Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T05:20:14.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Voting Rights and Immigrant Incorporation: Evidence from Norway

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2018

Jeremy Ferwerda ,
Henning Finseraas  and
Johannes Bergh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do political rights influence immigrant integration? This study demonstrates that the timing of voting rights extension plays a key role in fostering political incorporation. In Norway, non-citizens are eligible to vote in local elections after three years of residency. Drawing on individual-level registry data and a regression discontinuity design, the study leverages the exogenous timing of elections relative to the start of residency periods to identify the effect of early access to political institutions. It finds that immigrants who received early access were more likely to participate in subsequent electoral contests, with the strongest effects visible among immigrants from dictatorships and weak democracies. It also observes evidence consistent with spillover effects for other aspects of political engagement. These findings suggest that early access to voting rights influences subsequent trajectories of immigrant incorporation, in particular among immigrants from less developed states who may otherwise face high integration barriers.

Keywords

immigrationintegrationturnoutregression discontinuity
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , April 2020 , pp. 713 - 730
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Dartmouth College, Department of Government (email: [email protected]); Institute for Social Research, Norway (emails: [email protected], [email protected]). We would like to thank Dag Arne Christensen, Jens Hainmueller, Axel West Pedersen, Victoria Shineman, Øyvind Skorge, and participants at the 6th annual workshop on Comparative Approaches to Immigration, Ethnicity, and Integration, Yale, June 2016, the 6th annual general conference of the European Political Science Association in Brussels, June 2016, and the Political Behavior workshop in Toronto, November 2016 for useful comments and suggestions. Grant numbers 227072 (Research Council of Norway) and 236786 (Research Council of Norway) are acknowledged. Parts of the data employed in the analysis are drawn from Norwegian administrative registers and cannot be shared publicly for legal reasons. Researchers can gain access to the data by submitting a written application to Statistics Norway. More information is available at https://www.ssb.no/en/omssb/tjenester-og-verktoy/data-til-forskning. Data replication sets are available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/UMKD0K and online appendices at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000643

References

Bedolla, Lisa Garcia, and Michelson, Melissa R.. 2012. Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate Through Get-Out-The-Vote Campaigns. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergh, Johannes, Christensen, Dag Arne, and Matland, Richard E.. 2016. Vem blir medborgare och vad hander sen? [Who Becomes Citizens and What Happens Next?]. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Bergh, Johannes, and Ødegaard, Guro. 2013. Ungdomsvalget 2011. Norsk statsviten-skapelig tidsskrift 29 (1):30–50.Google Scholar
Bevelander, Pieter, and Pendakur, Ravi. 2009. Social Capital and Voting Participation of Immigrants and Minorities in Canada. Ethnic and Racial Studies 32 (8):1406–1430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bevelander, Pieter, and Pendakur, Ravi. 2011. Voting and Social Inclusion in Sweden. International Migration 49 (4):67–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhatti, Yosef, Hansen, Kasper M., and Wass, Hanna. 2016. First-Time Boost Beats Experience: The Effect of Past Eligibility on Turnout. Electoral Studies 41:151–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, Karen, Saalfeld, Thomas, and Wüst, Andreas M.. 2011. Voter Turnout Among Immigrants and Visible Minorities in Comparative Perspective. In The Political Representation of Immigrants and Minorities: Voters, Parties and Parliaments in Liberal Democracies, edited by K. Bird, T. Saalfeld and W. Andreas. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Black, Jerome H. 1987. The Practice of Politics in Two Settings: Political Transfer-Ability Among Recent Immigrants to Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue Canadienne de Science Politique 20 (4):731–753.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boix, Carles, Miller, Michael, and Rosato, Sebastian. 2013. A Complete Data Set of Political Regimes, 1800–2007. Comparative Political Studies 46 (12):1523–1554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueker, Catherine Simpson. 2005. Political Incorporation Among Immigrants From Ten Areas of Origin: The Persistence of Source Country Effects. International Migration Review 39 (1):103–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burchardt, Tania, Le Grand, Julian, and Piachaud, David. 2002. Introduction. In Understanding Social Exclusion, edited by J. Hills, J. Le Grand and D. Piachaud, 1–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Calonico, Sebastian, Cattaneo, Matias D., and Titiunik, Rocio. 2014a. Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression-Discontinuity Designs. Econometrica 82 (6):2295–2326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calonico, S Sebastian, Cattaneo, Matias D., and Titiunik, Rocio. 2014b. Robust Data-Driven Inference in the Regression-Discontinuity Design. Stata Journal 14 (4):909–946.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cattaneo, Matias D., Jansson, Michael, and Ma, Xinwei. 2016. Simple Local Regression Distribution Estimators with an Application to Manipulation Testing. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Coppock, Alexander, and Green, Donald P.. 2016. Is Voting Habit Forming? New Evidence from Experiments and Regression Discontinuities. American Journal of Political Science 60 (4):1044–1062.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Kadt, Daniel. 2015. Voting Then, Voting Now: The Long Term Consequences of Participation in South Africa’s First Democratic Election. Working Paper. Available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/j8b2r7gp6izg00k/enfranchisement_draft2.pdf.Google Scholar
De Rooij, Eline A. 2012. Patterns of Immigrant Political Participation: Explaining Differences in Types of Political Participation Between Immigrants and the Majority Population in Western Europe. European Sociological Review 28 (4):455–481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earnest, David C. 2014. Expanding the Electorate: Comparing the Noncitizen Voting Practices of 25 Democracies. Journal of International Migration and Integration 16 (1):1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fennema, Meindert, and Tillie, Jean. 1999. Political Participation and Political Trust in Amsterdam: Civic Communities and Ethnic Networks. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 25 (4):703–726.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferwerda, Jeremy, Henning Finseraas, and Johannes Bergh. 2017. Replication Data for: Voting Rights and Immigrant Incorporation: Evidence from Norway, doi:10.7910/DVN/UMKD0K, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:uCE/L7JFc+qkMHLN1/E9pg==.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferwerda, J. 2016. Immigration and Local Redistribution. Working Paper.Google Scholar
Fuchs-Schundeln, Nicola, and Schündeln, Matthias. 2015. On the Endogeneity of Political Preferences: Evidence From Individual Experience with Democracy. Science 347 (6226):1145–1148.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gelman, Andrew, and Imbens, Guido. 2014. Why High-Order Polynomials Should Not Be Used in Regression Discontinuity Designs. Working Paper No. 20405. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzalez Ferrer, A., and Morales, L.. 2013. Do Citizenship Regimes Shape Political Incorporation? Evidence From Four European Cities. European Political Science 12 (4):455–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groenendijk, Kees. 2008. Local Voting Rights for Non-Nationals in Europe: What We Know and What We Need to Learn. Working Paper, Migration Policy Institute.Google Scholar
Hainmueller, Jens, Hangartner, Dominik, and Lawrence, Duncan. 2016. When Lives are Put On Hold: Lengthy Asylum Processes Increase Unemployment Among Refugees. Unpublished Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, Jens, Hangartner, Dominik, and Pietrantuono, Giuseppe. 2015. Naturalization Fosters the Long-Term Political Integration of Immigrants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 112 (41):12651–12656.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lally, Phillippa, Van Jaarsveld, Cornelia H. M., Potts, Henry W. W., and Wardle., Jane 2010. How Are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World. European Journal of Social Psychology 40 (6):998–1009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leal, David L. 2002. Political Participation by Latino Non-Citizens in the United States. British Journal of Political Science 32 (2):353–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meredith, Marc. 2009. Persistence in Political Participation. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 4 (3):187–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munro, Daniel. 2008. Integration Through Participation: Non-Citizen Resident Voting Rights in An Era of Globalization. Journal of International Migration and Integration 9 (1):63–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, Torsten, and Tabellini, Guido. 2006. Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 1 (2):88–126.Google Scholar
Pikkov, Deanna L. 2011. The Practice of Voting: Immigrant Turnout, The Persistence of Origin Effects, and the Nature, Formation, and Transmission of Political Habit. PhD Thesis, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Ramakrishnan, S. Karthick, and Espenshade, Thomas J.. 2001. Immigrant Incorporation and Political Participation in the United States. International Migration Review 35 (3):870–909.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruedin, Didier. 2016. The Political Participation of Immigrants. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sainsbury, Diane. 2012. Welfare States and Immigrant Rights: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skovron, Chris, and Titiunik, Rocio. 2015. A Practical Guide to Regression Discontinuity Designs in Political Science. Working Paper, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Strijbis, Oliver. 2014. Migration Background and Voting Behavior in Switzerland: A Socio-Psychological Explanation. Swiss Political Science Review 20 (4):612–631.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strömblad, Per, and Adman, Per. 2010. Political Integration Through Ethnic or Nonethnic Voluntary Associations? Political Research Quarterly 63 (4):721–730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toral, G. 2015. Franchise Reforms in the Age of Migration: Why Do Governments Grant Voting Rights to Noncitizens?CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vernby, Kåre. 2013. Inclusion and Public Policy: Evidence from Sweden’s Introduction of Noncitizen Suffrage. American Journal of Political Science 57 (1):15–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voicu, B., and Comsa, M.. 2014. Immigrants’ Participation in Voting: Exposure, Resilience, and Transferability. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40 (10):1572–1592.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voicu, Bogdan, and Serban, Monica. 2012. Immigrant Involvement in Voluntary Associations in Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38 (10):1569–1587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wass, Hanna, Blais, André, Morin-Chassé, Alexandre, and Weide, Marjukka. 2015. Engaging Immigrants? Examining the Correlates of Electoral Participation Among Voters with Migration Backgrounds. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 25 (4):407–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Stephen, Nevitte, Neil, Blais, André, Everitt, J., Fournier, P., and Gidengil, E.. 2006. Making Up for Lost Time: Immigrant Voter Turnout in Canada. Electoral Insight 8 (2):10–16.Google Scholar
White, Stephen, Nevitte, Neil, Blais, André, Gidengil, Elisabeth, and Fournier, Patrick. 2008. The Political Resocialization of Immigrants: Resistance or Lifelong Learning? Political Research Quarterly 61 (2):268–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Wendy, Tam, Leona, and Witt, Melissa Guerrero. 2005. Changing Circumstances, Disrupting Habits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88 (6):918.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: PDF

Ferwerda et al. supplementary material

Ferwerda et al. supplementary material 1

Download Ferwerda et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.2 MB
Supplementary material: Link

Ferwerda et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/UMKD0K
Link