Electoral Revolutions: Towards a General Theory of Rapid Changes in Voter Turnout

Abstract

This article offers a novel theorisation of voter turnout by looking at electoral revolutions, i.e. large rapid changes in electoral participation. Since voting is conceptualised as a habit, turnout is generally seen as static, with its small and large variations dismissed as context-dependent. Instead, this work’s main hypothesis is that dramatic voter turnout variations follow rapid transformations in the credibility and competition of national politics. These transformations are reconstructed by following the national political process in the years preceding the electoral revolutions that took place in France (1967), Britain (2001), Honduras (2013) and Costa Rica (1998). Moving from a capacious framework, this article’s parsimonious theory shows how electoral revolutions follow the strengthening/weakening of oppositions, increasing/decreasing institutional credibility and growing/waning party system differentiation.