Proceedings of 11th Asian Business Research Conference
26-27 December, 2014, BIAM Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh, ISBN: 978-1-922069-68-9
Explaining Voter Participation: Evidence from Bangladesh
A. F. M. Ataur Rahman1 and Zayeema Sarwar 2
Voter participation is crucial for any democracy. Without effective participation,
elections are not representative of public opinion and thus positive outcomes of
democracy are hard to expect. Not surprisingly economists and other interested
groups are in search of explanatory variables of voter participation. Starting from
rational voting models (Downs 1957) to very recent models using game theoretic
models (as Taylor and Yildirim 2010) using access to information are being
proposed to explain variability of voter participation. However these studies are
mostly focused on developed economies (Blais 2006) which already have
institutionalized democracy in operation. For a growing democracy like
Bangladesh situation can be different. Using data of national election of
Bangladesh in this study we have found voter participation is positively related to
intensity of voter competition, rate of literacy and number of centers available.
Population, however, has a negative impact and the level of economic activities
(district level GDP) does not seem to have an effect on voter participation.
1
2
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, North South University (NSU), email: ataur@northsouth.edu
Department of Economics, North South University