3
Introduction
From the publication of Downs's (1957) seminal work onwards, political scientists have tried
to come to grips with the so-called "paradox of voting," i.e., the fact that so many people vote
despite the infinitesimal expected return from casting a ballot. In recent years, the failure to
resolve this paradox has led some to conclude that rational choice is not well suited for the
understanding of actions with low benefits and low costs such as the act of voting (Aldrich
1993). Others have gone even further and used the lack of success as a basis for questioning
the rational-choice approach in general (Green & Shapiro 1994).
Our vantage point is nevertheless that voter turnout can be understood as an instance of
purposive action. However, the costs and benefits that feed into the decision must be
conceptualized more widely than in the purely instrumental Downsian approach (Opp 1999).
While some observers (e.g., Ferejohn & Fiorina 1974; Barry 1978) have expressed uneasiness
about Riker & Ordeshook's (1968) early attempt to integrate the intrinsic benefits of voting
into a rational-choice framework, later theorizing has made significant progress in this
respect, e.g., with respect to norms (Coleman 1990) and expressive motives (Brennan &
Buchanan 1984; Brennan & Lomasky 1985; Calvert 2002).
In spite of theoretical advances, however, the instrumental as well as noninstrumental sides
of the voter calculus have been far from fully investigated empirically (Dennis 1991; Green
and Shapiro 1994; Blais et al. 2002). In this paper, however, based on a nationally
representative panel study including turnout data for the 1994 and 1998 Swedish elections
(the latter of which validated based on the electoral register), we first examine the explanatory
power of a wide range of potential motives for casting one's ballot, including but not limited
to the instrumental ones. Based on repeated cross-sections as well as panel data, we then try to
explain why turnout in Sweden has decreased by approximately 10 percentage points over the
last 20 years.
Our two explanatory ventures yield converging results. The voters' primary motive for
turning out on Election Day is not to influence the outcome but to reap the intrinsic rewards
of the act of voting itself. Especially important is the satisfaction received from expressing
one's opinion and fulfilling one's duty as a democratic citizen. Thus, voting is primarily an act
of consumption rather than an investment decision (Fiorina 1976). Parts of our results thus
concur with the findings of Blais et al. (2000) that turnout in Canada is primarily driven by
civic duty. We however do not agree that this implies a departure from the rational choice
Convention