Abstract:Voting is one dimension indicators of people's participation in the life of their community. The indicator used here to measure the participation of individuals to the electoral process is the "voter turnout", i.e. the number of individuals that cast a ballot during an election as a share of the voting‐age population ‐ generally the population aged 18 or more ‐ as available from administrative records of member countries. Different types of elections occur in different countries according to their institutional structure and for different geographical jurisdictions. The elections considered here are those that attract the largest number of voters in each country: presidential elections for Finland, France, Korea, Mexico, Poland and the United States, and parliamentary and legislative elections for other OECD countries. Data about voter turnout are extracted from the international database organised by the Institute for Democratic and Electoral Assistance (IDEA).
Document Type: Review Article
Publication date: February 1, 2007