Chong:

The crucial issue is that regardless of its theoretical validity, in practice, democracies may not necessarily improve
the distribution of income in the short run, or not at all, and if so, not to the extent that policy-makers expect or

objective of fair representation is for governments

to provide their constituencies with their wants and needs. This
should be reflected in the welfare of the corresponding groups.
According to conventional wisdom, the poor are less likely to go to the urns, which
may result[s] in the election of leaders who do not cater to their
needs and may end up skewing the distribution of income against
them. In fact, the voters who would benefit the most by voting tend not
to vote, as transaction costs tend to be extremely high. Furthermore, the
marginal impact of the vote of one single voter, especially in nonurban areas, is perceived, true or not, as inconsequential, which
ends up biasing the costbenefit calculation of individuals against
voting. Individuals do not adequately assess the positive
externalities of voting outcomes because they are typically not
internalized in the utility functions of the voter. In this context,
compulsory-voting mechanisms have been encouraged to make
voter turnout more representative of the democratic process.
desire. In fact,

the

ultimate

Reasons to prefer Chong

The inequality data come from Chong (2003). We updated the data up to 2000 using comparable household surveys
available from the World Bank (Deininger and Squire, 1997), and, similar to the other variables used in this paper,
we took averages for the period 19602000 by country. As argued by several researchers, while not perfect, the

First, the observations are based on

household surveys. Second, the population and the income coverages are
comprehensive. Additionally, criteria from different sources are
homogenized to avoid problems of definition (Chong, 2003). The data include 103
inequality data used here have several advantages.

countries but we obviously could not use them all as we are restricted by our variable of interest. Table 2 shows
some summary statistics for the Gini coefficient and the quintile distribution by region for the period under
consideration. The higher the Gini index, the more unequal the distribution of income. This variable goes from 0 to
100.

Engelem
low turnout is among the most serious threats democracies
face today, I want to argue that it affects basic democratic values. The most
fundamental premise of democratic thinking holds that those
affected by a decision should be able to participate in the process
which brings it about. To ensure that public policy is about the
public as it ought to be one has to give the public a say in it. As Dahl
argues, all members of a democracy must have equal and effective
opportunities for making their views known to the other members
as to what the policy should be (Dahl, 1998, 37).
To show that

As direct participation is practically impossible in large societies, one has to resort to some
type of representation and insist that policy decisions should be made by a publicly elected
government. This makes an election the pre-eminent occasion to participate in public life.

As voting is the most important form of political participation (IDEA,

2004, 23), turnout is often used as a measure of citizen participation
(Verba et al., 1978, 8). When casting their votes, people express their
opinions and preferences of the politicians, policies and politics of
their country, region or town. In line with Dahl, one can argue that all citizens
must have equal and effective opportunities for making their views known as to who should
govern the country. In fact, this is why every defender of democracy considers universal
suffrage to be a necessary requirement for any democratic regime.

The more citizens abstain, the less representative the electoral

result becomes. This problem is aggravated by the fact that low
voter turnout means unequal and socio-economically biased
turnout (Lijphart, 1997, 2). As Keaney and Rogers (2006, 10) aptly
summarize, international evidence shows that turnout and inequality
are closely linked, and that as turnout falls so it becomes more
unequal. While universal suffrage equalizes the opportunities for
participation in elections (every citizen has exactly one vote), inequalities
between privileged and less privileged citizens persist in the way citizens
exercise such opportunities (Lijphart, 1998, 12; Verba, Nie and Kim, 1978,
16). This forms a problem because governments normally respond
to the opinions expressed by citizens in elections: if you dont vote,
you dont count (Burnham, 1987, 99). This assumption has been
empirically confirmed. In their cross-country comparison, Mueller and
Stratmann (2003, 2151) found that political participation has a
positive impact on income equality. The more citizens abstain, the
greater income inequality will become. The logic behind this is clear
enough. As turnout declines, less privileged citizens tend to abstain
more than others. As a result, they will have less representatives
looking after their concerns and will therefore exert less influence
on policy decisions. As low turnout means unequal influence, it
violates the value of political equality, which lies at the heart of any
notion of democracy. I thus want to argue that a purely formal
equality of opportunity has to be extended to a more substantial
equality of participation and influence
Political participation is also crucial for guaranteeing the legitimacy of a democratic regime.
The more citizens abstain, the more the elected bodies lose their accountability. To illustrate
the problem one can refer to elections where only a minority of the electorate determines
the electoral result. In elections to the European Parliament, for example, average turnout
has declined systematically from 63% of all registered voters in 1979 to a record low of
45.6% in 2004 (EP, 2004). As more than half of the electorate abstains in 18 of the 25
member states, one can hardly speak of popular or majority will (Watson and
Tami, 2001). As democracy cannot imply that laws are enacted by legislators representing a
minority of eligible voters, one has to conclude that high turnout levels are necessary for
any democracy claiming legitimacy.

However, the idea that every citizen has an absolute freedom of choice amounts to a
strange notion of democracy, because it assumes that only unanimous decisions can be
democratic. In contrast, it is widely held to be an advantage of democratic decision-making
procedures that they can settle matters despite disagreement. Hence, it is hard to see how
any political decision-making method can respect everyones liberty (Christiano, 2001,
3415). Such libertarian views on man, society and state are highly problematic, because
they tend to consider almost every government intervention as an illegitimate demand on
its citizens. Allowing citizens to freely choose to exercise their rights, no strings attached,
makes political decision-making practically impossible.

To conclude, I believe that Levers liberal criticism of compulsory voting is misguided in two ways. First, if
understood correctly, compulsory voting or better, compulsory attendance does not violate anyones privacy,
freedom of thought or freedom of speech. Second, the underlying liberal idea that every citizen should be
guaranteed an absolute freedom of choice including the choice not to choose is problematic, because it thinks of
any government intervention as an illegitimate demand on its citizens. Levers own juxtaposition of liberalism and
democracy (Lever, 2008, p. 63) is paradigmatic in this respect. It inhibits her from seeing that both the liberties of
the moderns, such as freedom of thought and speech, and the liberties of the ancients, such as political

democracy
[is] are ultimately grounded on and co-originate from the fundamental principle of
mutual respect for each person as a free and equal human being. Without
individual rights and liberties, democracies continuously face the threat of
totalitarianism. However, without popular sovereignty guaranteed by a
democracy in which people participate in the decisions that will bind them
individual rights and liberties remain purely formal and empty. The basic
insight that both elements are based on the same principle of moral and
political autonomy is shared by Rousseau, Kant, Mill, Rawls and
Habermas. Lacroix (2007, p. 193) rightly stresses that political participation is crucial for any
sensible liberal project that aims to strive for liberty as autonomy, which
does not mean the absence of law but rather the respect of the laws that
men have made and accepted for themselves. Instead of exclusively focusing on the liberties of the
participation, are essentially interwoven (Habermas, 1995, pp. 127129). Both liberalism and

moderns, like Lever does, I thus want to join Lacroix in stressing the liberties of the ancients and the importance of effective political participation in any
liberal democracy that values self-determination. In this respect, I believe compulsory attendance should be conceived of as enhancing rather than
violating the basic liberal value of autonomy.

Jorge aragon
The stability and functioning of any kind of political regimeincluding [a] democratic
[regime] or representative onesrelies on the combination of the capacity of rulers
and government officials to use coercion and the development of political
legitimacy. Political legitimacy can be described as peoples recognition
and acceptance of the validity of the rules of their entire political system
and the decisions of their rulers. Accordingly, two things can be expected from political systems
that have a considerable level of political legitimacy. First, these political systems will be more

resilient to survive periods of crisis, and, second, rulers and authorities

will enjoy a fundamental condition needed to formulate and implement
policies in an effective manner (i.e., they will be able to make decisions
and commit resources without needing to obtain approval from the ruled
and without resorting to coercion for every decision). The issue of political
legitimacy can therefore be considered to be of utmost importance in
politics and political analysis.
Regarding the relationship between political legitimacy and democracy, the first thing that needs to be

the essential features of democratic systems (e.g., the

recognition of all citizens as political equals and the right of the citizens to
self-rule mainly through the election of their rulers) make this relationship
very complex and extremely significant. Furthermore, given the current worldwide
legitimacy of democracy as a form of political regime and the spread of
representative governments around the world in the last few years on the
acknowledged is that most of

one handand the seeming contradiction between this and an apparent crisis of democratic legitimacy both in
established and new democracieson the other, it is critical to consider some of the most important issues and
trends regarding the relationship between democracy and legitimacy.
Democratic legitimacy has very frequently been defined as citizen orientations toward the main principles of the
political regime or the entire political system (i.e., democracy and not a particular administration, needs to be
perceived as the best form of government or at least as the least evil). The main problem with this definition is that
it does not recognize that other objects of political legitimacy can be equally significant for the functioning and
prospects of a democratic regime. For example, it is clear that a persistent negative perception of the performance
of democratic authorities and institutions can erode the legitimacy of democracy as a form of government.

democratic legitimacy
or support for democracy is a multidimensional phenomenon. Extensive
empirical research found that there are at least five important dimensions
of political legitimacy that are relevant for the stability and effectiveness
of democratic regimes: (1) support for the political community; (2) support
for the core regime principles, norms, and procedures; (3) assessment of
the regime performance; (4) support for the regime institutions; and (5)
support for the authorities.
Fortunately, in the last few years it has become more common to assume that