The second article from the Extraterritorial Voting Rights and Restrictions Project (joint with Nathan Allen and Beth Wellman) managed to make it through the production process before the first one (forthcoming in Comparative Political Studies) I flagged in this earlier update.
Our second article is now published online in Comparative Migration Studies. The article is part of a cluster of articles focusing on Violent Democracies and their Emigrants, edited by Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz. Our article demonstrates a distinctive pattern of adoption and implementation of extraterritorial voting rights in violent democracies. While violent democracies extend transnational voting rights to their emigrants at rates comparable to other regime types, they are less likely to implement those rights, and when they do implement them, they are more likely to restrict them to insulate domestic politics from external influence.
The article is open access (no paywall!), something made possible through financial support from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Citation
Nyblade, Benjamin, Wellman, Elizabeth Iams, and Allen, Nathan. 2022. “Transnational voting rights and policies in violent democracies: a global comparison.” Comparative Migration Studies 10, 27. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-022-00299-9
Abstract
In recent decades more than one hundred countries have enfranchised their diasporas, allowing emigrants to vote from abroad. However, this widespread formal recognition of extraterritorial voting rights does not always lead to increased participation of emigrants in home country politics. Migrant-sending countries have complex relationships with their diasporas, and this relationship is particularly fraught for countries with endemic violence. This article leverages a new dataset documenting the adoption and implementation of extraterritorial voting rights and restrictions for 195 countries from 1950 to 2020 to demonstrate how transnational voting rights and policies in violent democracies difer from other regimes. While violent democracies extend transnational voting rights to their emigrants at rates comparable to other regime types, they are less likely to implement those rights, and when they do implement them, they are more likely to restrict them to insulate domestic politics from external influence.
Benjamin Nyblade 