Across the Latin American region, invalid votes regularly âwinâ over candidates from smaller political parties. This dissertation assesses how individual and contextual factors affect individuals' decision to assume the costs of turning out to vote but then choose not to select a candidate, and to what political effect. First, I find that most invalid votes in Latin American presidential elections are cast as a protest signal that reflects disappointment with specific policy outcomes or with a particular slate of candidate offerings rather than with democracy itself. Second, I argue and show that elite polarization, the number of candidates competing, and flux in the partisan options shape invalid voting by changing the ease with which citizens navigate politics, as well as their perceptions of the representativeness of the political space. Third, I find that efforts to mobilize the invalid vote have occurred in more than twenty Latin American presidential elections since 1980, mostly as an expression of discontent with candidate options, or with corruption in politics, although evidence of accompanying increases in government corruption is limited. Finally, I show that small ideological and radical parties respond to historical rates of invalid voting in making strategic decisions about where to enter competition in Peru.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-11202016-171641 |
| Date | 12 December 2016 |
| Creators | Cohen, Mollie Jane |
| Contributors | Elizabeth J. Zechmeister, Jonathan Hiskey, Mitchell A. Seligson, Zeynep Somer-Topcu, Timothy J. Power |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-11202016-171641/ |
| Rights | restrictsix, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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