Electoral Participation in Municipal Elections Across Europe: Between National and Local Drivers

In this chapter, we move a step forward in our understanding of electoral participation in municipal elections and its drivers. After having explored the role of two core variables (municipal size and urbanization) within each country, we investigate the effects of these two variables over municipal turnout through rigorous regression models, which include some of the main drivers of municipal turnout emerged from the literature review presented in Chapter 1 . We include four sets of variables—economic, institutional, cultural, and timing variables—separately and then in a full model. In doing so, we will both assess the role of size and urbanization, controlled for not just each other but also for the additional relevant predictors, and reveal the explicative role of these additional factors themselves. Overall, this investigation sheds light on what determines higher or lower participation rates in municipal elections across the European continent through a robust, comparative, rigorous empirical investigation. First, it uncovers the higher explicative role of urbanization over municipal size. Then, it indicates the importance of some national-level elements, such as the national economic performance, and the state of democracy, but not of some other (expected) ones, such as the placement of the municipal elections within the national electoral cycle. As well, some local-level elements emerge as significant, in particular the decisiveness of the municipal elections. Finally, it shows that electoral participation in municipal elections is in fact a quite different phenomenon in Western Europe and in Eastern Europe.