The return of silent elections: democracy, uncontested elections and citizen participation in Czechia

ABSTRACT Even when robust competition becomes institutionalized for national elections in democracies, this is no guarantee that elections to subnational governments will be equally competitive there. This article documents a recent disconcerting worldwide return of “silent elections'' - electoral races in which citizens are unable to choose among political alternatives and their vote makes no difference to the outcome. Holding such uncontested elections clashes simultaneously with the dual dimensions of democratic government: contestation and inclusiveness. Eliminating any contestation whatsoever not only skews democratic representation but is also expected to have a devastating effect on citizen participation. Leveraging a large dataset of 6,254 Czech municipalities in seven municipal elections between 1998 and 2022, the main contributions of this article are assessing the extent of the problem of silent elections over time, understanding its root causes, estimating its effect on turnout and exploring what mechanisms drive the nexus between uncontested elections and voter participation. The steady rise in the proportion of uncontested races (28% of all municipalities by 2022) as well as their staggering and increasing estimated effect on turnout (17 points relative to contested) point towards a thus far unnoticed deficit of local democracy.