Local Voting Rights for Non-Nationals: Experience in Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium

Abstract

This article explores the impact of local voting rights accorded to non-nationals in Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium. The first two countries have some three-decade experience with such voting rights; while in Belgium, the expanded franchise was first exercised in 2006. Drawing on qualitative research carried out in the three countries, the author reviews the rationale for the reforms, the parameters of the franchise and trends in migrants’ democratic involvement, including their election to municipal and other representative bodies. In Sweden and the Netherlands, non-nationals’ turnout in local elections is generally lower than that for citizens and has tended to decline over time (although there are exceptions, such as the 2006 Dutch local elections in Amsterdam and Rotterdam). Non-nationals’ participation in Belgium’s two commune elections since the law was changed was low (and dropped slightly between 2006 and 2012). Introducing non-national local voting rights may be making a modest contribution to migrant political integration (including through the election of representatives from a migration background) in the three countries, but other factors, including political parties’ recruitment strategies and minority community mobilization, are probably more important. As for lessons that could be applied elsewhere, the author is critical of rules that create obstacles to non-nationals’ electoral participation and thus seem to contradict what should be seen as a gesture of inclusion.