Expressiv icke-röstning : En intern kritik och vidareutveckling av rational choice-teorier om röstning

Sammanfattning: This study is mainly centred around a twofold theoretical aim, but also pursues a secondary empirical aim. The first part of the theoretical aim is to critically examine and identify problems for previous research within a group of rational choice theories that sets out to explain voter turnout in terms of utility maximisation. A new and seemingly overlooked theoretical approach is then suggested according to which both voting and abstention can be explained primarily by psychological utility, namely in the following way; voters value expressing a political satisfaction when they vote, and abstainers value expressing a political dissatisfaction when they don’t. Three testable hypotheses to that fashion are then suggested. The empirical aim is to investigate whether the suggested theoretical approach and its hypotheses holds up empirically. The results indicate that political abstainers are significantly more dissatisfied with how democracy is functioning than both non-political abstainers and voters. The results of the first theoretical and empirical aims thus suggest that psychological utility indeed can follow from the act of abstention – at least when the abstention constitutes a political act. Lastly, the second part of the theoretical aim is to tie the theoretical and empirical endeavours together by providing a possible solution to the previously identified problems. I argue that since the act of abstention has its own utilities, the voting formula which these theories use to describe the decision to either vote or abstain must include new abstention-terms in order for it to accurately describe the full extent of the decision at hand. Otherwise, the formula gives an inadequate explanation for abstention. I therefore conclude by developing a new and extended voting formula which includes such abstention-terms and in doing so hope to pave way for further research.