10 - Closing Avenues of Costly Action: Reform to Primary Elections

Summary

In this chapter I consider the consequences for political participation where an institutional change closes one avenue of political action. Since the early 1990s, multiple American states have ended closed party primary elections, rules that restricted participation to voters previously registered with the political party. I show that if participating in closed primaries is costly to voters, reforms to liberalize access to primary elections have different empirical implications for existing theories of political action than for intensity theory. I present a difference-in-differences research design and data to evaluate the different implications.