Explaining Turnout Decline in Post-Communist Countries: The Impact of Migration

Turnout decline in former communist countries has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. In this paper, I re-test some of the previous hypotheses on new data and I propose a new hypothesis that considers the impact of external migration. Using multivariate regression models on a dataset of 2...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Comşa Mircea
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sciendo 2017-12-01
Series:Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/subbs-2017-0010
Description
Summary:Turnout decline in former communist countries has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. In this paper, I re-test some of the previous hypotheses on new data and I propose a new hypothesis that considers the impact of external migration. Using multivariate regression models on a dataset of 272 presidential and parliamentary elections held in 30 post-communist countries between 1989 and 2012, I have found strong support for the “migration hypothesis”: other things being equal, an increase of migration rate by 1 percentage point reduces voter turnout by around 0.4 percentage points. Most of the previous hypotheses related to causes of turnout decline are supported too.
ISSN:2066-0464