Underprivileged Voters and Electoral Exclusion in Contemporary Europe

Abstract:

This volume investigates the reasons behind contemporary participatory inequality, the form and dimensions it assumes in relation to the institutional constraints that regulate access to the electoral arena and socio-cultural transformations which have altered both the class structures and the territorial basis of voting. At the same time, it analyses the effects that the intensification of these processes risk to produce, if uncontrolled, on the stability of the democratic system and on the individual life of voters, deprived of institutional representation and left with the alternatives of protest (channelled by existing parties or elements outside the party system) or detachment from politics.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Voter Turnout and Imperfect Inclusivity: A Democratic Problem
• Turnout and Socio-economic Inequality at the Individual Level
• The Institutional Determinants of Turnout Inequalities
• Voting in Times of Crisis: From Opting Out to Regaining a Voice
• Conclusion