Abstract
Is the decline in voter turnout an indicator of a worse health of a representative democracy? We build a simple probabilistic-voting model with endogenous turnout to address this question. We find that a lower turnout caused by a higher cost of voting implies higher political rents. Contrarily, a lower turnout caused by a higher ideological mobility of voters or by a lower expressive benefit of voting implies lower political rents. If voters have a civic-duty motive to vote that depends on the level of rents, multiple equilibria (a high-rents low-turnout and a low-rents high-turnout) arise.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 528-552 |
Number of pages | 25 |
Journal | Journal of Public Economic Theory |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |