Enacted but neither regulated nor applied: exploring emigrant enfranchisement in deviant cases

ABSTRACT

Some states that enacted external voting rights decades ago have still not regulated or applied these rights, leaving emigrants unable to participate in elections. Searching for why the emigrant enfranchisement process remains incomplete, I map countries as either typical (fast-track or slow-paced) or deviant (stagnant, interrupted, or outlier) cases. Then I review the legal background of emigrant enfranchisement in the stagnant case of Nicaragua. I examine a set of hypotheses related to economic reasons, global norms, democratisation, and political competition; the role of political actors and instrumental factors are possible bona fide explanations for the enactment of Nicaraguan external voting rights. Along with putting more weight on domestic explanations, as compared to prior cross-national and comparative studies, this article aims to enrich existent empirical analyses on emigrant enfranchisement, taking a ‘Global South’ perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Emigrant enfranchisement
• external voting rights
• deviant cases
• global south
• policy

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my gratitude to Andrea Mazzini and Leticia Orces Pareja for their support with the Nicaraguan case and to Victoria Finn and Johanna Peltoniemi for their remarks on earlier versions of this draft.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 For instance, non-resident US citizens have tax obligations in their origin country, entitling them to vote (Klekowski von Koppelfeld 2019); this makes the US an ‘extreme outlier’ (Bauböck 2009, 490).

2 To track de jure emigrant enfranchisement, I consulted constitutions, electoral codes, and judicial rulings, when needed. Then, I checked if, and since when, non-resident citizens can participate in origin-country elections. I ensured data reliability by contacting electoral management bodies and/or consulting experts when the information was incomplete or contradictory.

3 I consulted the following datasets: datasets from the Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT) on the Conditions for Electoral Rights 2019 (Arrighi and Bauböck 2017) and Electoral Laws Indicators (GLOBALCIT 2019), as well as from the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s dataset on voting from abroad (IDEA 2007/2021). I also checked supplementary data in relevant cross-national articles (e.g., Turcu and Urbatsch 2020a; Umpierrez de Reguero, Yener-Roderburg, and Cartagena 2021; Wellman 2021).

4 Albania, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, The Gambia, Greece, Haiti, Nicaragua, Congo, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste, and Yemen.

5 Algeria, Angola, Brazil, Guyana, Honduras, India and Niger.

6 This provision is still technically in-country voting, but as Costa Rica is one of the top three residence countries of Nicaraguans, it makes a distinction as compared to the previous mandate in 1988.