?Electoral Cycle and Voting Behavior: Assessing the Impact of Electoral Integrity on Electoral Behavior of Latin American Democracies?

MARÍA CELESTE RATTO

Sydney

Seminario; Electoral Integrity Project Seminar Series; 2018

Electoral Integrity Project. The University of Sydney

The main goal of this project includes studying the influence of the electoral integrity dimensions on electoral behavior. Some models of interpretation have incorporated the assumption that institutional constraints limit voter choices (Miller and Niemi 2002:169). Here I will focus on whether electoral integrity influences the contexts for the attribution of responsibility in Latin American countries. The leading question of this project is how does electoral integrity condition the retrospective evaluations of Latin American citizens regarding the economic administration of the incumbent? I intend to find out whether disappointed Latin-American citizens punish incumbents at the polls or not, and how electoral integrity influences their voting choice. In this sense, the main goal of this research is to provide methodological; empirical; and theoretical contributions to the field of Comparative Politics. I will endeavor to answer this question using a comparative design based on the use of the multilevel statistical technique to compare the general tendency of the region. It allows a better understanding of contextual influence on voting for Latin American countries.