Best of both worlds? Independent lists and voter turnout in local elections

ABSTRACT

How does the presence of independent lists influence voter turnout in municipal and sub-municipal elections? Despite the persistence of independent lists in local elections of European countries, this question has remained underexplored. Our paper examines the influence of independent lists on voter turnout both theoretically and empirically. In the theoretical discussion, we outline two competing hypotheses. On one hand, the best of both worlds hypothesis predicts that owing to increased choice for the voters, the presence of nonpartisan lists would increase voter turnout. On the other hand, the competing hypothesis suggests the opposite due to higher information costs associated with independent lists. We test our hypotheses using data from four election cycles of Portuguese municipal and sub-municipal levels of government. Since 2001, Portugal’s electoral law allows the participation of nonpartisan lists of candidates in local elections. The empirical analysis employs fractional probit and beta regression models and finds strong support for the best of both worlds hypothesis, both at the municipal and the sub-municipal levels.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the following, we use the terms independent, nonpartisan, and local lists interchangeably.

2. One could counter that, however, with an argument that when citizen groups recruit, fund and campaign for candidates, they can also provide information, which, at least in some cases, can give even more accessible cues than the more general party labels (Wright, 2008, p. 14).

3. We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the use of the ratio variable rather than the count of the number of lists.

4. The upper part of Table 1 also includes the political fragmentation variable used in Appendix A. This variable is measured as the total number of lists participating in the municipal executive elections.

5. The bottom part of Table 1 also includes the political fragmentation variable used in Appendix B. This variable is measured as the total number of lists participating in the parish council elections.

6. The descriptive statistics of the political variables are also worth mentioning. The level of political competition is generally low, since the average margin of victory (i.e. the difference between the first place list and the runner-up) is 24.4 percentage points. The majority of contests were won by parties on the left (53%). The average number of consecutive terms served by Portuguese mayors is 1.5, a mean clearly deflated by the effect of the term limits legislation applied for the first time to the 2013 election cycle. In the 2009 elections, the mean was 1.9, and about 17% of mayors were serving more than three consecutive terms. This number dropped to zero in the 2013 election cycle as a result of the enactment of the term limits legislation (mean = 0.4). Finally, also as a result of the term limits, 12.7% of the mayors in the 2013 election cycle came into office as a result of the forced exit of the incumbent.

7. The average margin of victory was high (26.8 percentage points). The proportion of contests won by parties on the left was substantially lower than in the case of municipal executive elections (48.7% of cases).

8. We are really grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (EFDR) [SmartEGOV: Harnessing EGOV for Smart Governance (F]; the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) [PEst-OE/CJP/UI0758/2014], and the Estonian Research Council [PUT-1142].

Notes on contributors

António F. Tavares

António F. Tavares holds a Ph.D. in Public Administration from Florida State University. He is associate professor of the School of Economics and Management and member of the Research Center in Political Science at the University of Minho, Portugal. He is also adjunct associate professor at the United Nations University, Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV) in Guimarães, Portugal. He is co-editor of the Urban Affairs Review, the journal affiliated with the Urban Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. His research interests comprise topics in the fields of local government and urban politics, including territorial reforms, regional governance, service delivery, and political and civic engagement. His research has been published in a wide range of journals in political science, public administration and urban affairs, including Government Information Quarterly, Journal of Urban Affairs, Local Government Studies, Policy Studies Journal, International Review of Administrative Sciences, and Public Management Review.

Ringa Raudla

Ringa Raudla is Professor of Fiscal Governance, Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. Her main research interests are fiscal policy, public budgeting, public administration reform, and institutional economics. Her recent publications include articles in Electoral Studies, Public Choice, Public Administration Review, Governance, Public Administration, Policy Studies Journal, the American Review of Public Administration, Journal of Public Policy, Public Money & Management, International Review of Administrative Sciences, and Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. She has also worked as a consultant for various governmental organizations, including the Ministry of Finance and the National Audit Office in Estonia, and international organizations, including the World Bank. Ringa Raudla received the Estonian national research award in social sciences in 2018. She is an editorial board member of seven different journals in the fields of public administration, public management, governance and economics.

Tiago Silva

Tiago Silva holds a PhD in political and social sciences from the European University Institute. His dissertation analyses the salience of different media frames during electoral campaigns by looking at the traditional media news coverage and social media in four different countries.

He has a BA in Public Administration and a MA in Political Science, both from the University of Aveiro. He has also been an academic fellow at UNU-EGOV, studying local governments’ use of new technologies to increase political engagement and participation. His main research interests are political communication, media effects, online campaigning and European integration. In the past years, he has been involved in several projects analyzing European elections, particularly the news media coverage and the political parties’ campaigns. Tiago is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the project MAPLE (Measuring and Analysing the Politicization of Europe) at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.