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The history of Australian electoral systems shows a high degree of democratic experimentation. Australia employs the alternative vote to elect its lower house of parliament, and the single transferable vote to elect the upper house. In addition, the adoption of compulsory voting has consequences for the operation of those electoral systems. Political culture reflects a high degree of delegation by voters to political parties, and electoral reform is not high on the political agenda.

Placed in a comparative perspective, the hallmark of Australian politics is the dominance of party: the vast majority of voters identify with and vote for one of the major political parties, and gaining election at the federal level is next to impossible without the benefit of one of three party labels (Liberal, National, or Labour). Within the legislature, party government operates in every sense of the word, with parties determining the legislative agenda and enforcing rigid discipline among their members. Perhaps more interestingly from a comparative perspective, Australia has seen little decline in the strength of the major parties in recent years, in contrast to Britain, the US, or many of the other advanced democracies. The explanation for the continuing strength of political parties in Australia can be traced to the origins and development of the country's political culture; Australia's split from Britain was imbued with the utilitarian ideas of Jeremy Bentham and his followers, and political parties are a necessary and important part of this utilitarian political culture. The introductory part discusses these factors, and also presents a separate account of the development of the party system; the next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy (turnout—voting is compulsory, party identification, party membership, and attitudes towards parties), organizational strength (party finance, and mass media), and systemic functionality (governance, interest articulation and aggregation, political recruitment, political organization, political participation, and political communication and education).

The introductory chapter addresses the need for a new full-length manuscript on compulsory voting and discuss the meaning of the term. The chapter then reviews arguments for and against the requirement to vote, focusing mostly on matters of duty, collective action, legitimacy, representation, and the putative downstream consequences of compulsory voting. The chapter subsequently briefly reviews the history of compulsory voting and the potential reasons for its implementation. The chapter then provides data on where and how compulsory voting is used today and gives a detailed overview of recent events surrounding compulsory voting throughout the world. From there, the chapter discusses various empirical methods available to the scientific community for assessing the effects of the legal requirement to vote.

This chapter considers the influence of compulsory voting on electoral integrity and the overall legitimacy of the political system. Reducing electoral abuse and improving electoral integrity were among the most important reasons for the introduction of compulsory attendance at the polls in many states. It is therefore worth considering whether making electoral participation mandatory improves the conduct of elections and thereby improves confidence in the political process. This chapter tests the hypothesis on the basis of case studies as well as aggregate data. It also considers whether mandatory voting enhances the legitimacy of the democratic process overall.

This chapter reviews the growing literature on compulsory voting’s consequences. Compulsory voting has an unsurprising upward impact on voter participation, which lessens the impact of many socioeconomic and demographic forerunners of turnout, thereby making the composition of the voting population better reflect the distribution of eligible voters. Further, invalid balloting tends to be more common under compulsory voting. Compelled voters are also less likely to cast ballots that correspond with their preferences. Many studies indicate that mandatory voting has an educative effect and can socialize people into political engagement, with others casting strong doubt on this possibility. A small number of studies have assessed whether compulsory voting shapes attitudes, election outcomes, the behavior of political parties, policy characteristics, and income growth and inequality, with few clear patterns yet established. Compulsory voting laws have the greatest impact where sanctions for abstention are enforced and meaningful.

This chapter turns to the topic that has received the greatest amount of attention from those who have studied the institution of compulsory voting: aggregate turnout. The question of concern in this chapter is how efficient compulsory voting really is in improving turnout levels. The discussion aims to review previous analyses of the impact of mandatory voting laws on rates of participation, and to assess the conditions under which such laws are most likely to be associated with substantial change in the rates of voting.

This book provides a detailed overview of the history, practice, causes and effects of the legal obligation to vote, as well as an analysis of the normative arguments surrounding it. Recent debates about the possibility of introducing mandatory voting in those states where going to the polls remains voluntary call for a detailed discussion of the normative advantages and disadvantages of this institution. This chapter specifies what exactly is meant by the term ‘compulsory voting’. It seeks to conceptualise and construct a typology of electoral obligation, before examining variations in the way the institution of compulsory voting has been implemented in different states.

The concluding chapter reviews the findings and discusses their implications for academic research and for policymakers. It also discusses alternate ways of increasing turnout that may have fewer downstream consequences than a requirement to vote. These include: easing voter registration requirements; making it easier to vote with procedures such as early voting, online voting, and mail voting; and rewarding citizens for voting. It wraps up with reflections on the justifiability of compulsory voting in democracies.

Chapter 4 empirically probes the relationship between attitudes toward democracy and support for compulsory voting. In doing so, it makes use of a range of public opinion surveys which ask questions about attitudes toward compulsory voting. Results demonstrate variation in the average level of support for compulsory voting across countries. They are also indicative of a systematic, negative effect of dissatisfaction with democracy, which is used to capture orientations toward democracy, on support for compulsory voting. This effect can be discerned even with controls for political interest, ideology, and a slate of demographic variables. This supports the uncomplicated but foundational expectation of the theory in Chapter 3: that those who are democratically disenchanted are also unsupportive of mandatory voting.

This chapter explains historical and systemic sources of institutional activism. Starting from re-examining underlying principles of New Deal financial regulations established in the 1930s that discouraged institutional activism, it argues that they were overturned in the 1980s and 1990s in the name of promoting “shareholder democracy.” It analyzes these misguided regulatory “reforms” including the introduction of compulsory voting by institutional investors, a proxy-voting rule change that greatly facilitated aggregation of proxy votes by predatory value extractors. The chapter argues that those reforms created a large vacuum in corporate voting because, contrary to the ideal of shareholder democracy and particularly with the increasing dominance of index funds, institutional investors had little ability and incentive to vote the shares in their portfolios. The main beneficiaries of these reforms have been the leading proxy advisory firms and a small group of hedge-fund activists intent on looting the business corporation.

The chapter brings out five features of the Australian electoral system: the original use of the secret ballot, preferential voting, compulsory voting, an independent Australian Electoral Commission, and a rural and regional party of national significance. These peculiar institutions are a settled and unquestioned part of the Australian political framework. Most provide the occasion for national self-congratulation. This chapter surveys the origins of these particularities, and weighs what they actually indicate about the nature of Australian society, arguing that, contrary to the common Australian presumption, none of these constitute a proof of the strength of democracy. Australian democracy is, in fact, weak, and that the poverty of its parliamentarism is its key weakness.

Non-voting has become a major issue of late as electoral participation has declined in most liberal democracies, not just in France. However, the history of voting demonstrates that this is no new phenomenon and, indeed, the problem of abstention was attracting attention from the inception of mass voting. After 1848 it would become a major preoccupation for French politicians. Proposals were frequently tabled for the vote to be made compulsory, though this would remove the liberty of not voting, while there was always disagreement over how to enforce the obligation. By the turn of the twentieth century, in the light of turnout regularly exceeding 75 per cent of the electorate, in both legislative and municipal elections, such concern might appear exaggerated. Yet the principle of representation was perceived to be at risk when electors failed to vote and there were fears that militant minorities would take control. Despite these persistent demands for compulsion, voting has remained a voluntary act in France and the civic duty to vote has been emphasized instead.

How can we remedy some of the negative effects of diploma democracy? First, we discuss the rise of nationalist parties. They have forced the mainstream political parties to pay more attention to the negative effects of immigration, globalization, and European unification. Next we discuss strategies to mitigate the dominance of the well-educated in politics. We start with remedies that address differences in political skills and knowledge. Then we discuss the deliberative arenas. Many democratic reforms contain an implicit bias towards the well-educated. A more realistic citizenship model is required. This can be achieved by bringing the ballot back in, for example, by merging deliberative and more direct forms of democracy through deliberative polling, corrective referendums, and more compulsory voting. The chapter ends with a discussion of ways to make the political elites more inclusive and responsive, such as descriptive representation, sortition, and plebiscitary elements.