Adapting to Democracy: Voter Turnout Among Immigrants from Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract: Voting in an election is the most basic and fundamental form of political participation in a democracy. Citizens are given the opportunity to elect legislators that take political decisions on their behalf. As immigration is increasing globally, many immigrants find themselves with this opportunity for the very first time immigrating from authoritarian regimes. Are immigrants from authoritarian regime able to adapt to their new political setting, or is there an observable difference in voter turnout based on the regime-type of the immigrant’s native country? There exist three branches of theories within the theoretical framework of political resocializa-tion: the theory of exposure, the theory of transferability and the theory of resistance. Previous research on the adaptability of immigrants from authoritarian regimes is often single case stud-ies that only analyse one of the three branches or analyse different forms of political participa-tion and have produced somewhat contradicting results. With empirical evidence remaining the relationship between voter turnout and regime-type is yet to be fully comprehended. By using data from the European Value Survey, this study tests all three theories of political resocializa-tion in 34 countries, to further generate insight into this matter. The results show that immigrants from authoritarian regimes are not less likely to vote in the national election of their new host country. The amount of exposure to the new host country, or whether the immigrant spent his “formative years” in the authoritarian regime are not statisti-cally significant to voting. Age, marital status, education and income are shown to be more statistically significant predictors to voter turnout, compared to regime-type.