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Size and Electoral Participation in Local Elections

This paper reviews local election turnout for the period since the 1970s in five European countries: Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It explores especially the relationship between size of municipality and turnout in local elections. The author seeks to explore this issue in the light of Dahl and Tufte's 1973 classic study Size and Democracy (Stanford University Press) which claimed that citizens' motivation to participate is greater in small governmental units than in large ones. This study confirms the Dahl and Tufte hypothesis, in that turnout is consistently higher over time in small municipalities in all the countries reviewed, although the strength of the relationship varies between the different countries. The paper also shows that other factors, such as the type of electoral system used or whether voting is compulsory or not, also have an effect on turnout.