Activation and co-optation: The strategic adoption of compulsory voting in Western Europe

Why was compulsory voting (CV) adopted in a moment when the Left was mobilized and enfranchisement was extended? We answer this apparent paradox by developing an argument explaining that making voting mandatory, in fact, benefited the parties that sponsored that policy. Traditional conservative and liberal parties used CV to mobilize some of their own voters but also to co-opt newly enfranchised ones, thus, increasing their electoral support. Activation was possible because by making voting mandatory, the cost of voting for already enfranchised voters was lower than for newly enfranchised individuals. Co-optation took place in contexts where low levels of economic development fostered extensive practices of electoral malpractice. These theoretical claims are tested using a district-level dataset covering the 1892 and 1894 Belgian elections, and a province-level dataset of parliamentary elections in Spain between 1890 and 1920.