FIFTH FRAMEWORK RESEARCH PROGRAMME (1998-2002) Democratic Participation and Political Communication in Systems of Multi-level Governance Participation in European Parliament elections: A framework for research and policy-making Richard Sinnott Department of Politics and Institute for the Study of Social Change University College Dublin Presentation made at the Conference on European Public Opinion and the 2004 European Parliament Elections, Paul Henri Spaak Building, The European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium September 18, 2003
The essential and indispensable function of the Parliament is to represent the citizens in the European policy-making process. Elections are the foundation of this representative relationship. Turnout in European Parliament elections is important because it is a vital indicator of the state of the relationship between the citizens and the Parliament. Turnout in the European Parliament election of 1999 varied from 90 per cent in Belgium to 24 per cent in the United Kingdom. But Belgium and a number of other member states have compulsory voting and several states have concurrent nation-wide elections. Omitting cases with either of these features shows that turnout in the remaining member states was 39.4 per cent in 1999 (compared to 52.9 per cent in the similarly-defined set of member states in the first direct election in 1979 - see Figure 1). The demographics of participation in EP2004 The likelihood that a given individual will vote in the European Parliament election in 2004 depends quite heavily on the socio-demographic characteristics of the individual in question. As Figure 1 shows, propensity to vote varies from a high of +20 among employed professionals, the self employed and business owners to a low of -24 among both skilled workers and manual workers 1. It is +9 among those with third level education but -18 among those with incomplete secondary education. As a final example from Figure 1, propensity to vote is -24 among those aged 18 to 24 and +6 among the 55 to 64 year olds. All this means that we know quite a lot about who votes. However, if we are to make an impact on the level of turnout, we need to know why people vote, and, in particular, why they abstain. The factors that lead some people to turn out to vote and that lead others to abstain are rooted in two processes: voter facilitation (things that make voting easier) and voter mobilisation (things that make people want to vote) 2. Both processes can be characteristics of political systems and political institutions or they can be characteristics of individual citizens. In short, they can be "systemic" or "individual-level" variables. Putting these distinctions together shows that there are four basic types of variables that affect turnout/abstention: 1 For each of the groups considered in the graphs that follow, the net propensity of the group in question to turn out to vote in European Parliament elections is measured as follows: (PH-PL)*(1-(PDK/100), where, PH = proportion responding 9 or 10 on a 10-point scales of probability of turning out to vote; PL = proportion responding 1 to 8 on the scale and PDK = proportion responding 'don't know'. This procedure ensures that the net figure receives a lower weight if the share of respondents who picked the don t know option was large. Data are from Eurobarometer 57 (spring 2002).
the characteristics of political systems/institutions that make it easy to vote the characteristics of individuals that make it easy for them to vote the characteristics of political systems/institutions make people want to vote the characteristics of individuals that make them want to vote. In the jargon, turnout/abstention is a function of systemic facilitation and individual facilitation and of systemic mobilisation and individual mobilisation (see Figure 2). Because these processes interact with one another, it is necessary to spell out the causal connections between them. Doing so provides an overall framework both for research on the problem of turnout in European Parliament elections and for devising policy measures to deal with the problem (see Figure 3). The five main processes leading to turnout/abstention are indicated by the numbered arrows in Figure 2. In going through each of these processes, this discussion will seek to illustrate the utility of the framework by taking what is the strongest and perhaps the least understood relationship revealed by study after study of voter turnout, namely the relationship between turnout and age. 1. Administrative facilitation (nuts and bolts and personal circumstances) (arrow 1) Systemic facilitation consists of the characteristics of the political system that make voting easier. The first and most straightforward set of systemic facilitation variables consists of the administrative arrangements that affect the ease with which a citizen can cast a vote. The administrative arrangements in question include voter registration requirements and procedures, the timing and the day of the election, the hours of polling, the accessibility of polling stations, the availability of postal voting etc. However, in assessing whether a particular set of administrative arrangements makes voting easy or not, one must take account of the electionrelated personal characteristics of the individual, in other words, one must look at the interaction between systemic and individual-level facilitation. For example, weekday voting poses no obstacle to the lawyer in a small town who has complete control over her work schedule and whose town-centre office is near the polling booth. Contrast this with the effect of weekday voting on a construction worker who regularly works overtime and whose place of work is more often than not a long distance from his home and his polling station. This interaction between administrative arrangements and personal circumstances, which is indicated by the broken 2 Obviously, each of these has a negative side - poor facilitation makes voting more difficult and poor mobilisation means that fewer people will want to vote or people will feel less strongly about wanting to vote.
segment of arrow1 in Figure 2, also helps to explain high abstention among young people. The fact is that voting can be, in practical terms, difficult for young people. The difficulties stem mainly from a failure of the administrative arrangements for voting to take adequate account of the needs of individuals with high levels of geographical mobility. This results in young people either not being registered or being registered at an address other than to the one at which they are resident come election time. One category of young people, namely students, are also subject to a seasonal cycle of activity that reduces the probability of turning out to vote at certain times of the year (examination periods and extended vacation periods). 2. Cognitive facilitation (political communication and political knowledge) (arrow 2) The systemic characteristics that facilitate voting are not confined to the administrative realm. This is because voting is also much easier for individuals if they live in a society with effective channels and processes of political communication. Good communications infrastructures increase the attention, knowledge and understanding that citizens bring to matters political. Many of the variables involved in this second form of systemic facilitation are long-term factors such as the quality and reach of the educational system, the existence of explicit or implicit civic education in schools, the volume and depth of media coverage of politics and elections, the degree of media penetration in the society, and the extent and quality of social capital in the society. However, more short-term factors such as the resources available for political campaigning, also play a role and are more amenable to policy intervention. Note that these communication variables do not lead directly to voting. Instead, as indicated by arrow 2 in Figure 2, they affect the level of cognitive facilitation with which individuals approach the whole question of voting. Though the effect is indirect, the impact of cognitive facilitation on the level of turnout can be particularly important because it affects how receptive citizens are to the various forms of systemic mobilization. Again take the problem of explaining high levels of abstention among young people. While inadequate administrative facilitation contributes to the problem of youth abstention, the more fundamental problem for young people is that political knowledge and the capacity to process political signals are not innate. This knowledge and these skills have to be learned but the evidence suggests that this learning process tends to be quite slow and is a function of years or even decades of (mainly adult) experience rather than something that comes automatically with the right to vote or with graduation from second-level schooling. Political learning by young people is also inhibited by the fact that many of them are beyond the reach of conventional forms of political communication -- they have low levels of
newspaper readership, they pay limited attention to news and current affairs on television and their peer-group social networks do not give high priority to political discussion. 3. Institutional mobilisation (what's at stake?) (arrow 3) Over the long term, the characteristics of political institutions and structures provide greater or lesser incentives to vote. Thus the degree to which political power in the society is concentrated in the elected institution in question as opposed to being dispersed over a number of institutions increases the incentive to vote. So too does the scope of the policy competence of the institution. Still within the realm of formal institutions, the electoral system, the kinds of choices it offers, and the way in which these choices are translated into allocations of political power enhance or reduce incentives to vote. Finally and at a more informal level, the nature of the party system maximizes or minimizes what is at stake in an election and so maximizes or minimizes the incentive to vote. Having listed these various aspects of institutional mobilization, however, it is essential to repeat that the impact of all of these features on the individual elector are mediated by the elector's level of cognitive facilitation, in other words are dependent on the extent to which he or she knows how the political system works. Again, youth abstention illustrates the point -- given young people's low levels of cognitive facilitation (in regard to politics), the mobilising effects of political institutions and structures pass many of them by. 4. Campaign mobilisation (getting the message through the medium) (arrow 4) In the short-term, systemic mobilisation consists of the campaigns of the parties and the candidates. Manifestos, speeches, political advertising, party political broadcasts and canvassing all seek to persuade the voter to vote this way or that. In terms of turnout, this means providing the elector with reasons for wanting to vote. But, once again, these messages only get through to the extent that electors read newspapers, watch current affairs television, talk about politics among family, friends and acquaintances and have a general framework of social and political understanding that enables them to make sense of it all. This is the reason why political campaigns, even those directed at a specific group (such as young people), fail to reach their target. The problem is often not the message but the medium through which the message has to pass. The medium in this case is the awareness, the knowledge and the understanding of politics and elections produced in individual citizens by a communication process of greater or lesser effectiveness. If the communications infrastructure is inadequate, the medium is opaque. If the medium is opaque, the message does not get through.
5. Individual mobilisation (preferences and identity) (arrow 5) Systemic mobilisation produces individual mobilisation. This is of two kinds - (a) sense of citizenship and (b) preferences. Sense of citizenship refers to a feeling of belonging to or being part of a political community as a whole as distinct from having a sense of belonging to any of the groups competing in the election. It encompasses a sense of identity, a recognition of the legitimacy of the political process that goes with that identity, a feeling of solidarity with one's fellow citizens that may express itself as a sense of duty to participate in the political process. These attitudes are distinct from the preference as a category of mobilisation (see below) because they do not affect the direction of choice but have an impact on the desire to vote as such. Of course, like the other variables identified in the process portrayed in Figure 2, the sense-of-citizenship variable can move in a positive or negative direction. Good experiences of the political system enhance the sense of citizenship and reinforce the predisposition to participate. Bad experiences can undermine the sense of citizenship. In terms of Figure 2, arrow 3 can be negative as well as positive. In negative mode, arrow 3 captures the destructive effects of incompetence or of corruption on people's feelings of citizenship, of solidarity and of duty to vote. In short the performance of institutions and political actors can produce voter demobilization rather than mobilization. Of course, incompetence or corruption do not necessarily lead to withdrawal and abstention. The alternative outcome is a determination to vote the so-and-sos out. For this to predominate over the temptation to withdraw there must be parties or candidates who represent a real alternative. This brings us to the second category of individual mobilistion -- preferences. These can be long-standing attitudes such as, for example, party attachment or ideological commitment. They can also be short-term preferences acquired in the course of the campaign, such as policy or leadership preferences or preferences for individual candidates at constituency level. If there various preferences are to have an impact on turnout, two things are necessary: electors must possess such preferences and parties or candidates must exhibit differences related to them. Taken in combination, these two factors give rise to party and candidate differentials. The final step leading to turnout/abstention is the interaction of individual facilitation and individual mobilisation. This can be thought of as the ratio of the costs of voting to the benefits of voting. This is indicated in Figure 2 by the box arrow into which the individual facilitation and individual mobilisation arrows (1 and 5) feed. This final interaction shows why systemic facilitation measures in themselves have only limited effects, the limits being set by the
individual's level of political mobilisation. Thus, administrative facilitation measures that one would expect to be highly effective (e.g. efforts to improve the level of registration of young people) may end up having only minimal effects on turnout, the problem being that most of the young people who are more or less automatically brought on to the electoral register by the registration drive have low levels of politically-relevant cognitive capacity and (partly as a result of this) low levels of personal political mobilisation. In the absence of improvement on these two fronts, the facilitation measure cannot not have its anticipated effect. Conclusion Given that this is only the opening session of our conference, to draw any conclusions, in particular any conclusions about the determinants of turnout in the European Parliament elections of 2004, from any of the above would be premature in the extreme. Obviously, the conclusions will depend on the case studies and the comparative analyses to which we now turn. The final presentation will, however, revert to the concepts and themes introduced above, and focusing specifically on the European Parliament elections of 2004, will attempt to summarise what we have learned both in terms of substantive findings and practical implications. References Aldrich, John H. (1993) Rational Choice and Turnout in American Journal of Political Science, 37: 246-78. Blais, Andre (2000) To Vote or Not to Vote? The Merits and Limits of Rational Choice Theory. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Blondel, Jean, Richard Sinnott and Palle Svensson (1998) People and Parliament in the European Union: Democracy, Participation and Legitimacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Franklin, Mark N. (1996) Electoral Participation in Lawrence LeDuc, Richard G. Niemi and Pippa Norris (eds.) Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in Global Perspective. London: Sage