

1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0

Latvia New Era Who owns the state? Communist Party of Latvia Socialist Party of Latvia Latvian Unity Party Reform Party For Fatherland and Freedom

0 1 0 0 0 1 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 0 1 1 1 0 0

0 1 1 1 0 0 0

1 1 1 0 1 0 0

0 0 1 1 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 1 1

0 0 1 1 1 0 0

Lithuania Labour Party The Way of Courage Young Lithuania Lithuanian National Union List Lithuanian Centre Party Communist Party of Lithuania Lithuanian Communist Party on the CPSU Platform

(continued)

171

APPENDIX

(continued) Party name (in English)

Populist

Far-right

Far-left

Eurosceptic

Lithuanian Liberty Union Socialist People’s Front National Resurrection Party Order and Justice

1 0 1 1

0 0 0 0

1 1 0 0

1 1 0 1

Luxembourg Alternative Democratic Reform Party The Left (Luxembourg) Communist Party of Luxembourg National Movement

1 0 0 0

0 0 0 1

0 1 1 0

1 1 1 1

Netherland 50PLUS Centre Democrats Forum for Democracy Reformed Political League Livable Netherlands Fortuyn List Party for the Animals Party for Freedom Socialist Party (Netherlands) Political Reform Party

0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0

0 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1

0

1

0

1

0

1

0

1

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1

0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1

1 0

0 1

0 0

1 1

0

0

0

Poland Coalition for the Renewal of the Republic—Liberty and Hope Coalition for the Renewal of the Republic—Liberty and Hope (KORWiN) Kukiz ’15 Left Together League of Polish Families Together Party Party X Polish United Workers’ Party Polish Western Union Law and Justice National Movement Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland Self-Defense of the Republic Poland Real Politics Union | Congress of the New Right Christian National Union

0 (continued)

172

APPENDIX

(continued) Party name (in English) Portugal Left Bloc Enough! Unitary Democratic Coalition (PEV & PCP) Portuguese Communist Party

Populist

Far-right

Far-left

Eurosceptic

0 1 0

0 1 0

1 0 1

1 1 1

0

0

1

1

Romania People’s Party—Dan Diaconescu Greater Romania Party United Romania Party Socialist Party of Labour Romanian Socialist Democratic Party Romanian National Unity Party

1 1 1 0 0 1

0 1 1 0 0 1

0 0 0 1 1 0

0 1 1 0 0 0

Slovakia Alliance of the New Citizen Communist Party of Slovakia Kotleba—People’s Party Our Slovakia Civic Conservative Party Ordinary People Real Slovak National Party Freedom and Solidarity Slovak National Party We are family Direction—Social Democracy Party of Civic Understanding Association of Workers of Slovakia

1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0

0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1

Slovenia The Left List of Marjan Sarec Slovenian Democratic Party Slovenian National Party Socialist Party of Slovenia United Left/The Left

1 1 1 1 0 1

0 0 1 1 0 0

1 0 0 0 1 1

1 0 0 1 0 1

Spain Galician Nationalist Bloc Aragonese Council Compromise | A la valenciana In Common We Can In Tide Basque Country Unite

0 0 0 1 1 0

0 0 0 0 0 0

1 1 1 1 1 1

1 0 1 1 1 1 (continued)

173

APPENDIX

(continued) Party name (in English)

Populist

Far-right

Far-left

Eurosceptic

Common Group of the Left United People United Left Podemos Voice

0 0 0 1 1

0 0 0 0 1

1 1 1 1 0

1 1 1 1 1

Sweden New Democracy Sweden Democrats Left Party

1 1 0

1 1 0

0 0 1

0 1 1

United Kingdom Conservatives Democratic Unionist Party Respect—The Unity Coalition Sinn Fein United Kingdom Independence Party

0 0 1 1 1

0 0 0 0 1

0 0 1 1 0

1 1 1 1 1

Index

A activism, 15–17, 31, 62, 71, 105, 159 anti-establishment, 6, 133, 164 austerity, 125, 128, 135 average district magnitude, 96 B Beck, Ulrich, 4, 29, 31 Blais, André, 24, 25, 28, 51, 63, 85, 88–90, 93–98, 101 blue-collar workers, 16, 49, 134, 143, 164 blurring of responsibility, 128 C canvassing, 17, 109–111, 163 cartel party, 21 centre–periphery, 16, 44, 45 challenger parties, 129, 132, 134, 138, 139, 141, 143, 147, 148, 150 Civic Voluntarism Model, 45, 62

class voting, 19–22, 160 clientelism, 107 cognitive mobilization, 23 compulsory voting, 3, 6, 18, 94, 95, 98, 162 critical citizenship, 23 Crouch, Colin, 4, 28–31, 124

D Dalton, Russell J., 2, 4, 12, 13, 17, 22, 23, 44, 50, 106, 159 decisiveness of the election, 97 deliberative process, 12 denizenship-based regime, 93 disaffected voters, 4, 131 disenfranchisement for crimes, 90 door-to-door campaign, 111, 163

E economic adversity, 32, 62

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 D. Tuorto, Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe, Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97505-0

175

176

INDEX

economic crisis, 5, 6, 29, 31–33, 57, 61, 68, 71, 103, 124, 129, 130, 139, 141, 145, 164 economic cycle, 32, 125 economic voting, 101, 127, 128 education, 13, 16, 17, 21, 27, 44, 46, 50–53, 56, 57, 59, 68, 71–73, 75, 84, 101, 107, 111, 133, 134, 144, 146 electoral system, 6, 96, 98, 100 elite competition theory, 10 establishment/anti-establishment cleavage, 6 EU-15 high-income countries, 53–55, 66, 67, 73, 131, 137, 138 EU-28 late-comers, 53–55, 66, 67, 73, 137 European Social Survey (ESS), 51, 54, 55, 58–60, 67–69, 71, 73, 75, 99, 104, 129, 144–146, 148, 149 Euroscepticism, 135, 138, 140 F franchise, 14, 86, 87 G GAL (Green-alternative-libertarian), 135 Get-out-the-Vote (GOTV), 110, 111 Gini index, 104, 105 globalisation, 29, 31, 133 Great Recession, 127, 128, 132, 160 H Hansen, John M., 20, 45, 47, 88, 109 I “I can’t”, “I don’t want to” and “nobody asked”, 160

immigration, 92, 135 income, 27, 44, 45, 47–53, 56, 57, 59, 61, 71–75, 84, 101–106, 111, 160 incumbent government, 32, 33, 63, 129, 131 institutional accountability crisis, 126

J job insecurity, 62, 134

K Katz, Richard S., 2, 15–17, 21, 22, 91, 95, 161 Kriesi, Hanspeter, 11, 15, 20, 31, 33, 124–126, 129, 131, 133–135

L left behind, 133 left-wing parties, 17, 110, 128, 133 legitimacy crisis, 22 Lijphart, Arend, 3, 26, 47, 94, 98, 159 Lipset, Seymour M., 3, 16 Lister, M., 102, 105, 106

M Mair, Peter, 2, 4, 15–17, 21, 22 majority systems, 96, 98 manual workers, 17, 19, 49, 51, 52, 62, 134, 135, 143 Marienthal , 62, 101 Marshall, Thomas H., 105 mass parties, 4, 5, 15, 16, 18–21, 26, 101, 133, 163 mediatisation of politics, 30 mobilisation campaigns, 109, 111 moral duty, 98 Mudde, Cas, 132–135, 139

INDEX

N non-citizen residents, 92, 93 non-resident citizens, 5, 91–93 number of parties, 6, 96, 97, 99, 100, 126, 127, 130 P participatory citizenship, 11 participatory inequality, 4, 6, 18, 26, 47, 50, 56, 99, 105, 124, 159, 162 party membership, 19, 21, 22, 31, 160 party polarisation, 97 PIIGS, 53–57, 61, 66–69, 72, 73, 125–127, 129–131, 137, 138, 141, 146, 147, 161 Pizzorno, Alessandro, 11, 17 political mobilisation, 15, 16, 103 poll booths, 18 populism, 132, 135, 136, 138–142, 164 post-democracy, 28, 29, 31 proportional representation (PR), 96, 99 protest vote, 28, 136, 137, 150, 159 public debt, 125 puzzle of participation, 27 R radical right, 135, 140, 143 registration requirements, 5, 85 relative deprivation, 5, 70, 71, 73–75, 103 relative risk (RR), 51–54, 56–59, 66, 67, 69, 73 representative democracy, 10, 11, 92, 161 residual welfare regimes, 106 resources, 2–4, 17, 26, 29, 44–47, 49, 52, 57, 62, 63, 71, 91, 92,

177

98, 101, 102, 106–111, 125, 128, 131, 133, 134, 139, 148, 160–163 Rokkan, Stein, 16 Rosenstone, Steven J., 20, 45, 47, 48, 62, 88, 109 S Schattschneider, Elmer E., 102 social centrality, 27 social cleavages, 15 social ranking, 74 socio-economic status (SES), 4, 5, 44, 46, 47, 49–52, 56, 57, 59–61, 65, 70, 71, 73, 74, 95, 98, 99, 104–106, 139, 145–150 sociotropic explanation, 127 Standing, Guy, 64 subjective socio-economic status, 70 T TAN (traditional-authoritariannationalist), 135 temporary workers, 61, 64–69, 145–147, 161 Tingsten’s law, 46, 57 turnout gap, 27, 47–49, 51, 52, 55–57, 59, 65, 68, 69, 98–100, 102–105, 108, 111, 143, 150, 161 U underprivileged groups, 3–5, 44 under-rewarding, 71, 74 universalistic welfare policies, 106 V Verba, Sidney, 12, 27, 44–46, 62, 101, 108, 111, 160, 162

178

INDEX

voting age, 84, 85, 88, 89 voting-age population (VAP), 85–87 voting-eligible population (VEP), 85–87 voting rights of disabled persons, 89

W welfare chauvinism, 75, 134 welfare state, 4, 15, 17, 101, 104, 106, 132, 161