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It’s About The Benefits

Choice Environments, Ideological Proximity and Individual Participation in 28 Democracies

School of Law and Social Science, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK, avid.brockington{at}plymouth.ac.uk

This article approaches the question of turnout by focusing on the benefits term in the classic equation through an examination of the relationship between the quality of the choice environment, ideological proximity and participation in 28 democracies. Using data from the CSES (Comparative Study of Electoral Systems), I find that electoral contexts that feature choice-rich environments, measured both at the individual level by ideological proximity and the contextual level by the coverage of the ideological continuum, are associated with a higher probability that any single voter will participate in an election. These findings hold in the presence of individual and institutional controls, and are confirmed using both robust standard errors and against estimated variance in individual over-reporting of turnout.

Key Words: contextual effects • CSES • ideological competition • turnout

Party Politics, Vol. 15, No. 4, 435-454 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1354068809334554


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