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Neither Citizen Nor Stranger: Why States Enfranchise Resident Aliens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

David C. Earnest
Affiliation:
Old Dominion University, dearnest@odu.edu
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Abstract

Why would democracies extend to aliens a right they historically have reserved for citizens—the right to vote? Some scholars argue that transnational movements and global norms increasingly moderate how states treat their aliens. If so, this is important evidence of a change in the meaning and content of sovereignty. This article investigates whether democratic states enfranchise their aliens in response to international, transnational, or domestic factors. While the article finds little support for transnational or systemic arguments, it also finds that political parties and judiciaries affect opportunities for aliens in ways the existing scholarship fails to explain. These findings suggest that both comparative and IR scholarship need to revisit their explanations for contemporary citizenship politics in democracies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2006

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References

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51 One might argue that one should rank discriminatory national rights above nondiscriminatory local rights—in other words, to reverse ranks 3 and 4. To test nationalist and transnationalist hypotheses, however, I argue one must order the voting rights systems according to their use of nationality as a criterion for the franchise. In this sense, the orders of the dependent variable range from those that most emphasize nationality as a criterion (no rights) to those that do not use nationality as a criterion for the broadest range of rights. For this reason, I rank nondiscriminatory local rights as a higher order than discriminatory national rights, since the latter retains an emphasis on nationality.

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53 Of the twenty-six states in Figure 1 that have some provision for immigrant voting rights, eight arguably are transitional democracies. Two (Hungary and Uruguay) are in the study's population. Of the remaining six, Bolivia and Colombia have constitutional provisions that allow their legislatures to enfranchise aliens at their discretion, though neither has done so. Estonia's franchise rights are discriminatory (for native Russian speakers only), while Belize, Chile, and Venezuela have local rights only. Given this variability among transitional democracies, it is not clear how alternative sampling criteria would affect the study's hypothesis tests. If anything, since most states that enfranchise aliens are consolidated democracies, the inclusion of a large number of transitional democracies with no rights probably would increase the likelihood of finding no effect for any hypothesized factor.

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66 For purposes of comparison and for validation of the findings, I also conducted a PCSE regression of the model. While such analysis is inappropriate for ordered dependent variables, Beck (fn. 46) notes that researchers using ordered variables with seven points commonly treat them as continuous and can estimate such variables with PCSE techniques (p. 273). The dependent variable for this study has only six points, making tenuous any inferences from PCSE estimation. When using PCSE estimation, I assume that there is panel-specific first-order autoregression. The PCSE analysis found the following nationalist and transnational factors significant: birthright citizenship (β = 1.512, s.e. = 0.225); density of NGOs (0.529, 0.092); and proximity to other states that enfranchise noncitizens (0.179, 0.046). The PCSE model also found several controls significant: membership in the British Commonwealth (1.412, 0.235); a history of representative institutions (0.742, 0.259); the center-formed state dummy (0.821, 0.252); and the control for unexplained temporal variation (0.021, 0.008). The PCSE model thus seems to find more support for transnational arguments than the ordered probit model. This support is qualified, however, for two reasons. First, the control variable for time illustrates that there is an overall increase in voting rights over time that the PCSE model does not explain. Second, the reader is again advised to keep in mind Beck's caution that we know little about the consistency of PCSE estimates and the degree to which they are unbiased when one uses an ordered dependent variable; Beck (fn. 46).

67 Rath (fn. 1).

68 Neuman (fa. 3).

69 Rath (fn. 1).

70 Klausen (fn. 8).

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75 Rath (fn. 1).