The Decline of Political Participation: An Empirical Overview of Voter Turnout and Party Membership

Abstract

This chapter considers two important indicators of citizen participation in Europe and Canada: voter turnout and party membership. These two indicators capture different dimensions of citizen involvement in politics, and both register significant declines on both sides of the Atlantic. Voter turnout taps broad citizen involvement in political decision making, as it is a relatively ‘easy’ form of participation that is accessible to the entire adult citizenry of a country. Party membership taps a higher level of citizen involvement, generally involving the more politically attentive and mobilized strata of the population. By examining these two levels of political involvement, using a broad range of empirical data from the 1970s until the present period, we gain a picture of the nature of the participation gap in advanced Western democracies. This chapter will also examine the major explanations offered in the literature for both trends, as well as the interrelationship between them. The analysis draws on data from the 27 current European Union (EU) member states, the three main non-EU western European states (Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland), the EU itself (its European Parliament elections through 2004), and Canada. There are clear variations across these countries and, at least in terms of voter turnout, these variations have increased in recent times.