COMPULSORY VOTING, HABIT FORMATION, AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Michael M. Bechtel, Dominik Hangartner, and Lukas Schmid* Abstract—Can electoral institutions induce lasting changes in citizens’ vot- We explore these questions by studying a citizenry that ing habits? We study the long-term and spillover effects of compulsory voting in the Swiss canton of Vaud (1900–1970) and find that this inter- has been exposed to a sanctioned compulsory voting law vention increases turnout in federal referendums by 30 percentage points. for over twenty years. Theories of habitual voting (Weber, However, despite its magnitude, the effect disappears quickly after voting 1968; Almond & Verba, 1963; Lijphart, 1997; Plutzer, 2002; is no longer compulsory. We find minor spillover effects on related forms Gerber, Green, & Shachar, 2003; Fowler, 2006) predict that of political participation that also vanish immediately after compulsory voting has been abolished. Overall, these results question habit formation citizens develop a voting habit under compulsory voting arguments in the context of compulsory voting. because they are more likely to having repeatedly engaged in this activity. Consistent with this reasoning, recent empir- ical work on the formation of voting habits documents that I. Introduction those who voted in today’s election are also more likely to ARTICIPATION in elections is the most widespread participate in subsequent elections (Meredith, 2009; Fuji- Pform of civic engagement and a key mechanism through wara, Meng, & Vogl, 2016). This habit formation argument which citizens can hold elected officials accountable (Pers- not only predicts the contemporaneous effect of compulsory son, Tabellini, & Trebbi, 2003; Besley, 2005; Schaltegger & voting on turnout in elections; it also suggests that compul- Torgler, 2007). However, many countries have experienced sory voting has broader positive spillover effects on other types of political participation and has a lasting, positive a long-term decline in political participation, with turnout impact on the level of civic engagement in a political sys- levels having reached all-time lows (Solijonov, 2016). To tem even after it has been abolished (Lijphart, 1997; Cooter, alleviate widespread concerns about the lack of demo- 2000; Fieldhouse & Cutts, 2012). cratic legitimacy and the potential policy bias due to low Our study offers a comprehensive analysis of the effects turnout (Jackman, 2001; Mueller & Stratmannn, 2003), a of compulsory voting by isolating its contemporaneous, considerable number of countries have introduced com- long-term, and spillover effects on several types of politi- pulsory voting.1 While the evidence clearly suggests that cal participation. We explore the impact of a sanctioned and compulsory voting increases turnout contemporaneously long-standing, but eventually abolished, compulsory voting (Franklin, 1999; Jackman, 2001), we know surprisingly lit- law in the Swiss canton Vaud that aimed at building civic tle about its long-term and spillover effects: Do compulsory virtue by increasing citizens’ participation in direct legisla- voting laws have a lasting impact on turnout even after tion (Matsusaka, 1992). Vaud practiced compulsory voting they have been abolished? Can compulsory voting increase in federal referendums (i.e., direct legislation) from 1925 to citizens’ willingness to engage in other types of politi- 1948. Abstention triggered a sizable fine that local police cal collective action for which participation has remained authorities collected by visiting nonvoters’ homes in person, voluntary? thereby adding a social shaming component to the monetary sanction imposed on nonvoters. Vaud exclusively sanctioned abstention in federal ref- Received for publication September 11, 2015. Revision accepted for publication May 3, 2017. Editor: Brigitte C. Madrian. erendums, while other forms of political collective action * Bechtel: Washington University in St. Louis and Swiss Institute for Inter- remained voluntary. We exploit this specific design of Vaud’s national Economics and Applied Economic Research; Hangartner: ETH compulsory voting norm to explore the existence of positive Zurich and London School of Economics; Schmid: University of Lucerne and Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economic spillover effects of compulsory voting for federal referen- Research. dums on related forms of civic engagement that remained We thank Reto Foellmi, Marco Steenbergen, Dennis Quinn, and audi- voluntary. Since policymakers attempted to foster civic par- ences at the University of Bern, HWK Delmenhorst, the Annual Swiss Economist Meeting, and the Young Swiss Economists Meeting for use- ticipation more generally, the temporal variation in Vaud’s ful comments; Yvan Rielle for providing data; and Fabian Morgenthaler, compulsory voting norm in combination with its specific Christian Vogt and Nils Bürk for valuable research assistance. M.B. grate- design provides a rare opportunity to test norm interna- fully acknowledges support by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant PP00P1-139035). D.H. and L.S. gratefully acknowledge support tionalization and habit formation arguments. Due to the from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant 100017-141317/1). large number of potential confounding factors that plague L.S. gratefully acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science cross-country comparisons, an empirical evaluation of these Foundation (grants 100017-163135/1, PBBEP1-141484, and CRSI11- theories poses formidable methodological challenges. Our 132272). The data and code required to replicate all analyses in this paper are available online at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml? case study of Vaud’s compulsory voting law promises to persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/QKP9EJ. yield more credible causal estimates of the immediate, long- A supplemental appendix is available online at http://www.mitpress term, and spillover effects of external sanctions on political journals.org/doi/suppl/10.1162/rest_a_00701. 1 According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral participation than cross-country analyses, where case het- Assistance (2014), about 14% of all countries practice compulsory voting. erogeneity complicates causal inference. Providing such The Review of Economics and Statistics, July 2018, 100(3): 467–476 © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi:10.1162/rest_a_00701 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00701 by guest on 24 September 2021 468 THE REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS causal estimates instead of correlations is crucial because Most empirical studies analyzing the sources of habitual otherwise, we cannot ascertain whether any changes in voting have estimated local average treatment effects of an political participation are due to compulsory voting or other exogenous stimulus on the probability of turnout for a small unobserved factors. set of compliers (see table A1 in the online appendix for an Using a synthetic control design (Abadie & Gardezabal, overview of existing studies). Fujiwara et al. (2016) estimate 2003; Abadie, Diamond, & Hainmueller, 2010), we find that a 1 point decrease in turnout induced by higher precipita- that the introduction of compulsory voting in Vaud mas- tion lowers turnout in subsequent U.S. presidential elections sively increased turnout in federal referendums, by about by 0.7 to 0.9 percentage points. Analyzing individual-level 30 percentage points on average, when compared to a syn- data, Plutzer (2002) investigates how citizens transition from thetic Vaud that did not introduce compulsory voting. The habitual nonvoters to habitual voters and documents a con- available cross-country data suggest that turnout is about 12 siderable degree of stability in political behavior over the life percentage points higher in political systems that practice course that strongly correlates with the political involvement compulsory voting (Blais & Young, 1996). The fact that of an individual’s parents. In line with the idea of voting as a our treatment effect exceeds previous estimates by more habit-forming activity, Gerber et al.’s 2003 field experimen- than 100% strengthens the theoretical expectation that at tal evidence suggests that get-out-the-vote campaigns based least parts of the citizenry became habitual voters through on face-to-face canvassing and direct mailings increase voter repeated participation in referendums. Therefore, compul- turnout in subsequent years. More recently, Meredith (2009) sory voting should have increased turnout even after it was finds that voters who are barely 18 at the time of a presi- abolished, and it should also have increased participation in dential election, and hence eligible to vote, are also about other types of civic engagement. 4% more likely to vote in the subsequent election than those Our results suggest that compulsory voting had no long- who just missed the age cutoff. term impact on participation in federal referendums. We The literature not only lends empirical credibility to the document some contemporaneous, positive spillover effects argument that political participation can be habit form- on closely related forms of civic engagement, for exam- ing over time. It also directs our attention to exogenous ple, turnout in cantonal referendums and federal elections, shocks in the costs of voting as an important explanation especially if these were concurrent