Why has voter turnout declined in democracies all over the world? This article draws on findings from microlevel studies and theorizes two explanations: generational change and a rise in the number of elective institutions. The empirical section tests these hypotheses along with other explanations proposed in the literature—shifts in party/candidate competition, voting-age reform, weakening group mobilization, income inequality, and economic globalization. The authors conduct two analyses. The first analysis employs an original data set covering all post-1945 democratic national elections. The second studies individual-level data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and British, Canadian, and US national election studies. The results strongly support the generational change and elective institutions hypotheses, which account for most of the decline in voter turnout. These findings have important implications for a better understanding of the current transformations of representative democracy and the challenges it faces.

中文翻译：

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全球选民投票率下降的代际和制度根源

为什么全世界民主国家的投票率都下降了？本文借鉴了微观研究的结果，并提出了两种解释：代际变化和选修机构数量的增加。实证部分检验了这些假设以及文献中提出的其他解释——政党/候选人竞争的转变、投票年龄改革、削弱群体动员、收入不平等和经济全球化。作者进行了两项分析。第一项分析使用了涵盖 1945 年后所有民主全国选举的原始数据集。第二个研究来自选举制度比较研究和英国、加拿大和美国国家选举研究的个人层面数据。结果强烈支持代际变化和选举制度假设，这是选民投票率下降的主要原因。这些发现对于更好地理解代议制民主的当前转型及其面临的挑战具有重要意义。