Advertisement

Public Choice

, Volume 180, Issue 3–4, pp 257–283 | Cite as

Is civic duty the solution to the paradox of voting?

  • Abel FrançoisEmail author
  • Olivier Gergaud
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Although sense of civic duty is seen by many scholars as the most obvious solution to the paradox of voting, very few empirical studies provide clear evidence on that motive. We use blood donation to build proxies, focusing only on intrinsic motivations, and then introduce such measures into electoral turnout regressions. Our results show that civic duty has a strong influence on voter turnout rates, confirming that the satisfaction voters receive from voting matters regardless of election outcomes. The results are even stronger when we incorporate the number of plasma and platelet donations, which take more time and require stronger commitments from donors.

Keywords

Electoral turnout Paradox of voting Civic duty Blood donations Calculus of voting 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

References

  1. Ashenfelter, O., & Kelley, S. J. (1975). Determinants of participation in presidential elections. Journal of Law & Economics, 18, 695.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Belli, R. F., Traugott, M. W., & Beckmann, M. N. (2001). What leads to voting overreports? Contrasts of overreporters to validated voters and admitted nonvoters in the american national election studies. Journal of Official Statistics, 17(4), 479–498.Google Scholar
  3. Belli, R. F., Traugott, M. W., Young, M., & McGonagle, K. A. (1999). Reducing vote overreporting in surveys: Social desirability, memory failure, and source monitoring. Public Opinion Quarterly, 63, 90–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Benabou, R., & Tirole, J. (2003). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The Review of Economic Studies, 70(3), 489–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Benabou, R., & Tirole, J. (2006). Incentives and prosocial behavior. The American Economic Review, 96(5), 1652–1678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Bernstein, R., Chadha, A., & Montjoy, R. (2001). Overreporting voting: Why it happens and why it matters. Public Opinion Quarterly, 65(1), 22–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Blais, A. (2000). To vote or not to vote? The merits and limits of rational choice theory. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Blais, A., & Galais, C. (2016). Measuring the civic duty to vote: A proposal. Electoral Studies, 41(1), 60–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Brennan, G., & Lomasky, L. E. (1997). Democracy and decision: The pure theory of electoral preference. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  10. Brody, R. A., & Page, B. I. (1973). Indifference, alientation and rational decisions. Public Choice, 15(1), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Campbell, A., Gurin, G., & Miller, W. E. (1954). The voter decides. Evanston: Row, Pererson & Co.Google Scholar
  12. Cancela, J., & Geys, B. (2016). Explaining voter turnout: A meta-analysis of national and subnational elections. Electoral Studies, 42(2), 264–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Cassel, C. A. (2003). Overreporting and electoral participation research. American Politics Research, 31(1), 81–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Cox, G. W., & Munger, M. C. (1989). Closeness, expenditures, and turnout in the 1982 us house elections. The American Political Science Review, 83, 217–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
  16. Fauvelle-Aymar, C., & François, A. (2006). The impact of closeness on turnout: An unambiguous empirical relation based on a study of a two-round ballot. Public Choice, 127(3–4), 461–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Fiorina, M. P. (1976). The voting decision: Instrumental and expressive aspects. Journal of Politics, 38(2), 390–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Frey, B. S., & Jegen, R. (2001). Motivation crowding theory. Journal of Economic Surveys, 15(5), 589–611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  19. Frohlich, N., Oppenheimer, J. A., Smith, J., & Young, O. R. (1978). A test of downsian voter rationality: 1964 presidential voting. The American Political Science Review, 72, 178–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Fullerton, A. S., Dixon, J. C., & Borch, C. (2007). Bringing registration into models of vote overreporting. Public Opinion Quarterly, 71(4), 649–660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Galais, C., & Blais, A. (2016a). Beyond rationalization: Voting out of duty or expressing duty after voting? International Political Science Review, 37(2), 213–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  22. Galais, C., & Blais, A. (2016b). Do people feel more of a duty to vote in some elections? West European Politics, 39(4), 755–777.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Gerber, A. S., Green, D. P., & Larimer, C. W. (2008). Social pressure and voter turnout: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment. American Political Science Review, 102(01), 33–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Geys, B. (2006). Explaining voter turnout: A review of aggregate-level research. Electoral Studies, 25(4), 637–663.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Goette, L., Stutzer, A., & Frey, B. M. (2010). Prosocial motivation and blood donations: A survey of the empirical literature. Transfusion Medicine and Hemotherapy, 37(3), 149–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Hillman, A. L. (2010). Expressive behavior in economics and politics. European Journal of Political Economy, 26(4), 403–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Holtgraves, T. (2004). Social desirability and self-reports: Testing models of socially desirable responding. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(2), 161–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Jones, P., & Hudson, J. (2000). Civic duty and expressive voting: Is virtue its own reward? Kyklos, 53(1), 3–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Kamenica, E. (2012). Behavioral economics and psychology of incentives. Annual Review of Economics, 4(1), 427–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Kamenica, E., & Brad, L. E. (2014). Voters, dictators, and peons: Expressive voting and pivotality. Public Choice, 159(1–2), 159–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Kessel, R. (1974). Transfused blood, serum hepatitis, and the coase theorem. Journal of Law and Economics, 17(2), 265–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  32. Loewen, P. J., & Dawes, C. T. (2012). The heritability of duty and voter turnout. Political Psychology, 33(3), 363–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Mueller, D. C. (2003). Public choice III. Cambridge, MA: CUP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  34. Presser, S. (1984). Is inaccuracy on factual survey items item-specific or respondent-specific? Public Opinion Quarterly, 48(1B), 344–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Riker, W. H., & Ordeshook, P. C. (1968). A theory of the calculus of voting. American Political Science Review, 62(01), 25–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Schwartz, T. (1987). Your vote counts on account of the way it is counted: An institutional solution to the paradox of not voting. Public Choice, 54(2), 101–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. Silver, B. D., Anderson, B. A., & Abramson, P. R. (1986). Who overreports voting? The American Political Science Review, 80(2), 613–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Silver, M. (1973). A demand analysis of voting costs and voting participation. Social Science Research, 2(2), 111–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Stocké, V., & Stark, T. (2007). Political involvement and memory failure as interdependent determinants of vote overreporting. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21(2), 239–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Tullock, G. (1968). Toward a mathematics of politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
  41. White, H. (1980). A heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimator and a direct test for heteroskedasticity. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 48, 817–838.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.LEM (UMR 9221)University of LilleVilleneuve d′AscqFrance
  2. 2.KEDGE Business SchoolTalenceFrance
  3. 3.LIEPP, Sciences PoParisFrance

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options