Valdeltagandet i EP-valet har historiskt sett varit betydligt lägre än valdeltagandet vid nationella val, både för medborgare i Europeiska unionen som hos de svenska medborgarna. I denna undersökning tittar vi närmare på de faktorer som potentiellt påverkar huruvida man deltar eller ej. Från den tidigare forskningen hämtar vi förklaringar som kön, ålder, utbildning etc och applicerar dessa på valdeltagandet. Vi ämnar undersöka i vilken utsträckning samma individer deltar i riksdagsvalet och EP-valet, samt att undersöka vilka faktorer, om några, som påverkar benägenheten hos individer att delta i riksdagsvalet och EP-valet. Vi undersöker om det är samma eller olika faktorer som påverkar deras deltagande i dessa val. Vi använder data inhämtat från Europaparlamentsvalundersökningen 2019 som genomfördes i samarbete mellan Statsvetenskapliga institutionen vid Göteborgs universitet och Statistiska centralbyrån (SCB) och med hjälp av en korstabell och logistisk regression kommer vi bland annat fram till att det finns ett statistiskt signifikant samband mellan utbildning och politisk kunskap och deltagande i EP-valet, vilket inte finns i riksdagsvalet. Vi ser även att det finns ett statistiskt signifikant samband mellan kön och deltagande i riksdagsvalet vilket inte finns i EP-valet. Faktorerna inkomst, politisk diskussion och konsumtion av politiska nyheter har ett starkare samband och påverkan i riksdagsvalet än vad det har i EP-valet. Medan politiskt intresse har ett starkare samband och påverkan i EP-valet än i riksdagsvalet. / The voter turnout in the elections to the European Parliament have historically been low among the citizens in the European Union, including Sweden. In this study, our aim is to further investigate which factors affect voter turnout. From the previous research, we derive explanations such as gender, age, education, etc. and apply these to voter turnout. We intend to investigate to what extent the same individuals participate in the parliamentary elections and the European Parliament elections, as well as to investigate which factors, if any, influence the propensity of individuals to participate in the parliamentary elections and the EP elections. We are interested in investigating whether similar or different factors influence their participation in these elections. We use data obtained from the European Parliament election survey 2019, which was carried out in collaboration between the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg and Statistics Sweden and by using a cross table and logistic regression, we conclude that there is a statistically significant relationship between education and political knowledge and participation in the EP election, which is not found in the parliamentary election. Additionally we discover that there is a statistically significant relationship between gender and participation in the parliamentary election, which is not found in the EP election. The factors income, political discussion and consumption of political news have a stronger connection and influence in the parliamentary elections compared to the EP elections. Conversely, political interest demonstrates a stronger association and influence in the EP election than in the parliamentary election

Essay I (with Mattias Öhman): Fluoridation of the drinking water is a public policy whose aim is to improve dental health. Although the evidence is clear that fluoride is good for dental health, concerns have been raised regarding potential negative effects on cognitive development. We study the effects of fluoride exposure through the drinking water in early life on cognitive and non-cognitive ability, education and labor market outcomes in a large-scale setting. We use a rich Swedish register dataset for the cohorts born 1985-1992, together with drinking water fluoride data. To estimate the effect we exploit intra-municipality variation of fluoride, stemming from an exogenous variation in the bedrock. First, we investigate and confirm the long-established positive relationship between fluoride and dental health. Second, we find precisely estimated zero effects on cognitive ability, non-cognitive ability and education. We do not find any evidence that fluoride levels below 1.5 mg/l have negative effects. Third, we find evidence that fluoride improves labor market outcome later in life, which indicates that good dental health is a positive factor on the labor market. / Essay II: Motivated by the intense public debate in the United States regarding politicians’ backgrounds, I investigate the effects of electing a candidate with earlier experience from elective office to the House of Representatives. The U.S. two-party-system with single-member election districts enables me to estimate the causal effect in a RD design where the outcomes are measured at the election district level. I find some indications that candidates with earlier elective experience are more likely to be members of important congressional committees. I also find some indications that directed federal spending (pork barrel spending) is higher in those districts were the elected representative had earlier elective experience prior of being elected to the House, but the effect manifests itself some years after the election. In contrast, I find no robust or statistically significant effects for personal income per capita or unemployment rate in the home district. / Essay III: This paper uses Swedish and Finnish municipal data to investigate the effect of changes in voter turnout on the tax rate, public spending and vote-shares. A reform in Sweden in 1970, which overall lowered the cost of voting, is applied as an instrument for voter turnout in local elections. The reform increased voter turnout in Sweden. The higher voter turnout resulted in higher municipal taxes and greater per capita local public spending. There are also indications that higher turnout decreased the vote share for right-wing parties. I use an individual survey data set to conclude that it was in particular low income earners that began to vote to a greater extent after the reform. / Essay IV (with Lovisa Persson): In a theoretical model where voters and politicians have different preferences for how much to spend on basic welfare services contra reception services for asylum seekers, we conclude that established politicians that are challenged by right-wing populists will implement a policy with no spending on asylum seekers if the cost is high enough. Additionally, adjustment to right-wing populist policy is more likely when the economy is in a recession. Voters differ in their level of private consumption in such a way that lower private consumption implies higher demand for basic welfare services at the expense of reception of asylum seekers, and thus stronger disposition to support right-wing populist policies. We propose that this within-budget-distributional conflict can arise as an electorally decisive conflict dimension if parties have converged to the median voter on the size-of-government issue.

Ratification of the 26th Amendment in 1971 was a watershed event in America's long and often tumultuous electoral reform journey. The persistently low voter turnout of newly enfranchised 18-20 year-olds since then not only is troubling from a democratic perspective but also is puzzling in light of the rapidly rising educational attainment of this age group during the same period. In this investigation, I develop an original theoretical frame by which to examine relationships between the 1972-2006 voter turnout patterns of 26th Amendment eligible voters and a large complement of educational and non-educational influences manifested during the end of high school and the years immediately following high school. Drawing upon multiple data sources, including a greatly under-utilized national survey series that is maintained under National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) auspices, I reaffirm the overall strength of educational attainment as a young adult voter turnout predictor while providing new evidence that attainment effects are attenuated by other educational and non-educational circumstances and traits. My results, which also reveal the dynamism of these influences in predicting young adult voter turnout, are suggestive of five areas in which the 26th Amendment can serve as a teachable moment to strengthen the democratic education mission through: (1) expanded post-high school enrollment opportunities; (2) energized high school citizenship training; (3) strengthened connections between the high school literacy and civics curricula; (4) improved use of technology to deliver civically relevant messages; and (5) more aggressive voter registration efforts on high school and college campuses.

Despite analysts' predictions and assertions prior to the 2016 presidential election, the Hispanic vote did not prove decisive. Donald Trump's victory elucidates a new electoral calculus, one that will be ruled simultaneously by changing demographics and the backlash against such change. While Hispanic voters largely supported Hillary Clinton, structural and individual impediments hinder their access to the voting booth and their turnout on election day. This thesis explores the reasons why the Hispanic electorate did not prove decisive in the 2016 presidential election. It further illuminates the changing Electoral College map, in which the Midwest and the Rustbelt are determined by an older white electorate and the South and Southwest are determined by an influx of minorities and immigrants, namely the Hispanic electorate. The 2016 presidential election illustrates the demographic changes and subsequent backlash that will persist over the next decade. A growing Hispanic population and electorate will eventually alter the political calculus of national and state elections, but turnout among white voters will continue to prove decisive in the near future. White backlash and transactional voting (e.g. economic, religious) clearly clinched Trump's success in crucial swing states, ultimately securing his Electoral College win. A review of polling prior to the 2016 election, as well as case studies of economic transactional and Hispanic Trump voters, demonstrates the breakdown across party and state lines that ensured Trump's Electoral College victory, despite a large and expanding Hispanic electorate. While it will continue to grow exponentially, it is unlikely that the Hispanic electorate will prove decisive as soon as the 2020 presidential election, but it will inevitably determine national and state elections within the next decade.

Cette thèse porte sur le déclin de la participation électorale dans les dix démocraties post­communistes qui ont intégré l’Union européenne en 2004 et 2007. Ces pays ont connu la plus forte baisse de participation électorale observée en régimes démocratiques depuis la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Afin de comprendre ce phénomène, la thèse adopte une approche qui est à la fois systématique, théorisée, quantitative et comparative. Elle est structurée autour d’un nouveau schéma directeur conceptuel pour l’étude de la participation électorale au niveau agrégé. Ce cadre théorique distingue quatre types de facteurs qui affectent la participation en fonction de la nature et la temporalité de leurs effets. Le rôle de chaque type dans le déclin post­communiste est théorisé et considéré l’un après l’autre. Les sections empiriques emploient des méthodes quantitatives et une comparaison à l’intérieur des dix pays mais également avec d’autres démocraties établies ou nouvelles. Elles analysent plusieurs bases de données originales, dont la principale contient pratiquement toutes les élections législatives intervenues dans le monde démocratique entre 1939 et 2010. Les résultats remettent en cause l’idée selon laquelle le déclin participatif est principalement dû à un désenchantement démocratique. Ils montrent qu’au moins six autres facteurs causaux y contribuent. Ils tiennent aux contextes de démocratisation, aux changements institutionnels et aux évolutions dans la composition des électorats. La magnitude exceptionnelle du phénomène étudié est, ainsi, le produit d’une multiplicité des causes. / This dissertation studies the puzzling decline of voter turnout in ten post­communist democracies that joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007. These countries experienced the most spectacular erosion of electoral participation in democratic regimes since World War Two. To solve this puzzle, my dissertation follows a systematic, theory­based, quantitative and comparative approach. It is structured by a newly­conceived master conceptual scheme for the study of aggregated voter turnout. This theoretical framework distinguishes between four types of turnout drivers based on the nature and temporality of their effects. The role of each type in the post­communist decline is theorised and considered in turn. The empirical sections employ several types of quantitative methods and intra­ but also inter­regional comparisons with established and other new democracies. They draw on several original datasets, the most important of which comprises the quasi­totality of democratic legislative elections held around the globe between 1939 and 2010. The results question the conventional wisdom that the post­communist turnout decline is mostly due to citizens’ dissatisfaction. Instead, they show that it is driven by no less than six other causes that relate to democratisation, institutional change and shifts in the composition of the electorate. It is the multiplicity of causal factors that explains the unparalleled startling magnitude by which voting rates decreased in the ten countries at hand. Besides solving the central puzzle, this dissertation yields a number of new middle­range theories and insights that pertain to electoral participation in both new and established democracies.

Measures of American inequality offer sparse coverage of subnational units and rely on surveys of self-reported family and household incomes. This dissertation details the development of new inequality datasets at the county, state, and national levels from alternative lenses: sector wages; industry earnings; and average incomes. Sector and industry data are particularly rich, detailed, consistent, and reliable. These new metrics from underutilized data sources contribute to debates over the lived effects of inequality. American economic inequality concentrates in some places more than others, arising from different causes. This dissertation considers ecological associations between inequality, voter turnout, and election outcomes at the state and county levels and multilevel models of individual participation and candidate preference, with voters nested within their state contexts. Aggregate voter turnout has been lower in states with higher levels of income inequality for the last several presidential elections, though this relationship did not strengthen with rising inequality. Likewise, some inequalities have strong associations with state- and county-level presidential election outcomes in certain years, but the patterns are irregular. Multilevel models of voters in states do not indicate a strong relationship among inequality per se and individual behavior. / text

Scholars have proposed the idea that trust influences individuals’ choice to vote or abstain. However, there is uncertainty about the composition of trust and its effect on voter turnout. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between interpersonal and institutional trust and voter turnout in South Africa. Examining presently unused data for South Africa from the World Values Survey 2006 through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the argument is advanced that trust is a multidimensional concept that may be modelled by multivariate measurements. A logistic factor score regression model shows that a one-unit increase of trust in public institutions on average increases the odds of voting by 9 % whereas trust in private institutions and interpersonal trust have no significant effects. The results imply that trust- strengthening actions may be of interest to South African public institutions to increase electoral participation and legitimise election outcomes.

Participation in the European Parliament Election has steadily declined since the start in 1979. In 2004 less than half (47.8%) of the voting-age population of the European Union used their right to vote. This has actualized questions asking if the European Parliament is a good representation of the European citizens. The paradigm when it comes to explaining the electoral turnout in the European Parliament Election is the second-order theory. Though the theory explains the low voter participation, it does not explain why the European Parliament Election has become a second-order election. Thus, in this thesis will search for the underlying variable explaining why the European Parliament Election is a second-order election. Through our research we find that distances are important in the European Union, and they create centres and peripheries within the European Union. By looking at Rokkan and Urwin‟s horizontal and vertical types of peripheries, where the vertical type consists of Rokkan and Urwin‟s three domain of social life, our research concludes that centre-periphery structures within the European Union are the underlying variable, explaining why the European Parliament Election is a second-order election.

States merge local governments to achieve economies of scale. Little is known to which extent mergers of county-sized local governments reduce expenditures, and influence political outcomes. I use the synthetic control method to identify the effect of mergers of large local governments in Germany (districts) on public expenditures. In 2008, the German state of Saxony reduced the number of districts from 22 to 10. Average district population increased substantially from 113,000 to 290,000 inhabitants. I construct a synthetic counterfactual from states that did not merge districts for years. The results do neither show reductions in total expenditures, nor in expenditures for administration, education, and social care. There seems to be no scale effects in jurisdictions of more than 100,000 inhabitants. By contrast, I find evidence that mergers decreased the number of candidates and voter turnout in district elections while vote shares for populist right-wing parties increased.

The thesis deals with the personal stability of the Czech Parliament in the period after 1993 when the Czech Republic was founded. The author assumes a better orientation in both organizational and procedural issues of reelected representatives. The aim of this thesis is to explore what factors have influenced the rate of reelection of MPs and Senators and how these are subsequently reflected in the personal structure of both Chambers. Using a quantitative analysis, the author tests the hypothesis that the rate of reelection will be higher in the Senate due to the majority voting system which is more personalized than the proportional one used in the Chamber of Deputies. The hypothesis was tested in the Committees analogically. Furthermore, the author tests if the current level of voter turnout influences the final election results and the rate of reelection, respectively. The text is divided into three chapters. The thesis is composed of a common structure heading from a theoretical background towards empirical analysis.