ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a theoretical and empirical review of the existing literature on electoral participation. Thus, the chapter discusses a number of established theoretical and empirical approaches of turnout drawn from the socio-demographic, mobilisation, political-psychological, and political-institutional models, summarising the main assumptions and propositions of each, before moving on to state the theoretical expectations that can be derived from these theories with regards to electoral participation in newly consolidated democracies. The chapter equally considers an overview of the place of elections in the democratisation process (i.e. how central are elections to democracy in new democracies), followed with a brief discussion on why and how newly consolidated democracies may differ from established democracies in terms of individual-level voter turnout. Thus, the chapter also provides an alternative explanation of turnout in newer democracies that focusses on issues such as corruption, authoritarianism, and clientelism etc.
