The Effect of Social Capital on Voter Turnout : Evidence from Saint ’ s Day Fiestas in Mexico 1

Social capital is thought to increase voter turnout and improve political representation. Measures of social capital are positively correlated with turnout, but reverse causation and omitted variables may bias the results of previous studies. We exploit quasi-random variation in the timing of saint’s day fiestas across municipalities in Mexico to estimate the causal effect of community participation on turnout. Employing both cross-municipality and withinmunicipality estimates, we find that saint’s day fiestas occurring near an election decrease turnout by 2.5 to 4.5%. This effect is strongest where fiestas have the greatest impact on social capital – namely smaller and more Catholic municipalities. In these contexts, 1 in 5 citizens are demobilized by a fiesta occurring near the election date. Contrary to previous studies, our results suggest that large doses of social engagement can decrease turnout by consuming time, exposing citizens to conflicting views, and providing an alternative route to fulfilling civic obligations. 1 Both authors contributed equally. We thank Alberto Alesina, Stephen Ansolabehere, Gloria Chao, Ana De La O, Ryan Enos, Jens Hainmueller, Eitan Hersh, Gabriel Lenz, Jeffrey Lewis, Kay Schlozman, James Snyder, Michael Tesler, Gelin Valencia, and seminar participants at MIT for their suggestions and support. 2 Theories of Social Capital and Turnout Rational-choice theories struggle to explain voter turnout because the expected benefits of voting do not outweigh the costs (Downs, 1957). While voting may not be rational from a self-interested individual’s perspective, high turnout is in the interest of like-minded groups. For example, if every low-income American voted, they would achieve greater political representation, and public policy would shift in their favor (Bartels, 2009). However, voting requires time and information, and there is little chance that one vote will change the outcome of an election. Thus, turnout poses a classic collective action problem (Olson, 1965). Social capital may provide a solution to the collective action problem of voter turnout. Robert Putnam defines social capital as “citizen engagement in community affairs” (1995, p. 664). In later work, he goes on to say that “the core idea of social capital theory is that social networks have value” (2000, pp. 18-19). This definition is consistent with the first known use of the term by L. J. Hanifan in 1916: “If he [the individual] comes into contact with his neighbor, and they with other neighbors, there will be an accumulation of social capital. ” We rely on these definitions throughout this paper, referring to social capital as the degree of connectedness within a community. While the social capital of a community is typically measured through levels of membership in civic organizations and survey responses regarding trust in one’s community, these estimates simply provide proxies for the true level of connectedness and engagement in a community. Previous researchers have proposed several ways in which social capital can increase voter turnout. We focus on three particular theories. First, the norm of reciprocity is associated with communities high in social capital (Putnam, 1993; Stolle, 1998). Because high turnout serves the common interest in a community, citizens might use social capital to remind one