Peer reviewed articles

Compulsory Voting Rules, Reluctant Voters and Ideological Proximity Voting

2018 Dieter Stiers / Fernando Feitosa / Ruth Dassonneville Compulsory voting / Correct voting

Abstract Political theorists have argued that democracies should strive for high turnout, leading to an argument for the introduction of compulsory voting, one of the surest ways to increase turnout. Others have warned that this obligation comes at a cost of lower quality votes. We investigate these claims by examining the impact of compulsory voting […] Read more

Peer reviewed articles

Compulsory Voting, Inequality, and Quality of the Vote

2016 Ruth Dassonneville Compulsory voting / Correct voting / Economic voting

  Abstract   Democratic elections imply that the electorate holds incumbents accountable for past performance, and that voters select the party that is closest to their own political preferences. Previous research shows both elements require political sophistication. A number of countries throughout the world have a system of compulsory voting, and this legal obligation boosts […] Read more

Peer reviewed articles

High Turnout in the Low Countries

2016 Ruth Dassonneville Compulsory voting / Turnout

Abstract We use a quasi-experimental framework to test the conventional wisdom that left-of-center parties benefit from higher turnout by analyzing the partisan effects of the abolition of compulsory voting in the Netherlands. Fixed effects, multilevel, and matching models of party family vote shares in the Netherlands before and after the reform–and in reference to a […] Read more