Defending Abstention

There have been a couple of recent pieces defending Mexico's high rates of abstention in recent weeks. Here's José Antonio Crespo:

[M]y posture is that, based on the behavior of all of the parties in recent years, you can conclude that there isn't a substantial difference between them.

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[I]n the present circumstances, voting could strengthen the particratic and oligarcic arrangement that many of us perceive and about which we complain. In contrast, the "non vote", if it is sufficiently large, could grab the partidocracy's attention so that it realizes the next step in opening and political inclusion, not, in this case, of the opposition, but precisely of the citizens.

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I don't suggest that we proscribe the parties ("throw all the bums out"), but rather improve the representation. In any case, the probability of this happening is greater with a large "non vote" than with an abundant turnout, which wouldn't generate in and of itself any incentive for correction or reform.

I like Crespo's writing, but this suffers from serious logical defects. First, although they all have their flaws and lamentable characters, there most certainly is a difference in the parties. Consider the following questions: Once in power, which party would be most likely to invite private enterprise into the operation of Pemex? Which party would be most likely to resort to anti-democratic protest should its initiatives be defeated? Which party would be most likely to usher in a new era of church-state collusion? Which party has shown the greatest degree of corruption in executive office? There are definite answers to these questions.

Additionally, it strikes me as incredibly naive to think that politicians will pay more attention to citizens the less they vote. The currency for democratic politicians is, first and foremost, votes. Withholding that currency removes any incentive for the politician to pay attention to you. He (or she) is not going to be more solicitous in the hope that you come back to him (or her); he's going to move on to the voters who he knows are locks to vote. Look at the US: there's a reason social security is a sacred cow, yet the national system of college loans routinely screws millions of students out of thousands of dollars. That reason? Seniors vote, young people do not. Politicians pay attention to seniors, and they largely ignore the young.

I also think that tossing all of the ills of Mexico's democracy under the epithet "partidocracy" or "political oligarchy" tells us nothing. In any representative democracy, representation is inherently imperfect, but talking about a Mexican "partidocracy" suggests that Mexico's democracy is fundamentally different from others. It may be more distant from the voters than in the US, but all democracies suffer from a too-large gap between voters' will and politicians' behavior. And the best way to bridge that gap is, of course, to vote! If Mexicans set up a MoveOn.org, or some version of the Christian coalition, which is to say grass-roots groups that could deliver votes en masse to one Mexican candidate instead of another, they would find a much greater degree of responsiveness from their representatives. But if they disapprovingly isolate themselves on a mountaintop, it seems painfully obvious to me that the incentive for the politicians to conflate their own interests with those of their constituents is reduced, not increased.

César Cansino made arguments similar to Crespo's last week:

A sudden decline in said participation or a considerable increase in abstention can't be explained by reasons of a scarcely democratic political culture that drives the citizens away from the voting booths, but the opposite: the existence of a citizenry sufficiently mature and informed as to discern that the political offer being presented is poor and therefore doesn't deserve endorsement at the voting booths.

For basically the same reasons I mentioned above, I find any justification of non-voting as a legitimate form of engaging the political class rather unconvincing. Additionally, classifying Mexicans voters as extraordinarily wise specifically because of their low turnout makes me worry that in his next column, Cansino is going to try to sell me a bridge in New York.