In this BRRIDGE Lecture Series Professor Filip Kostelka (EUI) will present his paper titled Understanding Voter Fatigue: Election Frequency and Electoral Abstention Approval

Abstract: In the past half-century, liberal democracies have considerably expanded the scope for citizen participation, calling on their citizens to vote in a growing number of popular votes. This presentation introduces a multi-year research agenda that investigates the impact of rising election frequency on electoral participation. After briefly reviewing earlier findings, it introduces a new paper that explores the sources of voter fatigue. The study hypothesizes frequent elections make electoral abstention more acceptable to citizens. The main hypothesis is tested via an original pre-registered survey experiment fielded in five countries with a total sample size of 12,221 respondents. The results offer pioneering evidence on the psychological effects of election frequency. They confirm that high election frequency increases the social acceptability of electoral abstention and that this effect is proportional to the number of past elections. It can be equally observed among all major social groups, including politically engaged citizens and those who believe that voting is a civic duty. These findings hold major implications for our understanding of voter turnout, democratic citizenship, and democratic institutional engineering.

Funding
This event has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101079219