Who is responsible? The effect of clarity of responsibility on voter turnout

Abstract

Does voters’ ability to discern who is responsible for policy outcomes affect voter turnout? Although particular institutional arrangements which influence this ability – known as clarity of responsibility – appear to affect how voters form retrospective judgements, existing literature is less informed about its role on voter turnout. This article argues that voters tend to turn out less if they cannot discern who is responsible for policy outcomes. This lack of clarity hinders the process of retrospective evaluations, makes the electoral stakes less profound, and dampens the voters’ political efficacy. Using 396 elections in 34 established democracies between 1960 and 2015, it is found that lower clarity of responsibility is associated with lower voter turnout. This study highlights the importance of clarity of responsibility, as it enhances democratic accountability, not only by encouraging retrospective voting, but also by increasing political participation.

Keywords:

• Democratic accountability
• clarity of responsibility
• voter turnout

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For robustness purposes, we test the impact of each indicator of this cumulative index and offer the empirical results in Online appendix A3 and A4. See Note 9 for a detailed explanation.

2 For a review on turnout measurement, see Appendix A in Geys (2006).

3 The correlation in the two measures of dependent variable is high, the Pearson correlation coefficient is 0.84 (p < 0.0001), indicating that they are very similar, though not identical, measures of turnout.

4 website: http://www.idea.int

5 Dassonneville and Lewis-Beck’s measure runs from 0 to 5 because their institutional rules is the summative index from five elements.

6 Indeed, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Spain, Great Britain, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia have not experienced any change in their institutional rules measure.

7 Previous studies have used a measure of difference in vote share between the two largest parties (i.e. Blais and Dobrzynska 1998; Kostadinova 2003). In fact, Hobolt and Klemmensen (2006) point to two potential drawbacks of using the two first parties’ vote share. For a detailed analysis, see note 10 on page 13 in their unpublished manuscript. Although we follow Hobolt and Klemmensen’s suggestion, we also run our models by using the difference in vote share between the two largest parties for a robustness check. This test verifies that our results are robust across all models. Institutional rules do not affect turnout rates, but there is a positive and statistically significant association between power rules and voter turnout. The results of this additional test are in Table A5 in the Online appendix.

8 The FE models drop the time-invariant variables such as compulsory voting from the model.

9 None of the indicators of institutional rules has reached a conventional level of statistical significance when we use VAP as a dependent variable (A3). In the case of REG, majoritarian electoral systems and no dual executive appear to increase voter turnout (A4). This second finding follows our theoretical expectations as both the existence of a majoritarian system (Hellwig and Samuels 2008) and the lack of a dual executive (Dassonneville and Lewis-Beck 2017) increase clarity of responsibility. On the other hand, existing literature on voter turnout seems to portray them as institutions with opposite effects. Upon closer examination of this literature, it became apparent that the two institutions have not been included in the same models. Specifically, scholars have predominantly included the electoral system (majoritarian/proportional) rather than the regime type (presidential/parliamentarism). Following this trend, the large meta-analyses on this literature do not discuss regime type (Cancela and Geys 2016; Geys 2006; Stockemer 2017). A possible explanation for this is the high correlation of parliamentarism with proportional representation and presidentialism with majoritarian electoral systems. Given our results, though, as well as the growing scepticism about the robustness of the effects of PR on turnout, we believe that considering the electoral systems and regime type as having separate effects would be a step forward in understanding voter turnout. With regard to individual indicators of power rules, three variables (majority government, limited number of parties and stable cabinet) affect VAP turnout (A3), while only two (majority government and limited number of parties) appear to affect REG turnout (A4).

10 To measure political efficacy, we used ‘The national parliament takes into consideration the concerns of ordinary citizen’ guided by Blais (2014). Blais (2014) measures external efficacy by using the question ‘How much do you believe the federal government cares about what people like you think?’ Similarly, Zuniga et al. (2017) measure government political efficacy using a question ‘my government makes decisions based on what citizens want’.

11 For this analysis we only use the subsample of cases in which compulsory voting laws are in effect. This variable was acquired from V-Dem, and the cases are coded 1 for no sanctions, 2 for light sanctions, and 3 for heavy sanctions. The analysis reveals that heavier sanctions lead to significant increases in voter turnout. This relationship is robust in Model 1, Model 2, and Model 4. The results are consistent with Dettrey and Schwindt-Bayer (2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brandon Beomseob Park

Brandon Beomseob Park is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). His research focuses on the role of economy in voting behaviour, political parties, and how international factors affect electoral accountability and party mobilisation. His articles have appeared in Conflict Management and Peace Science, and the International Political Science Review. [[email protected]]

Nikolaos Frantzeskakis

Nikolaos Frantzeskakis is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. His current research interests include political behaviour, electoral institutions, and democratisation. [[email protected]]

Jungsub Shin

Jungsub Shin is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Soongsil University, Seoul, South Korea. His main research interest lies in the area of comparative politics, with a focus on elections, political parties, and political campaigns. His articles have appeared in journals such as Political Research Quarterly, International Political Science Review, and Asian Journal of Communication. [[email protected]]