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The Heritability of Duty and Voter Turnout
Author(s) -
Loewen Peter John,
Dawes Christopher T.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
political psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.419
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-9221
pISSN - 0162-895X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00881.x
Subject(s) - politics , turnout , duty , personality , history , psychology , sociology , media studies , political science , voting , social psychology , law
Explaining voter turnout is a central preoccupation of political scientists. This is due in no small part to the apparently paradoxical nature of participation (Grofman, 1993). The probability of being decisive in any election is very small (e.g. Gelman, Katz, & Bafumi, 2004; Riker & Ordeshook, 1968), and thus individuals can reasonably expect to receive the same benefits from the outcome of an election if they do not vote. Yet, modern democracies normally witness a majority of citizens casting ballots. Why then do we witness such high rates of turnout? Among the most important explanations is that individuals feel a duty to vote (Blais, 2000; Blais & Young, 1999; Riker & Ordeshook, 1968). According to this explanation, some citizens feel morally compelled to vote and do so independently of the expected benefits of an election and despite the costs of voting. Duty is not the only explanator of political participation. In their review of work on political participation, Fowler and Dawes (2008) count 33 different factors thought to predict voter turnout, encompassing demographic, attitudinal or behavioral, social, and institutional factors (p. 589). These factors have measurably increased our knowledge; however, such environmental accounts still only explain a relatively modest portion of the variance in political participation. In the face of this, some scholars have begun to ask whether variation in political participation can be attributed to biological and genetic factors (Dawes & Fowler, 2009; Fowler, Baker, & Dawes, 2008; Fowler & Dawes, 2008). The goal of this article is to examine whether one of the most central explanators of the decision to vote—a sense that voting is a duty—is itself heritable. To do so, we employ a twin study design with 561 twin pairs in the United States. We find significant heritable variation in the belief that voting is a duty. These results comport with recent research that other predictors of turnout we previously assumed to be exclusively the product of the environment are also heritable.