What is it about?
This paper reports an analysis of who votes in eight East Asian countries, based on self-reported turnout data collected by the Asian Barometer Surveys for over 10,105 voting-aged individuals. The major findings are that institutional variables appear to have much stronger effects than individual-level variables on the likelihood of voting in these democracies, which is consistent with some other comparative analyses of turnout in other geopolitical regions.
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Why is it important?
Our findings show that age is an important factor for voter turnout in East Asia. This adds further confirmation of the worldwide tendency of young people to abstain from voting. Since young people are generally considered ‘future democrats’ this is a worrying finding which points to the continuing need for research that aims to understand the reasons for political disengagement among young citizens and what steps might be taken to counteract it.
Perspectives
It would be advantageous to compare this analysis of the East Asian region with other global regions (i.e. Africa, Latin America, post-Communist states) in order to fully understand electoral behaviour and voting at the individual level. This would enable us to establish how far the models of electoral participation that are drawn from the experience of voters in established democracies (i.e. Western Europe and the USA) are generally useful in new or emerging democracies.
Elvis Bisong Tambe
University of Sussex
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Who Votes in East Asia?, European Journal of East Asian Studies, January 2016, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15700615-01502006.
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