Disenchanted or Discerning: Voter Turnout in Post-Communist Countries

Voter turnout in post-communist countries has exhibited wildly fluctuating patterns against a backdrop of economic and political volatility. In this article, we consider three explanations for this variation: a ‘‘depressing disenchantment’ ’ hypothesis that predicts voters are less likely to vote in elections when political and economic conditions are worse; a ‘‘motivating disenchantment’ ’ hypothesis that predicts voters are more likely to vote in elections when conditions are worse; and a ‘‘stakes’ ’ based hypothesis that predicts voters are more likely to vote in more important elections. Using an original aggregate-level cross-national time-series data set of 137 presidential and parliamentary elections in 19 post-communist countries, we find much stronger empirical support for the stakes-based approach to explaining variation in voter turnout than we do for either of the disenchantment-based approaches. Our findings offer a theoretically integrated picture of voter participation in the post-communist world, and, more broadly, contribute new insights to the general literature on turnout. In the first decade and a half of after the collapse of communism, observers noted with concern the apparent dramatic decline of voter turnout in post-communist countries. From initial rates of 80% and higher in the first wave of open and competitive