Electoral integrity and voting: The interplay of individual perceptions and contextual conditions (chapter in edited volume)
Published in: Informationsflüsse, Wahlen und Demokratie, edited by Thorsten Faas, Sascha Huber, Mona Krewel, and Sigrid Rossteutscher, 2023.
Elections and citizens´ participation in the electoral process are at the heart of representative democracy. In the absence of free and fair elections, citizens lack a meaningful opportunity to take part in the selection of political representatives and, hence, are deprived of an effective means to influence the direction of public policies in their country. Elections and voting thus fulfill an important legitimizing function that is indispensable for the long-term viability of modern democratic systems. Despite its overall relevance for democratic well-being, the nexus between the integrity of the electoral process and citizens´ inclination to participate in elections has been largely overlooked in extant research. Against this background, our study aims to shed new light on how the integrity of the electoral process and individual perceptions about the proper conduct of elections are related to citizens´ voting behavior. In doing so, the study contributes to the extant literature in at least three distinct ways: First, it provides a more comprehensive analysis than previous research by simultaneously considering both individual-level electoral integrity perceptions and countries´ actual, contextual-level electoral integrity as antecedents of individual citizens´ participation in elections. Second, it highlights the micro-macro conditionality of electoral integrity by arguing that the relevance of individual-level electoral integrity perceptions as determinants of citizens´ voting behavior depends on the actual, contextual-level electoral integrity of a country. Third, it offers a more encompassing empirical test than previous studies by analyzing information from 130,000 individual survey respondents from WVS and EVS, covering a total of 75 countries over a period of eleven years (2011-2021). Results show that individual perceptions concerning the proper conduct of elections constitute a decisive factor in citizens´ voting calculus. Second, there is no direct effect of a country´s contextual-level electoral integrity on individual voting behavior. Third, the impact of individual-level electoral integrity perceptions on citizens´ propensity to vote is conditioned by the actual electoral integrity across contexts. Specifically, individual perceptions are more relevant for citizens´ voting calculus when the actual quality of the electoral process is high.
Recommended citation: Schnaudt, Christian and Wolf, Christof (2023). "Electoral integrity and voting: The interplay of individual perceptions and contextual conditions." In Thorsten Faas, Sascha Huber, Mona Krewel, and Sigrid Rossteutscher (eds), Informationsflüsse, Wahlen und Demokratie. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 485-512. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783748915553-485