129 © The Author(s) 2021
C. Wiesner (ed.), Rethinking Politicisation in Politics, Sociology and
International Relations, Palgrave Studies in European Political
Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54545-1_7
CHAPTER 7
Voting and Non-voting in Post-democratic
Times
Dirk Jörke
7.1 INTRODUCTION
When we look at the development of European democracies since the turn
of the twenty-frst century, two phenomena are particularly evident: on
the one hand, the decrease in voter participation (Offe 2013), and, on the
other hand, the increasing electoral success of right-wing populist parties
(Kriesi and Pappas 2015b). In scholarly (Birch 2009; Schäfer 2011; Müller
2017; Mounk 2018) as well as public discussions, both types of voting
behaviour are described as irrational and as threats to democracy. In this
chapter, I would like to contradict these interpretations. First of all, I
argue that both the refusal to participate in elections and the decision to
vote for a right-wing populist party could be considered as new forms of
politicisation. Second, I consider the criticism of non-voting and of the
election of right-wing populist parties as part of what Ingolfur Blühdorn
(2013) described as ‘simulative democracy’. In other words, the typically
D. Jörke (*)
Institute for Political Science, TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
e-mail: joerke@pg.tu-darmstadt.de