ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 provides a comparative overview of how much consistency and variation we find across the four geo-political regions. The major conclusion is that while some of the models are largely applicable in these emerging democracies, others are not. The approaches that perform best are the mobilisation, socio-demographic, and, to a lesser extent, the alternative model, the various indicators of which significantly increase the chances of an individual turning out to vote. On the other hand, our results across the four geo-political regions offer some contradictory results with regards to the impact of some political-institutional variables (i.e. concurrent elections and the closeness of elections), political-psychological variables (i.e. political trust, internal and external efficacies) and people’s perceptions of their country’s economy performance on voting. Overall, however, the bigger picture in relation to voting in emerging democracies is that political behaviour of voters or citizens in these regions is influenced by many of the same factors that determine the electoral behaviour of citizens in established democracies.
