Voting without law?(Symposium: Law, Economics, & Norms)

As now, when here's the fixed Assembly Day, And morning come, and no one in the Pnyx. There in the Agora chattering, up and down Scurrying to dodge the cord dripping red

--Aristophanes, The Acharnians(1)

INTRODUCTION

In ancient Athens, election officials corralled voters with a red-dyed rope, herding them from the marketplace to the Assembly's voting area at the nearby Pnyx.(2) Athenian officials in later years simply paid voters to attend the Assembly's In contemporary Italy, those who fail to vote face the prospect of having their names posted by the mayor on the communal notice wall and of being branded a nonvoter in official papers.(4) In (where else but?) California, a voting stub obtained after casting a ballot has entitled voters to a free half-dozen "Yum-Yum" doughnuts or a discounted spinal adjustment by a chiropractor.(5)

Carrots and sticks have been employed to increase voter turnout since the birth of democracy, in reaction to what rational choice theorists have termed "the paradox of voting":(6) given the infinitesimal chance that one's own vote could affect the outcome of most elections or the stability of the electoral system, it often appears rational to abstain from voting. The paradox facing rational choice scholars is that many people do vote in the absence of visible carrots or sticks, although not in the same numbers in comparable elections or across state or national boundaries.

Social norms may solve the paradox of voting in a meaningful way. A social norm could induce voting through (1) social sanctions that raise the costs of nonvoting; (2) social rewards that raise the benefits of voting; and (3) internalization of a norm of voting. The norm of voting overcomes at least two collective action problems: First, society is better off if all (or at least many) people vote because a large turnout legitimates democratic government, which is itself a public good. Second, a group is better off if all of its members vote in a bloc for a particular candidate or party because politicians offer groups rents or other advantages in exchange for bloc votes.(7) Despite these benefits, voting has (at least opportunity) costs and each person's individual vote alone has a negligible effect on the provision of these public goods. The norm of voting overcomes the apparent irrationality of voting, thereby facilitating the provision of these public goods.

This Article examines the plausibility and implications of a norm-based explanation for voting. Part I reviews rational choice models for voting, contrasts the rational choice models with the social norms hypothesis, and examines the empirical evidence regarding the existence of a norm of voting. As Part I demonstrates, rational choice explanations have offered only a tautological explanation of why people vote: People vote when the psychic benefits of voting exceed its costs.(8) Unlike the rational choice explanation, a norm-based explanation of voting can explain plausibly why some people vote, as well as explain aggregate changes in voter turnout over time. Although the norms hypothesis is plausible, evidence supporting the hypothesis is sketchy and may be consistent with alternative explanations for voting. The analysis in Part I illustrates a general proposition that norm-based explanations are about as easy to conjure up as they are difficult to prove.