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The Origins and Consequences of Compulsory Voting in Latin America

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The Origins and Consequences of Compulsory Voting in Latin America THE ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF COMPULSORY VOTING IN LATIN AMERICA By Arturo Maldonado Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Political Science December, 2015 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Date: _______________________________________________ __________________ Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ __________________ Mitchell A. Seligson, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ __________________ Cindy D. Kam, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ __________________ Jonathan Hiskey, Ph.D. _______________________________________________ __________________ André Blais, Ph.D. Copyright © 2015 by Arturo Maldonado All Rights Reserved Para Gioco, mi elección voluntaria iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Six years of graduate education have transformed me from a person interested in Political Science to a political scientist. This journey would not have been possible without the support of my lovely and supportive wife Gioco. Te amo!! Together, we moved to a new country and began our new life in Nashville. During this time, she has been in charge of the needs of our growing family while I was busy struggling with this dissertation and finishing the Ph.D. She is the light in this journey. In the meantime, our two kids were born: Arturo and Florencia, who bring more happiness to our life. My family is the main motivation to grow still further as scholar and professional. When I arrived to Nashville, I met a fantastic group of people. I first met Charo Basay and her family who courteously welcomed to her home in our first days in Nashville. I also met awesome professors and fellow graduate students in the Department of Political Science. I would specially like to thank Mitch Seligson and Liz Zechmeister, who have been mentors and advisors in my years in graduate school and have co-chaired this dissertation project. Mitch has inspired me to be a rigorous and meticulous scholar. I learned about the political economy of inequality in his seminar and the intricacies of public opinion research in Latin America in the LAPOP project. This dissertation owes a great deal of its content to the thoughts and feedback of Liz Zechmeister. She provided invaluable comments and was a critical reader of every chapter of this dissertation. I really appreciate the time and commitment that she dedicated to this dissertation in the middle of her innumerable activities as a remarkable professor at Vanderbilt University and as a LAPOP Director. I am also indebted to many professors, colleagues, and friends, who have helped me at different stages in this project. At Vanderbilt University, I would like to thank Jonathan Hiskey iv and Cindy Kam, who were also part of my dissertation committee. Josh Clinton, Zeynep Somer- Topcu, Suzanne Globetti, Alan Wiseman, Monique Lyle, and Larry Bartels, all were terrific instructors in substantive and methodological topics. My research included fieldwork in Colombia. This part of my research was generously sponsored by the RIPS Small Grant for Experimental Research at the Research on Individuals, Politics & Society Lab at Vanderbilt University. In Colombia, Fredy Barrero and Nicolás Liendo graciously granted me access to the Universidad Sergio Arboleda, Ivonne León to the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Miguel García to the Universidad de Los Andes, and Fabián Acuña to the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, where I applied a survey experiment with their students. I was also able to spend time in Peru for doing fieldwork. This research was made possible due to a research grant from the National Science Foundation (0851136 and 0850824), which supported the implementation of a survey-based experiment in Lima, Peru. I was the Peru- based coordinator of that study, administered by Jennifer Merolla and Liz Zechmeister, and had their approval to embed the experiment into that data collection effort. The broader study was approved by the Vanderbilt IRB (IRB# 081383) and the experiment presented here was also reviewed and approved by the Vanderbilt IRB office. In my country, Aldo Panfichi kindly reserved a space in the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In this carrel, I wrote much of this dissertation. In my alma mater, I would like to thank Eduardo Dargent, Martín Tanaka and David Sulmont for their generous support during these years. Among my Peruvian colleagues and friend, Carlos Meléndez, José Carlos Requena and Paula Muñoz deserve a special note of gratitude. v Among my “Nashvillian” colleagues and friend, I would like to thank: Rubí Arana, José Miguel Cruz, Margarita Corral, Justin Pickering, Alejandro Diaz-Dominguez, Diana Orcés, Daniel Montalvo, María Fernanda Boidi, Dominique Zephyr, Abby Córdova, Mason Moseley, Mariana Rodriguez, Matt Leyton, Trevor Lyons, Scott Revey, Steve Utych, Becca McBride, Anna Carella, Ted Enamorado, Fabiola Pineda, Camilo Plata, Fred Batista, Gui Russo, Mollie Cohen, Rafael Piñeiro, Amy Erica Smith, Ana María Montoya, Nicole Hinton, and Georgina Pizzolitto. Among the administrative staff at Vanderbilt, I want to than Tonya Mills, Darlene Davidson, Tina Bembry and Natasha Duncan for their significant help during these years. In particular, I would like to thank Daniel Zizumbo-Colunga, my friend and colleague, with whom I spent endless hours discussing our dissertation projects. Some ideas in this dissertation were born in these stimulating talks. Last but definitely not least, I would like to thanks my parents and my large family. I remembered my parents at every stage and they were the inspiration for this journey: Arturo and Reneé, tarea cumplida!! In these six years, my family experienced profound losses: my father-in- law Manuel, my mother-in-law Irma, and my sister Charo. The culmination of this project is a tribute to their memories. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ v LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: COMPULSORY VOTING IN LATIN AMERICA .......................... 1 The Debate about the Implementation of Compulsory Voting ................................................... 4 Turnout in Latin America ........................................................................................................... 9 Variation in the Implementation of Compulsory Voting in Latin America .............................. 13 The Dissertation in Brief ........................................................................................................... 19 II. THE STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION OF COMPULSORY VOTING AND FRANCHISE EXPANSIONS IN LATIN AMERICA ............................................................. 22 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 22 The Implementation of Electoral Rules as a Struggle of Power ............................................... 26 Compulsory voting and Enfranchisement as Strategic Decisions ........................................ 26 Pressures for Social and Political Transformation in Latin America ....................................... 35 Argentina and Uruguay: Still Powerful Elite and Rising Disenfranchised Groups .............. 36 Bolivia and Peru: Divided Elites and Weak Disenfranchised Groups .................................. 38 Institutional Outcome ................................................................................................................ 41 Scenario A: Franchise Expansion and Compulsory Voting ................................................. 42 vii Uruguay as a Middle Path Between Scenario A and B ........................................................ 45 Scenario C: Compulsory Voting and Later Franchise Expansion ........................................ 47 Further Consequences After Critical Junctures ........................................................................ 53 Expanding the Model to Other Countries ................................................................................. 58 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 64 III. SHIFTING RATIONALES: DETERMINANTS OF VOTER TURNOUT IN COMPULSORY VERSUS VOLUNTARY VOTING COUNTRIES IN LATIN AMERICA ................................................................................................................................... 67 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 67 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 70 The Calculus of Voting Under Voluntary and Compulsory Voting Systems ....................... 71 Methods and Data ..................................................................................................................... 76 Results ......................................................................................................................................
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