Research on the decline of voter engagement and participation
October 13, 2013 7:07 PM   Subscribe

Calling political science people: I want to read solid, evidence-based work that tries to explain why voters are voting less and less in Western democracies over the last few decades. Which writers and what works do you recommend?

I'm particularly interested in research itself rather than popular works about the research. English language preferred, though I can read German and find helpers for other languages. Work that looks across different countries for common factors is particularly interesting to me.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen to Society & Culture (2 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's not my area, so mostly I haven't looked at this stuff since grad school in the 90s. But the results from "turnout decline" in google-scholar seemed a Good Place To Start.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:42 AM on October 14, 2013


Best answer: I asked a couple of friends who teach / have taught PoliSci in NZ and the USA. One of them says:

"Two good books to start with are Andre Blais (2000) To Vote or Not to Vote, and Russel Dalton (2002) Parties Without Partisans. Another good introductory read on this is Arend Lijphart's Presidential Address to the American Political Science Association in 1997, called Unequal Participation: Democracy's Unresolved Dilemma. The cites in these pieces, and the later work that cites them, make for good added reading."
posted by John Shaft at 3:37 PM on October 16, 2013


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