Few studies have investigated the impact of language policies on voter turnout. India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world, where hundreds of languages are spoken by the population, but only certain languages are granted official status. At the subnational level, all States have the right to decide upon their own official languages. Across States, there is great variation in terms of how large shares of their populations that speak (one of) the official language(s). Using aggregate level data from the Election Commission and the 2011 Census, this quantitative study of 624 Indian districts investigates the relationship between voter turnout in State elections (dependent variable) and the share of the population speaking the official State language (independent variable) through a multivariate OLS regression analysis. The preliminary results indicate a positive relationship between voter turnout and more inclusive language policies, implying that more people vote in districts where more people speak the official State language.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-462676 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Kjellén, Erland |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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