COMPULSORY VOTING AND SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION | Zendy

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COMPULSORY VOTING AND SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION

Author(s) -

Stanislas Richard

Publication year - 2021

Publication title -

public affairs quarterly

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

eISSN - 2152-0542

pISSN - 0887-0373

DOI - 10.2307/48616071

Subject(s) - premise , voting , representation (politics) , argument (complex analysis) , democracy , politics , political science , proxy (statistics) , consistency (knowledge bases) , turnout , social psychology , law and economics , positive economics , sociology , epistemology , psychology , computer science , law , economics , artificial intelligence , medicine , philosophy , machine learning

A prominent defense of compulsory voting is based on the negative effects of a low turnout on democracy, which leads to an unequal representation of the most vulnerable citizens of our societies, since they are the least likely to vote voluntarily. This paper shows that this justification relies on the truth of an added premise—that voting is a proxy for use of political influence and power. However, the inclusion of this premise weakens the entire argument, which regains consistency only through the adoption of a narrow understanding of what representation is.

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