An alternative reading of abstention and the belief that every fall in turnout is a symptom of democratic crisis.
At more or less every election in Italy (and elsewhere), turnout falls. Many politicians, analysts and people in the street often interpret this as a sign of distrust in politics.
According to this interpretation, disappointed and angry citizens have stopped believing in politics and institutions to such an extent that they no longer go out to vote. “Why bother going? Nothing changes anyway!” is the thought mentally attributed to every non-voter.
And some, still more pessimistic, infer from this that democracy is in trouble, whatever that might mean.
This explanation may well capture part of the reality, but it certainly overlooks another, equally credible, perhaps more credible, altogether: what if the non-voting citizen were thinking instead: “Why bother voting, when I’ll be happy with any result?”
This citizen, with a reasonable degree of confidence in the stability of the administrative, bureaucratic and perhaps even political system, certainly exists. And is more likely to be found precisely in mature democracies, where the main political forces tend to operate within relatively agreed fundamental boundaries.
Priorities change (more for education or more for healthcare), fiscal policies change (a wealth tax or not), parliamentary balances shift, but the fundamental structure of the state is not called into question. Essential rights remain, institutions continue to function and individual freedoms remain guaranteed.
In political science terms, this is one of the characteristics of consolidated democracies: the main political forces compete to govern the system, not to redefine its rules.
Under these conditions, voting has lost the character of a momentous choice that it may have had after the Second World War, or at any rate during periods of intense political conflict.
When voters perceive the consequences of the different political options as relatively limited, participation naturally tends to lose its urgency. Turnout measures, in effect, what is at stake.
If, whoever wins the chance to lead the country, the country will remain recognisable, children will continue to go to school, and hospitals, newspapers and the police will not budge an inch, citizens may begin to see electoral participation as less urgent than other activities in their daily lives.
To this we should add that economic well-being also contributes to this transformation. When material survival is relatively assured, politics tends to occupy a smaller portion of people’s mental lives. Work, family, leisure, consumption and personal interests may take on increasing importance. Voting becomes one possibility among the many the day offers.
It is in less stable societies that the opposite happens. When incomes are precarious, when rights appear fragile or when political power can alter living conditions, participation tends to increase. Politics is once again perceived as a matter that deserves attention, and therefore a vote.
History offers numerous examples of this phenomenon. Elections perceived as turning points tend to mobilise voters far more than those in which an expectation of continuity prevails.
This does not mean that every form of abstention is a sign of democratic health. Some abstention certainly stems from distrust, distance from political parties and the feeling of not being represented. Yet reducing the entire phenomenon to this single cause risks producing an incomplete diagnosis. There is even a name for it: the single-cause fallacy. Explaining multidimensional phenomena through a single, privileged cause.
The possibility that an explanation is correct does not imply that it is sufficient for all phenomena, in every case. Many social phenomena result from factors acting simultaneously that cannot be reduced to a single dominant variable.
Edgar Morin has spent his life explicitly criticising monocausality, arguing convincingly that social phenomena emerge from the interaction of multiple factors in feedback loops, and that considering a single cause, even the most consequential, means overlooking the others, which, taken together, may outweigh that single cause.
The initial mistake is probably to regard high participation automatically as a good thing and low participation as a bad thing. Political freedom also includes the right not to participate. Anyone may legitimately and freely feel that, in their particular circumstances, they are comfortable implicitly delegating the decision, with moderate indifference, to those who do enjoy going out to vote.
From this perspective, abstention does not necessarily amount to a rejection of the system. In some cases, it may represent an unspoken acceptance of how it works.
As with many forms of infrastructure, we notice their importance above all when they stop working. As long as democracy appears stable, predictable and resistant to extremism, some citizens may simply consider their vote inessential, taking it for granted that democracy will continue to function even without their direct involvement.
The paradox is that democracy’s success can produce behaviour, such as abstention, that in some cases reflects confidence in the stability of the system, yet is interpreted instead as a sign of its crisis.
Besides serving instrumental purposes, this interpretation may be encouraged by various cognitive mechanisms. The false consensus effect leads those who attach great importance to politics to assume that most citizens attach the same importance to it. Availability bias, meanwhile, leads people to overestimate the place politics occupies in other people’s lives simply because it occupies a significant place in their own. Finally, the curse of knowledge makes it difficult to imagine the perspective of those who pay little attention to politics and know only its essential aspects. It may therefore be difficult to understand that many voters attach less importance to politics and consider the election result insufficiently relevant to justify going out to vote.