Does decentralization boost electoral participation? Revisiting the question in a non-western context

IF 2.9 2区社会学 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Electoral Studies Pub Date : 2024-10-10 DOI:10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102873

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, intergovernmental relationships worldwide have undergone an unequivocal transformation, with powers increasingly shifting toward subnational governments. One of the expected outcomes of decentralization reforms is a (re)vitalization of participation in subnational decision-making. If available empirical evidence tends to support this claim, it has remained primarily restricted to Western countries. This article leverages asymmetric decentralization arrangements in Ukraine to re-examine the effect of decentralization on voter turnout in a diverging setting. It conducts matching and regression analyses using an original city-level dataset that combines electoral, census, administrative, financial and geospatial data. The results converge on a significantly positive effect on voter turnout in local elections of more than 4 percentage points. Additional analyses concerning the mechanisms suggest that the effect might be driven by citizens’ awareness of electoral stakes. Interestingly, the increase in voter turnout appears concomitant with lower perceived local government performance.

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权力下放会促进选举参与吗？在非西方背景下重新审视这一问题

自 20 世纪 70 年代末以来，世界范围内的政府间关系发生了明显的变化，权力日益向国家以下各级政府转移。权力下放改革的预期结果之一是国家以下各级决策的参与（重新）充满活力。如果说现有的经验证据倾向于支持这一说法，那么这些证据仍主要局限于西方国家。本文利用乌克兰的非对称分权安排，重新审视了分权在不同背景下对投票率的影响。文章使用结合了选举、人口普查、行政、金融和地理空间数据的原始城市级数据集进行匹配和回归分析。结果表明，在地方选举中，地方分权对选民投票率的积极影响超过 4 个百分点。有关机制的其他分析表明，这种效应可能是由公民对选举利害关系的认识所驱动的。有趣的是，选民投票率的提高似乎与人们对地方政府绩效的看法降低同时发生。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Electoral Studies POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

3.40

自引率

13.00%

发文量

审稿时长

67 days

期刊介绍： Electoral Studies is an international journal covering all aspects of voting, the central act in the democratic process. Political scientists, economists, sociologists, game theorists, geographers, contemporary historians and lawyers have common, and overlapping, interests in what causes voters to act as they do, and the consequences. Electoral Studies provides a forum for these diverse approaches. It publishes fully refereed papers, both theoretical and empirical, on such topics as relationships between votes and seats, and between election outcomes and politicians reactions; historical, sociological, or geographical correlates of voting behaviour; rational choice analysis of political acts, and critiques of such analyses.