Universal turnout and its implications: 2012 Parliamentary elections in Montenegro.

• Jurisdiction: Rumania
• Date: 22 December 2017
• Author: Zivkovic, Slaven

"The democratic goal should be not just universal suffrage but universal or near-universal turnout"

(Lijphart 1997)

Introduction

Voting is widely regarded as the most common and essential act of political participation in any democracy (Aldrich 1993, 246). For a long time, it has been characterized as the holy voice of citizens' impact on decision-makers, and turnout is nowadays the most common measure of citizen participation (Ekman and Amna 2012, 285). The issues of turnout and non-voting continue to amaze worldwide scholars (Aldrich 1993, Franklin 2004). Lamenting the low level of participation and the rising level of people who stay at home on election day has become commonplace for both scholars and everyday politicians (Citrin and al. 2003, 75). The reason why declining turnout makes the news seems to be that it "allows commentators to pontificate about the dire state of democracy in the country concerned" (Franklin 2004). Empirical studies have shown that the mean electoral participation in national legislative elections was around 80 percent in the 1980s; now it is only slightly above 70 percent (Blais 2010, 168). Turnout appears to be in decline everywhere (Lijphart 1997, 1).

That "lack of citizen participation means that democracy falls short of its goals" (Pateman 1970), seems to be a long-standing truth. Low levels of turnout can be a severe problem for democracy. Although voting is a phenomenon at the individual- level (Lane and Errson 1990), studies have shown that it seems to be biased against specific groups. Those which are most underrepresented in the voting population include the less well-to-do (Lijphart 1997), the young (Blais 2010, 168), women (Norris 1996, Sawer 2010), and the less educated (Jackson 1995, 295).

Some worry that officials elected by a declining segment of eligible voters will lack legitimacy (Citrin et al. 2003, 75). One of the examples that first come to mind are MPs in European Parliament, who are elected by a continually declining segment of EU eligible voters (Blondel and al. 1998). The overall decline of turnout in recent years could result in more political voices remaining outside polling stations, and consequently without any influence in the political process.

Furthermore, casting a ballot is often considered to be a mark of civic virtue, with turnout as a sort of litmus test, an indicator of a country's democratic health (Clarke et al. 2004). For this reason, studying turnout in the context of young democracies, that is countries that have just passed through, or are still undergoing, democratic transition, is so important. Kostadinova, in her seminal work on turnout in post-Communist Europe, points out that "declining levels of turnout recently observed in some East European elections have generated concerns about the performance of the newly emerging democracies" (2003, 741). As turnout declines, concerns about the functioning of democracy are on the rise (Lutz and Marsh 2007, 539).

Among European post-socialist countries, Montenegro has often lacked scholarly attention. This country, like many other post-Communist countries, has gone through two phases of transition (Darmanovic 2007) since the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, in the Montenegrin case, democratization happened "without 'regime change'" (Bieber 2003). One party, the successor of The League of the Communists of Montenegro, has dominated the country's political life, forming every national government either alone or as the leading partner of a coalition since the introduction of party pluralism (Goati 2014). Even the voters of opposition parties have no faith that the outcome of the elections can be different, and most of them seem to believe that the winner is known in advance (Komar and Zivkovic 2016).

Democratic transition in Montenegro has been, in all of its phases, colored by the country's deep ethnonational cleavage. For the previous 25 years--some may argue even longer (Darmanovic 1992)--, there has been a constant confrontation between two camps: Montenegrins versus Serbs. Dzankic (2013) notes that "in unconsolidated political contexts cleavages are particularly susceptible to manipulation by political actors. At the time of the divide over statehood and identity, Montenegrin political elites revived ethnocultural narratives and triggered the dominance of structural cleavages over the functional ones."

Looking at the latest available Census data, we see that Montenegrins are the most numerous group in society. The following table reflects the country's ethno- national divisions:

Table 1: Ethno-national divisions in Montenegro Montenegrins 44.98% Serbs 28.73% Bosniaks 8.65% Albanians 4.91% Muslims 3.31% Roma 1.01% Croatians 0.97% Source: Census 2011, Montenegrin Statistical Agency (MONSTAT) While some minorities are more present in certain geographical regions, such as Bosniaks in the north of the country, or Croatians in the south, two major groups--Montenegrins and Serbians--are spread more or less proportionally throughout all of the country's regions. They are also rather proportionally represented in other demographic groups, such as gender, age, urban-rural residence and education.

However, ethnic identity has often been a mostly political issue across Montenegrin history, and that is why the numbers significantly changed in the course of less than a decade.

Apart from the ethnic cleavage, politics in Montenegro has been dominated by one political party--the Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS), which is the successor to The League of Communists of Montenegro. The DPS has won all general elections in Montenegro since the introduction of pluralism at the beginning of the 1990s, either by itself, or as the largest coalition partner. This uninterrupted incumbency is unique in post-communist Europe. Because of the pre-election coalitions, it is hard to analyze their election results comparatively over time, but the following graph can give a sense of their dominance:

Figure 1: Parliamentary election results of DPS or DPS-lead coalitions, 1996-2016 1996 51.20% 1998 49.50% 2001 42.04% 2002 47.34% 2006 48.62% 2009 51.94% 2012 45.60% 2016 41.40% Source: Goati (2014) and Montenegro Electoral Commission Note: Table made from line graph. Even though the DPS has recently seen a decline, its dominance in Montenegrin politics has never been questioned.

In addition to that, another piece of the puzzle needs to be taken into consideration. It is hard to say when the first free elections were actually held in Montenegro. Some say it was in 1998 (Vukovic 2010), and some that it was the 2001 elections (Goati 2014). Opposition parties still claim that elections are not free, but both international and domestic observers have never made a case for that. Even though the Freedom House ratings claim that Montenegro is a "partly free" democracy, its recent membership in NATO and candidate status in the EU integration process proves that the international community sees it as democracy.

A somewhat peculiar setting with single party dominance and a deep ethnonational cleavage make Montenegro one of the rare cases where social-demographic characteristics, mainly ethnicity, still serve as a useful predictor of voting choice. Members of one ethnic group, Serbians, have always been on the losing side in elections and have no faith that the outcome can change. They would be expected to give up on conventional participation and to become non-voters at higher rates compared to their confronting group--the Montenegrins.

This article attempts to answer several questions about elections in Montenegro, more specifically: Does turnout affect electoral outcomes? Has the overall decline in turnout left some political voices and attitudes outside polling stations and Montenegrin political life? Moreover, how likely is it that, had non-voters mobilized, their votes would have produced a different outcome in the 2012 Parliamentary elections in Montenegro?

This article has five sections. In the first section, we briefly present the literature in the field and discuss previous findings on whether and how non-voting and turnout level can affect elections. In the second, we turn our attention to the Montenegrin case, describing its peculiarities and how they can influence turnout level and election outcome, which is followed by the research design with the methods we intend to use to test our hypothesis in the third section. Then, results are presented in the fourth section, and are further discussed in the final section. The discussion will summarize the relevance of the results in the Montenegrin case, but also in the broader context of theories of politicized social structure, cleavages in society and of the link between turnout and election results.

1. Can turnout affect election outcomes?

   In this section, we will present the key literature findings related to the relationship between turnout and election outcome, as well as findings from previous simulations of universal turnout.

   As many studies have shown, it is hard to argue with the statement that low turnout is bad for democracy. A low turnout raises several issues: it questions the health of the democracy in a country (Kostadinova 2003), it can be a sign of dissatisfaction with democracy (Lutz and Marsh 2007), it undermines the legitimacy of the elected officials (Citrin et al. 2003), it affects public policies (Lutz and Marsh 2007) since they usually reflect the wishes of some voters rather than of the whole electorate (Bechtel et al. 2016), and it is a mark of unequal participation (Lijphart 1997).

   However, does turnout matter in terms of the outcome of the political process? More specifically, can turnout affect election results? It seems that the answer depends on who is being asked. On the one hand, conventional wisdom, mainly driven by political practitioners, repeatedly cites turnout as one of the most critical factors in determining the outcome of...