In The Motivation to Vote, André Blais and Jean-François Daoust advance a parsimonious account of electoral participation focused on a handful of attitudes and beliefs that are relatively proximal to the turnout decision. Their model combines two stable predispositions (political interest and belief that voting is a civic duty) with two more variable, election-specific judgments (caring about the election outcome and perceived ease of voting) to explain whether those who are eligible to vote—and for whom voting is not legally compulsory—decide to do so at a given opportunity. The authors test their model primarily through analysis of a single cross-national source of survey data—the Making Electoral Democracy Work (MEDW) dataset—that, if not exactly purpose-built for the book, is nonetheless ideally suited to the task. The bulk of this short book (the main text is 109 pages, including many tables and figures) consists of a systematic investigation of the components of the model using the MEDW data, with each of the four attitudes treated in separate chapters, first as a dependent variable to be explained and then as an independent variable in a model of voter turnout. Spoiler alert: the model passes the authors’ many tests rather convincingly. Two additional chapters consider a pair of alternative, though not exactly rival, explanations of voter turnout, asking, first, “Is Voting a Habit?” (chap. 7), and second, “Does It All Depend on Context?” (chap. 8). The book concludes, after a broad summary of the findings, with speculations on how the model might be adapted to other contexts (e.g., where voting is compulsory), suggestions for future research, and brief (but awfully important) recommendations for policy makers eager to motivate turnout.
With due respect to both authors, this book could easily be understood as part of a long-running dialogue between Blais—without doubt the most prolific student of electoral participation—and Riker and Ordeshook’s “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting” (American Political Science Review, 62 [1], 1968). Indeed, Blais and Daoust themselves invite that interpretation (see, e.g., p. 43). Relative to Riker and Ordeshook’s model, we might say Blais and Daoust omit P (the probability of casting the pivotal vote) and add, alongside D (the duty to vote), a second symbolic gratification, I (political interest). In any case, this book could be profitably read alongside Blais’s earlier monograph on these matters, To Vote or Not to Vote? The Merits and Limits of Rational Choice Theory (2000).
The Motivation to Vote can also be read as a complement to Brady, Verba, and Schlozman’s influential resource model of political participation (“Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation,” American Political Science Review, 89 [2], 1995); this interpretation is also suggested by Blais and Daoust (p. 104). Brady and colleagues would, of course, not be surprised by the central importance of political interest to the turnout decision: they saw voting as a key exception to the general importance of resources to political participation (as Blais and Daoust acknowledge on p. 7). At the same time, The Motivation to Vote provides a richer view of the motivational foundations of electoral participation, particularly in its careful analysis of the role of civic duty.
The Motivation to Vote is a very hard book to criticize. Most critical intuitions that occurred as I read the book were eventually satisfactorily addressed. It’s possible that my difficulties criticizing the work reflect a shortage of imagination on my part, or it may be that Blais and Daoust have simply written a very good book. For more than one reason, I prefer the latter interpretation.
Indeed, the book has many strengths. One that deserves special mention is the research design. As noted, Blais and Daoust rely on the MEDW dataset, which consists of two waves of surveys of electors during 24 elections across five countries (four in Western Europe plus Canada) at subnational, national, and supranational levels of government. The standardization of measurement and sample recruitment across the surveys is an obvious and important virtue. The overall inferential logic is roughly that of the most-different systems design: if the model holds up across diverse contexts, then we’re safe (or safer) concluding that system-level differences are irrelevant. Although high-income, Western democracies may not seem like the most diverse sample, it is important to remember the diversity of contexts that the 24 surveys capture (i.e., national elections, EU elections, and subnational elections involving governments with vastly different responsibilities).
Blais and Daoust’s thorough investigation of the components of their model also turns up a host of noteworthy findings regarding how interest, duty to vote, caring about the outcome, and ease of voting relate to and interact with each other as they drive electoral participation. About one-quarter of those who say they have no interest at all in politics vote, whereas one-quarter who express maximal interest abstain (p. 36). Political interest is strongly related to duty, but the unique variance in duty accounts for a sizable share of the variation in turnout explained by Blais and Daoust’s model (pp. 51–52). Caring about the outcome, quite sensibly, matters much less to the turnout decisions of those who regard voting as a duty, and overall, duty is more important than caring (pp. 59–60). Ease of voting matters to turnout, although its effect is notably smaller than that of the model’s motivational variables (p. 70).
No book is perfect. For those in political science for the drama, I must report that there are not many big surprises here; none of the key variables in this study is new to the field. The authors’ commitment to applying a uniform structure to the core empirical chapters makes this part of the book somewhat repetitive. Some readers may be irked that the authors decline to present a more fully specified demographic model of turnout: they consider only age and education, and for perfectly defensible reasons. Nevertheless, this doesn’t make me any less curious about how, for instance, income and gender relate to interest and duty in the MEDW dataset.
I had an equivocal reaction to the chapter on the role of habit (chap. 7). Blais and Daoust make an important contribution in presenting a clear-eyed discussion of what the concept of habit entails in the realm of voter turnout. In short, mere persistence in turnout does not make a habit; rather, it is the automaticity of the behavior that is crucial (pp. 71–73). I am certain the authors are right that turnout is not a habit in this sense. At the same time, some of the original empirical tests in the chapter (especially in tables 7.3 and 7.4) are almost certainly underpowered, involving models that contain multiple overlapping interactions consisting of variables that we know, from elsewhere in the book, may be highly correlated.
Admittedly, this quibble about statistical power is pretty small beer. Overall, The Motivation to Vote is an excellent and important book. Its theoretical value lies in its systematic presentation and thorough unpacking of the proximal causes of voter turnout at the individual level. For anyone seeking to explain variation in turnout, whether across individuals and contexts or over time, this book identifies the key attitudes that, in all probability, must be affected if a given variable is to have any influence on the decision to vote.
