IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_2197.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Democratic Participation and the Size of Regions: An Empirical Study Using Data on German Counties

Author

Listed:
  • Helmut Seitz

Abstract

The paper examines the relation between political participation and the size of regions taking German counties as observational units. The paper makes several contributions to the literature. To begin with, we measure political participation along two dimensions namely voter turnout, which is the most common variable used in empirical studies, and the number of candidates that run for a seat in county parliaments, a variable that has to the best of our knowledge never been examined at the local level. In addition, we fill a research gap because the issue of size and democracy has not been systematically investigated for Germany up to the present. It is shown, that the size of regions has a rather modest effect upon voter turnout and that active political participation is positively related - with however weak statistical significance - with the size of regions. In addition our results shed some further light on the importance of the educational attainment of the electorate on political participation. Our results indicate a strong positive impact of human capital on turnover. Based on the data presented and the results of our estimates we hypothesize that there is a "hierarchy of elections" on top of which are federal parliament elections whereas local and even state elections seem to be of much inferior interest to the electorate.

Suggested Citation

  • Helmut Seitz, 2008. "Democratic Participation and the Size of Regions: An Empirical Study Using Data on German Counties," CESifo Working Paper Series 2197, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2197
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp2197.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mueller, Dennis C. & Stratmann, Thomas, 2003. "The economic effects of democratic participation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(9-10), pages 2129-2155, September.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2005. "From Education to Democracy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 44-49, May.
    3. R. Purdy, 2002. "Editorial," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1-2, March.
    4. Michael Goldsmith, 2002. "Size and Democracy," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 20(6), pages 791-792, December.
    5. Helmut Seitz, 2007. "Kreisgröße, Bürgerbeteiligung und Demokratie," ifo Dresden berichtet, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 14(05), pages 26-37, October.
    6. Robert J. Barro, 1999. "Determinants of Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(S6), pages 158-183, December.
    7. R. K. Pachauri & Sujata Gupta, 2002. "Editorial," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(2-3), pages 127-128, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michelsen, Claus & Bönisch, Peter & Rosenfeld, Martin T. W., 2010. "Sharing Competences: The Impact of Local Institutional Settings on Voter Turnout," IWH Discussion Papers 21/2010, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    2. Eckhard Wurzel, 2009. "Finanzpolitik: Stärker auf Ergebnisse hin orientieren," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 62(18), pages 38-42, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2009. "Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 88-126, July.
    2. Doris A. Oberdabernig & Stefan Humer & Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, 2018. "Democracy, Geography and Model Uncertainty," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 65(2), pages 154-185, May.
    3. Papaioannou, Elias & Siourounis, Gregorios, 2008. "Economic and social factors driving the third wave of democratization," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 365-387, September.
    4. Salomón Kalmanovitz & Enrique López, 2003. "La Agricultura En Colombia Entre 1950 Y 2000," Borradores de Economia 2937, Banco de la Republica.
    5. Siedler, Thomas, 2007. "Schooling and Citizenship: Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Reforms," IZA Discussion Papers 2573, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Campante, Filipe R. & Chor, Davin, 2014. "“The people want the fall of the regime”: Schooling, political protest, and the economy," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 495-517.
    7. Gabriela B. Christmann & Karsten Balgar & Nicole Mahlkow, 2014. "Local Constructions of Vulnerability and Resilience in the Context of Climate Change. A Comparison of Lübeck and Rostock," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 3(1), pages 1-18, February.
    8. Raouf Boucekkine & Rodolphe Desbordes & Paolo Melindi-Ghidi, 2020. "Education, neopatrimonialism, and revolutions," Working Papers halshs-02613158, HAL.
    9. Chevalier, Arnaud & Doyle, Orla, 2012. "Schooling and Voter Turnout: Is there an American Exception?," IZA Discussion Papers 6539, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Jooste, Charl & Liu, Guangling (Dave) & Naraidoo, Ruthira, 2013. "Analysing the effects of fiscal policy shocks in the South African economy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 215-224.
    11. Duha Altindag & Naci Mocan, 2010. "Joblessness and Perceptions about the Effectiveness of Democracy," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 99-123, June.
    12. repec:cfe:wpcefa:2015_10 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Yasir Khan & Attiya Yasmin Javid, 2015. "The Impact of Formal and Informal Institutions on Economic Performance: A Cross-Country Analysis," PIDE-Working Papers 2015:130, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    14. Mina Baliamoune, 2009. "Elites, Education and Reforms," ICER Working Papers 18-2009, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    15. Antonio Spilimbergo, 2009. "Democracy and Foreign Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 528-543, March.
    16. Bhattacharyya, Sambit & Hodler, Roland, 2010. "Natural resources, democracy and corruption," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 608-621, May.
    17. Richard Bluhm & Adam Szirmai, 2011. "Institutions, Inequality and Growth: A review of theory and evidence on the institutional determinants of growth and inequality," Papers inwopa634, Innocenti Working Papers.
    18. Frank H. Westerhoff & Cristian Wieland, 2004. "Spillover Dynamics of Central Bank Interventions," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 5(4), pages 435-450, November.
    19. Walter W Mcmahon, 2007. "An Analysis Of Education Externalities With Applications To Development In The Deep South," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 25(3), pages 459-482, July.
    20. Fabrice Murtin & Romain Wacziarg, 2014. "The democratic transition," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 141-181, June.
    21. Lilyan E. Fulginiti, 2010. "What comes first, agricultural growth or democracy?," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(1), pages 15-24, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2197. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.