VARIATION I VALDELTAGANDE : - En statistisk undersökning av moderniseringens subnationella effekter på det svenska valdeltagandet

Sammanfattning: This essay sets out to bring further knowledge within the field of political participation on an aggregated level in Sweden. The theoretical access point for this study is the modernization theory provided by Lipset (1959). This theory will be investigated to see if variables within this theory have an effect on the Swedish voter turn-out. Furthermore this study aims to investigate if the contexts of the economical situations have an effect on modernization. The main questions of this essay is: (1) what effects do modernization have on voter turn-out in Swedish municipals? (2) Regarding the economic cycles, what influence does the effects of modernization have on voter turn-out? The method used in this essay is a qauntative analysis in the form of a bivariate and a multiple regression analysis. The empirical material in this study includes statistics from different public agencies. The analysis aims to investigate three election years, 1994, 2006 and 2014. The empirical study shows that socioeconomic pre-conditions, such as average income level, and urbanization have a positive and strong effect on the Swedish voter turn-out on an aggregated level. This shows that modernization theory is not relevant in full, it rather shows that certain parts of the original theory is relevant today. The effects modernization have on voter turn-out is also a lot stronger when the economic context is an economic boom. When the economy goes down the effect goes down with it.