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Democracy and Voting: A Response to Lisa Hill

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2010

Annabelle Lever
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Notes and Comments
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 925 - 929
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 For a debate on compulsory voting in Politics, see Lacroix, Justine, ‘A Liberal Defence of Compulsory Voting’, Politics, 27:3 (2007), 190–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lever, A., ‘ “A Liberal Defence of Compulsory Voting”: Some Reasons for Scepticism’, Politics, 28 (2008), 61–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Engelen, Bart, ‘Why Liberals Can Favour Compulsory Attendance’, Politics, 29 (3), 2009, 218–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lever, A., ‘Liberalism, Democracy and the Ethics of Voting’, Politics, 29 (3) 2009, 223–227CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Skocpol, Theda, ‘Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research’, in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 3–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Berger, Suzanne, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Sabel, Charles F., Work and Politics: The Division of Labour in Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, and Cohen, Joshua, Philosophy, Politics, Democracy: Selected Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. See also Fung, Archon, Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

4 Sometimes, religion makes one politically apathetic; sometimes, it arouses one to indignant action against both religious and political authorities, as we see with the recent furore over sex abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States, Ireland, Germany and Italy. Sometimes, being a woman means that electoral politics seems irrelevant, or a man’s business, and at others, the fact that it is dominated by men seems a decisive reason for action. The best example of the latter might be Emily’s List, and the fury, rather than resignation, generated by the treatment of Anita Hill during the televised hearings of the Judiciary Committee of the US Senate on Clarence Thomas.

5 Lever, Annabelle, ‘Compulsory Voting: A Critical Perspective’, British Journal of Political Science, 40 (2010), 897–915, p. 901CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Hill, Lisa, ‘On the Justifiability of Compulsory Voting: Reply to Lever’, British Journal of Political Science, 40 (2010), 917–923CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See Ballinger, Chris, ‘Compulsory Turnout: A Solution to Disengagement?’ in Democracy and Voting (London: The Hansard Society’s Democracy 7 Series, 2006), pp. 5–22Google Scholar; Jan Rovensky, ‘Voting: A Citizen’s Right, or Duty? The Case against Compulsory Voting’ (doctoral dissertation, Faculty of Political Science, LUISS Guido Carli, Rome, 2007–08). Hill seems blithely indifferent to the problems generated by trying to institutionalize compulsory voting fairly. In Australia, the grounds on which conscientious exemptions will be granted are kept secret, presumably so that people do not use them to get round either paying a fine for not voting or being forced to vote. But that means that how exemptions are granted could be quite arbitrary, unfair and decided in ways that are paternalistic or authoritarian rather than democratic. Moreover, so I have been told by several Australians, middle-class people who do not want to vote simply pay the fine for not voting, which they treat as an annoying, if small, tax. In those circumstances, it is premature to claim that compulsory voting promotes equality and/or legitimacy. For Belgium’s recent announcement that it will no longer enforce its laws on compulsory voting, see http://www.nrc.nl/buitenland/article2263399.ece/Belgie_vervolgt_niet-stemmers_niet_meer–. I owe the link to Dr Alex Voorhoeve, who, unlike me, can read Dutch.

8 Proportional representation sometimes means that some small political parties are almost always part of a governing coalition, or that politics really is a matter of dividing the spoils between winners and losers. Moreover, as Bingham Powell has emphasized, pre-election coalitions rarely win outright majorities, and nor do single parties in majoritarian party systems. Far from majority government being the norm, then, Powell notes ‘the persistent refusal of voters to deliver majority support for a single party or even a pre-election coalition’. This makes it likely that people’s beliefs about the legitimacy of their government are more contingent and variable than we sometimes suppose. See Bingham Powell, George, Elections as Instruments of Democracy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 129Google Scholar. See also Ringen, Stein, ‘The Message from Norway’, The Times Literary Supplement, 13 February 2004Google Scholar.

9 Hill, , ‘On the Justifiability of Compulsory Voting’, final sectionGoogle Scholar.

10 Of course, a great deal turns on how we specify the relevant counter-factuals, and that is why reasonable disagreement on the matter is so common, and why the issue is not simply empirical.

11 Hill, , ‘On the Justifiability of Compulsory Voting’, final sectionGoogle Scholar.

12 Rose, Jacqueline, ‘A Piece of White Silk’, London Review of Books, 31, no. 21 (5 November 2009), pp. 5–8Google Scholar.

13 I discuss the difficulty with the alleged similarities between compulsory voting, jury service and military service in ‘Is Compulsory Voting Justified?’ Public Reason, 1 (2009), 57–74, at pp. 70–1. This can be found online without charge at http://www.publicreason/home.

14 By quality, I mean the informational basis and motivations on which people vote, the range of choices that they face, and the character or ethos with which the election is fought. Quantity – understood either as number of elections, or numbers who vote in an election – is important only so far as it tells us something about the quality of the election: people’s ability to influence political outcomes via their choice of representatives. In the absence of reasons to think that electoral choices are sufficiently wide, that the electorate is adequately informed, that politicians are reasonably truthful and honest, it is hard to see why increases of quantity should be desirable.

15 The Feminist movements in the United States and Britain suggest that this is possible. Until women came to see themselves as political agents, even as leaders, rather than followers or helpers, many of them were not particularly interested in politics, or particularly keen to vote. It is probably not unusual that people who feel that they are political outsiders come to electoral politics as a consequence of politicization in some other area or field (union politics, welfare politics, sexual politics etc.) rather than the other way round. If that is so, then Lijphart may be mistaken to believe that voting is the ‘low cost’ route into democratic politics for the poor or marginalized, as compared to other forms of politics which may be more costly in terms of time or money. Cost being relative to benefit, it is possible that the latter are actually ‘cheaper’ than the former. Trying to cast an effective vote requires time and attention, and may be quite dull and frustrating. By contrast, less formal types of political activity may offer companionship, fun and a sense of self-worth and agency, whether or not they prove successful in instrumental terms.