SECOND ORDER ELECTIONS ARE THE FIRST TO GO Can corruption explain why second order elections have lower voter turnout?

Abstract

This thesis investigates corruption as an explainer for the difference in voter turnout between the European Parliament elections and national parliament elections. Previous research looks at how corruption affects the turnout of different elections but doesn’t consider the differences in voter turnout between elections in the same system. This master’s contribution to the literature is a new approach to corruption and voter turnout that combines the voter turnout of two elections into one which I call the national turnout preference and measures how much higher voter turnout is in the national election compared to the European Parliament election. Understanding the effects of corruption on the difference in voter turnout between different elections in the same system will allow us to understand the effects of corruption on second order elections generally, and more specifically it will allow us to further our understanding of democratic participation in the EU and why the European Parliament elections have a lower voter turnout than national parliament elections across almost all EU regions. That the European Parliament is less important than other elections is one of the major challenges facing the EU, making up a part of the EU’s democratic deficit. In order to provide a solution to the deficit we need to understand its many facets. This study investigates one such facet. When an election is less important than others in the same system it is called second order and suffers from lower voter turnout. This master’s thesis finds that voter turnout in European Parliament elections are disproportionately decreased by corruption compared to national parliament elections which indicates that corruption disproportionately affects second order elections. This research is valuable because it tells us that more attention and resources need to be allocated to second-order elections in high corruption contexts to make up for the damaging effect that corruption has on voter turnout. Additionally, the results suggest that corruption, as if it wasn’t enough of a problem, can be more damaging to democracies than previously thought because of the disproportionate effect on the less studied second-order elections. We now also know that we need to deal with corruption, or its consequences, in order to increase voter turnout in corrupt contexts and sustain the democratic legitimacy of the institutions whose elections are second order.