Institutional Context

This chapter turns to questions about how the institutional context influences voter turnout and how these effects might vary across rich and poor voters. The chapter contends that two types of institutional characteristics can encourage the incentive for voting across social groups. First, attention is placed on institutions that make the voting procedure easier. Particularly, these are institutions designed in ways that actively encourage, not repress, participation (i.e., voter registration). Second, the chapter focuses on institutions that operate as structures or centres for mobilisation. These institutions can reduce the cost of voting and mobilise potential political participants (i.e., party systems, electoral systems). Thus, drawing on several rounds of the Afrobarometer and institutional features, notably voter registration, party systems and electoral systems, the chapter uses multilevel modelling and develops models to examine how these institutional factors affect voting and modify the association between socioeconomic status and voting in sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, the result suggests country-level institutional determinants, notably voter registration and party system, are found to affect turnout across the board rather than to explain the reverse pattern between socioeconomic status and voting.