sou · GNB3151 · 2000-01-01 00:00:00 — SOU och Ds som ingår nummerserie kan köpas från Fakta Info Direkt. För remissutsändningar av SOU och Ds som ingår nummerserie svarar Fakta Info Direkt på uppdrag av . Fakta Info Direkt, Kundservice Box 6430, 113 82 Tel: , Fax: Omslagsbild: Pressens Bild Grafisk formgivning: , In October 1999 a conference was held in on Citizen Participation in European Politics. The background of the dis- cussion was a low Swedish turn-out in the Elections to the Euro- pean Parliament in . We wanted to give an account of and discuss research on citizen participation in European politics illuminating possible explanations. Special attention was given to the connection between on the one hand the level of participation and on the other hand the role of the institutions and of the mass media.1 During the two days five international and four Swedish scho- lars contributed by giving lectures consisting of a variety of chal- lenging perspectives and empirical data. In order to stimulate the public debate we are now pleased to publish most of the lectures. The conference was arranged by The Commission on Demo- cracy in in cooperation with The Swedish Committe of Evaluation of the General of 1998. The organisers want to express their deepest gratitude to pro- fessor for his generous support during the plan- ning of the conference. However, neither professor nor the organisers but the authors themselves are finally responsible for the opinions formulated in this book. The Commission on Democracy 1 In Swedish the Commission on Democracy also has published other analyses dealing with global and European challenges to Swedish democracy, for instance Demokrati på europeisk nivå? (SOU 1998:124), EU – ett demokratiprojekt? (SOU 1998:145), Bör demo- kratin avnationaliseras? (SOU 1999:11) and Globaliseringen och demokratin (SOU 1999:56). Democray w ithin the EU in the Light of the 1999 Why Some People Vote and Others do not European Parliament Elections . Integration and Statehood in Union . The distribution of Pow ers Betw een the EU and the The Architecture of EU Institutions and Citizen Blaming the Messanger? and Turnout in EU Elections To Share Democratic Legitimacy Betw een Different Democracy within the EU in the Light of the 1999 European Parliamentary Elections Member of Cabinet , Ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to welcome you all to the seminar on Citizen Partici- pation in European Politics. This seminar is focused on one of the most important common goals in Europe: To grant that the Euro- pean Union will be and percieved to be a union of the people of Europe. We who share that vision are terribly set back by the poor turn- out in the elections to European parliament this summer. A low participation by the citizens is the greatest obstacle in the process of securing peace and prosperity in Europe. The EU has been given important tasks. They involve guaranteeing peace, ensuring a good environment, creating favourable living conditions, and much besides. We do not consider national deci- sions to be sufficient in addressing such problems as precarious security, environmental threats, organised international crime, flows of capital that shift jobs from one country to another with lightning speed, to name but a few. We need political decision- DEMOCRACY WITHIN THE EU IN THE LIGHT OF THE 1999 EUROPEAN... making that can deal powerfully with those problems for which individual nations lack sufficient decision-making authority. Decisions reached within Union have major con- sequences in nearly all policy areas. EU policies have effects on the work of national parliaments as well as on that of municipalities and county councils. The EU influences the everyday life of people living within and in fact also far outside the borders of the com- munity. Moreover, the influence of the EU in such areas is steadily increasing. of has put a number of political issues on the Union agenda which are essentially of an everyday nature, for example consumer policy, social issues, equality bet- ween men and women and employment policy. At the same time we know that decisions and decision-makers in the political sphere must have popular legitimacy and support. elections are the single occasion on which the citizens of Europe can join forces to influence the shape of the EUs future. Nevertheless only half, 49.9 per cent, of the EU citi- zens entitled to vote did so in elections held this summer. The election turnout in was 38.8 per cent. We cannot accept elections in which well below half of the eli- gible voters participate. There are a number of reasons for concern. First, we consider that a low election turnout reduces the legi- timacy of the institution concerned. Second, we are afraid that a low turnout in one election will rub off on other elections. That is to say, a low turnout in the Euro- pean elections might also get citizens into the habit of not voting in national elections. Third, a high election turnout has its own intrinsic democratic value. It is indicative of a broad political debate within society, in which most people familiarise themselves with current political issues and make their own judgements regarding the political development they would like to see. If few take part in elections the risk is the opposite – that democracy will be diluted and that a representative government will in a sense be reduced to govern- ment by a minority. To reverse the trend towards low electoral turnout we need know- ledge. This is why the Swedish Government gave of 1998 the additional task of analysing the results of the 1999 European elections. It is also why the Commission on Democracy in , of 1998 and the , have invited you to take part in this seminar. There might be different views on the ideals of democracy. But the absolute majority of people are in full agreement on the key role of general elections in a democracy. The EU is not a nation, it is a very special organisation but it does have a directly elected parlia- ment. However, the authority of this parliament cannot be equated with that of a national parliament. People in our countries have realised that power in the Euro- pean Union is not concentrated exclusively in the Parliament. An important reason why Parliament does not attract the same interest as a national parliament is undoubtedly that sig- nificant power is vested in the national governments. But the low interest in Parliament reflects a low interest in democratically elected institutions generally. From the point of view of democracy a number of negative trends can be seen in society today, both in and in most of the mature democracies. There is declining confidence in political institutions. Public participation and the confidence of citizens in the ability of the established parties to solve problems and take action is being successively weakened. Public participation in society requires greater efforts and permanent commitment – both of which are decreasing. As far as I can see, the situation is not dramatic in the present EU member states. Democracy as a system is not threatened – on the contrary. There is considerable popular support for democracy as the best form of governance. But since public confidence and participation are long-term so- cial phenomena, it is important to heed the warning signs early on. DEMOCRACY WITHIN THE EU IN THE LIGHT OF THE 1999 EUROPEAN... Beside the low turn-out we also have the results of the recent elec- tions in and . We know that Union is facing massive and in part difficult challenges. Enlargement eastwards is one of them. We must identify which problems are specifically related to the EU. Efforts to make the work of the EU more transparent are an important part of this. has a long tradition of public access to information. The question of transparency applies to all EU institutions. The EU must be an organisation of its age. Moder- nising the institutions of the EU is crucial for public participation. We need transparent and understandable processes. We need budgetary disciplin, accountability, equal opurtunities for men and women , access to documents among other things. But in order to boost turnout at European elections we must also reflect upon what role we would have the EU play in the future. However, I dont think it will be enough to implement institu- tional reforms at the EU-level. The political parties, other NGOs, the mass media etc, will also have to revise the way in which they work. Many EU-related issues have had a divisive effect on the tradi- tional parties. Nevertheless, I believe that these parties must have the to put EU issues on the agenda, partly for the sake of their own future and partly because we cannot allow peoples con- fidence in politicians to deteriorate still further. A study made in 1998 shows that over 60 per cent of voters consider themselves to be uninformed when it comes to EU-related issues. A mere 2 per cent consider themselves to be very well informed. Among other things there must be an effort to increase and deepen information to the public about union-decisions and the progress in the fulfilling of them. This is a responsability for the EU-institutions – specially the council – and the member states. Creating our national democracies took decades. European cooperation on a democratic foundation must also be allowed to take time, perhaps even longer bearing in mind how new the East European democracies are. After this introduction I look forward to hearing your views and discussing these matters with you over the next two days. In the coming discussions about the future development of the Union the Swedish governments intend to keep focus on popular support and participation. There must be a joint analysis of the reasons for the low election turnout and proposals of measures that might reverse the trend. Why Some People Vote and Others do not The question of the determinants of participation in elections has occupied political scientists and political practitioners alike, par- ticularly since the introduction of suffrage. This question arises from the basic observation that not all people who have the right to vote make use of that right: while some people vote, others do not. Consequently, one is tempted to ask whether this difference originates in other distinctions between these two groups, and if so, what other characteristics are involved. Before World War II, this question had to be addressed mainly by analysis of percentages of turnout by region, municipality, or even smaller geographical units. Renowned in this respect are the studies of the French sociographer (1913) and the Swedish sociologist (1937). Notwithstanding the insights these analysts gained, this approach has severe limita- tions, and may even generate fallacious conclusions. The develop- ment of survey methods after World War II, and the explosion of practical possibilities for analysing large amounts of survey data with the development of cheap computer technology have allowed the pursuit of the question of why people do or do not vote at the level of the individual voter. This survey approach has greatly in- creased our understanding of the individual-level determinants of 1 The author is professor at science and research at . WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT Yet, in spite of the tremendous number of survey-based publications, important questions remain unanswe- red – particularly concerning the determinants of changes in over- all levels of turnout. Most recently, the insight has been estab- that combinations of individual-level and aggregate or sys- tem-level information are required in order to make further pro- gress in answering the question of who votes and who does not, but this approach has not yet been applied very much. In this report, I will focus on the behavior of individual voters, and the reasons why they do or do not employ their right to vote. I will therefore not systematically address the effects of systemic characteristics on the over-all likelihood of voting – although in passing I will occasionally refer to some of the work in that tradi- tion. This report is divided in three parts. In the first, I review a number of theoretical approaches to the question of individual electoral participation. The relevant concern in this discussion is not how successful each of these approaches is in explaining differ- ences between voters, but rather their conceptual and theoretical logic. In the second part of this report, first findings from a recent study of the Swedish electorate will be reported. These derive from the Swedish segment of Election Study 1999. The third part consists of reflective comments that link parts 1 and 2, and that contain some informed speculation about causes of the low turnout in the most recent Swedish parliamentary elections and European elections that, at the moment, cannot be subjected to empirical testing because of lack of relevant data. Part 1: Theoretical and conceptual approaches The literature on electoral participation contains a number of approaches that differ in terms of the locus of the factors consi- dered to be of causal importance for making people either partici- pate or abstain in elections. One rarely finds these approaches in ideal form, as most theorists and empirical analysts see the benefits of using elements of them in a complementary fashion, but for the purpose of presentation I will discuss them separately in more or less ideal-type form. The first of these approaches looks for the explanation of dif- in electoral participation to the voters involved: different people have different characteristics that help to understand why they behave differently. The second approach looks at the other actors that are of necessity involved in the conduct of elections: the political parties, the candidates and the politicians. They have to reach and mobilize voters and to the extent that they fail to do so this will explain non-voting. The third approach focuses on something else again: the specific context of the election at hand. Not all elections are alike, and from the differences between them one may try to explain why some people vote and others do not. Each of these three approaches will be discussed in some more detail below. Who votes depends on voters characteristics The logic of this approach rests on the notion that voters should possess certain qualities in order to turn out and vote. In general one can think of the following kinds of qualities that may relate to turnout: Physical qualities: voting requires a trip to a ballot station, and therefore that a person is sufficiently healthy and mobile to make this trip, that s/he has sufficient visual and motor skills to read the ballot and handle a pencil or voting-machine, etc. In most western political systems elections have been organized in such a way as to minimize the physical and motor demands that WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT are required for casting ones vote, so that the number of people unable to vote for these trivial reasons is minimized. Yet, for some people the activities required to vote will remain too strenuous – the (very) old, chronically ill, and disabled – although it can be expected that their number is quite small in developed democratic systems such as . Economic and social resources such as (flexible) time and money. To the extent that voting is organized in such a way that it costs a lot of time (because of distance to to a polling station, because of queues waiting for their turn, etc.) this may deter people from voting, and people with more free time or a more flexible time schedule will be advantaged. This will be particularly so when peoples income is so low that they cannot afford to lose time that is necessary for acquiring their income.2 In large measure, it is believed that these factors play at most a minor role in preventing people from going to the polls in developed western democracies, were it only because of measures taken to minimize these effects (such as long polling hours, possibilities for absentee voting or postal voting, etc.) Elections are a collective enterprise, the results of which are relevant for a society or political commu- nity as a whole. Belonging to that community or society is then an important factor that promotes turnout, whereas being estranged or alienated from it may obstruct electoral participa- tion. For this reason, social integration is a factor that impinges on turnout, and at the individual level this relates to the extent that an individual is integrated in networks of relationships that make a person into a member of the community. Although it is difficult to state which concrete characteristics should be taken as indicative for integration, the relevant literature looks at factors such as membership of and being in non-political 2 Although not of relevance in most western societies, the consequences of this logic run sometimes in the opposite direction: voting can be a source of income in conditions of widespread poverty in combination with a practice of vote-buying. In such circumstances, elections operate as a means of redistributing income. contexts and organizations – including churches, youth groups, sports and recreational organzations, etc. – and at membership of a multi-person household that bestows upon a person res- ponsibility for others. Relevant cognitive and information-handling skills. Although often not perceived that way, voting is a highly abstract act, particularly in the context of a mass society. Usually voters do not know the candidates personally, and parties themselves are often abstract entities. Many of the communications directed at voters assume the presence of some kind of prior knowledge or understanding of politics. The larger a voters capacity to hand- le abstract messages and arguments, the larger the store of ex- perience and knowledge s/he possesses, the better s/he will be able to understand the nature of the voting act in general, as well as in the specific election at hand. Although it cannot be assumed that this understanding will necessarily drive people to cast their votes, it is reasonable to expect that lack of under- standing will keep people away. A number of more concrete characteristics relate to cogni- tive and information-handling skills. Education is a primary one: more education (both in duration as in level) increases ones capacity for handling information, increases cognitive skills, and provides specific information that helps make sense of what an election is about. In addition to formal education, the amount of previously accumulated experiential knowledge and understanding also helps. Because of this, we may expect – ceteris paribus – older people to have acquired more understan- ding and hence to vote more frequently than younger ones. Also those who, for whatever reasons, have had direct expe- riences with parties, politicians, and political processes in ge- neral, will possess more of this facilitative (though not suffi- cient) condition for voting. In the course of their lives, from childhood socialization as well as from experiences in later life, voters have acquired attitudes that may either facilitate or impede electoral participation. Such attitudes are referred to in the literature (e.g. Verba and Nie, 1972) as civic attitudes, and they WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT pertain to generalized (rather than election-specific) feelings such as the following ¾Self-esteem, sense of political competence and sense of political efficacy, all of which refer to whether a voter looks at him/herself as a person who may have an impact on his/her own life and on what is going on in the world – which makes it reasonable to cast a vote – or as someone who is unable to affect to do so – rendering electoral par- ticipation a useless activity. ¾Generalized feelings about the importance of politics in general. A view that the political process is largely irrele- vant for whatever happens in the world and in ones own life is an impediment to electoral participation, whereas the opposite view will promote it. ¾Generalized feelings about the openness, malleability and benevolence of the political system all increase the relevance and potentially beneficial effects of voting, whereas feelings of an opposite nature promote a percep- tion of voting as futile or even hazardous. attitudes, such as those referred to above, cannot be observed directly in terms of overt behavior. Rather, they have to be inferred from responses to items in survey questionnaires that are expected to yield valid indicators for these attitudes. The approach in which peoples characteristics are looked upon as factors that are important for their participation (or lack thereof) has been very influential in political science since the 1960s. Its archetype is perhaps the seminal work by Verba, Nie and others (Verba and Nie, 1972; Verba, Nie and , 1978), later followed by many others (see, e.g. et al., 1992). This tradition has yielded something like a standard model in which socio-economic characteristics of people – representing their resources and social connectedness – impinge both directly as well as indirectly – via civic attitudes, that themselves are strongly determined by these same background characteristics – on electoral participation. Most of the comparative work in this tradition has focussed on the question how societal and institutional circumstances affect the relative strength of the direct, and indirect impact of peoples background on their participation. An institutional framework of, e.g., compulsory voting, takes away most of the direct and the in- direct impact of background, as it renders such distinctions largely irrelevant. Other contexts, such as a largely secularized and post- modern society would yield very strong indirect effects of back- ground, and so forth. In spite of the wealth of insights yielded by this approach, it is notoriously unable to account for variation in turnout across dif- ferent elections in a single system. After all, most of the factors identified in this approach as important do not change very rapid- ly, if at all, over time. Yet, in most countries successive elections yield different rates of turnout, sometimes dramatically so. Who votes depends on mobilization efforts by parties and others The line of reasoning of this approach focuses not on voters, but on other actors that are involved in elections. These are first and foremost the parties and candidates that vie for the support of the voters. To the extent that parties and politicians put more effort in reaching people and to getting out the vote, more people will be reached, more people will be affected by the persuasive communi- cations from parties aimed at mobilization, and consequently the number of people casting their vote will be higher. By contrast, to the extent that parties succeed in discouraging the supporters of their opponents from voting (e.g., by so-called negative cam- paigning) they will have the effect of lowering the number of voters. Aside from parties and politicians, other actors may also be im- portant in the mobilization process. One can think in this respect of organizations such as pressure groups or cause groups that occasionally take part in the electoral struggle by mobilizing their followers, usually in an effort to make them support a candidate or party sympathetic towards their interest or cause. An important example of such behavior in many countries is the effort by labor WHY SOME PEOPLE VOTE AND OTHERS DO NOT unions to get their members or followers to the polls. Less fre- quently nowadays in western democracies, but important in for- mer times, were the efforts of churches to mobilize their believers in support of a favored party.