Term limits and voter turnout

• Autor(a) principal: Veiga, Francisco José
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Veiga, Linda Gonçalves
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/45116
• topic: Term limits; Voter turnout; Local elections; Portugal; Natural experiment; Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão; Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão; D72; H7; K16

This paper studies the impact of term limits on voter turnout, using the recent introduction of term limits at the local government level in Portugal as a natural experiment. Although instrumental, expressive, and information-based theories of voter participation imply effects of term limits on turnout, this is clearly an under-researched topic. Applying a difference-in-differences approach to data at both the municipal and parish levels, we find strong evidence that the introduction of term limits increased voter participation. Our results contrast with previous findings for California and demonstrate that more re search on this topic is clearly necessary.