Compulsory voting and political outcomes

This chapter explores the impact of compulsory electoral participation on those political outcomes viewed as most significant, as well as those that can most intuitively be expected to result directly from the institution. It examines three such impacts: the impact of compulsory electoral participation on rates of female participation; the distribution of partisan support (the balance between small and large parties, moderate and extremist parties, and left-right forces); and the fairness of policy outputs, understood in terms of redistributive policy and quality of governance.