Falling levels of electoral participation in established democracies have raised serious concern. In a recent paper published in European Psychologist, researchers investigate the role of basic personal values in identifying those who do not vote. They argue that voting in specific elections offers non-voters less opportunity to affirm, protect, or attain the values they cherish than it offers to voters. They hypothesize that people who do not vote attribute less importance than voters to those values that the contesting parties actually endorse (actual value congruence) and that the parties are perceived as endorsing (perceived value congruence). Study 1 (Italian national elections of 2001, n = 1,782) confirmed the hypothesis for actual congruence between own and coalition endorsed values. Study 2 (2008 elections, n = 543) confirmed the hypothesis both for actual and perceived value congruence. In both studies, value congruence explained substantial variance in voter abstention beyond the effects of socio-demographic variables.
Post a comment
Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.
Your Information
(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)
Comments