However, research on migrant electoral rights has been limited to fragmented and regionally limited datasets. The recently published Migrant Electoral Rights (MER) Dataset, developed by researchers Sebastian Umpierrez de Reguero, Klaudia Wegschaider, and Rainer Bauböck, addresses this gap by offering the most comprehensive global overview of migrant electoral rights to date.
Key Features of the MER Dataset
- Comprehensive Coverage: MER includes data on both non-resident citizens and non-citizen residents, making it the first dataset to systematically cover electoral rights for both groups across such a wide temporal and geographic scope. It tracks voting and candidacy rights for legislative, executive, and referendum elections at national, regional, and local levels.
- Detailed Indicators: The dataset codes up to 488 indicators, capturing eligibility criteria, access conditions, and modalities attached to electoral rights.
- Global Scope: MER spans 165 countries, offering insights into diverse political systems and practices. It includes countries from all continents, with balanced coverage across regions.
- Longitudinal Data: Covering 61 years (from 1960 to 2020), MER allows users to analyze how electoral rights for migrants have evolved over time.
- Transparency and Accessibility: MER adheres to FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). It is publicly accessible in CSV format and comes with a detailed codebook and a 400-page Factbook with country-specific information and references.
The dataset highlights several key trends in migrant electoral rights: Over time, countries have generally eased conditions associated with migrants’ electoral rights, such as residence-duration requirements and registration processes. Voting rights for non-citizen residents are most commonly available at the local level, while non-resident citizens are more likely to have voting rights in national elections. Some countries extend electoral rights only to specific groups, such as EU citizens or nationals of certain countries, creating disparities in access. To explore these dynamics further, the authors published two pre-prints focusing on migrant franchise constellations and suffrage incongruencies.
Migrant Franchise Constellations
Traditionally, research on voting rights has adopted a state-centric approach, concentrating on why individual states grant or deny voting rights to non-citizen residents or non-resident citizens. However, this approach often overlooks that migrant's voting rights result from the combination of specific countries of citizenship and residence. For example, a Polish citizen residing in Uruguay can vote in elections at all levels in Uruguay and in national elections in Poland. Conversely, a Uruguayan citizen living in Poland cannot vote in either country, despite both being democracies.
The recently published pre-print "Migrant Franchise Constellations" by Klaudia Wegschaider, Sebastián Umpierrez de Reguero, and Rainer Bauböck introduces a migrant-centric framework that accounts for these dyadic combinations of countries.
The study categorizes migrant voting rights into six franchise constellations, ranging from full migrant franchise (voting rights in national and local elections in the residence country and national elections in the citizenship country) to no franchise (complete exclusion from voting in both countries). Using the MER dataset, the authors analyzed 1.3 million dyad-year observations across 172 countries between 1960 and 2020, revealing a global trend toward greater inclusion in migrant suffrage: In 1960, approximately 90% of dyads resulted in complete disenfranchisement. By 2020, this figure had dropped to 30%.
Despite this progress, disenfranchisement remains a pressing issue. Based on UN migrant stock data, the authors estimate that at least 74.7 million migrants were completely excluded from voting rights. Given the shortcomings of stock data, this number should only be seen as a rough estimate—it nonetheless highlights that this issue is of significant scale. This has profound implications for democratic inclusion. Migrants often have a stake in both their country of residence and their country of citizenship yet many remain excluded from the democratic process. Since this exclusion may have long-term consequences, such as reduced electoral participation even after naturalization, the authors highlight the need for future research to explore the attitudinal and behavioral impacts of long-term disenfranchisement on migrants. For instance, does being locked out of voting rights for years affect a migrant's willingness to engage in democratic processes after gaining suffrage?
Exploring Suffrage Incongruency
In their second recently published pre-print, "Incongruent Suffrage", Klaudia Wegschaider, Rainer Bauböck, and Sebastián Umpierrez de Reguero explore the under-researched aspect of incongruencies between voting rights (active suffrage) and candidacy rights (passive suffrage). While these are often assumed to go hand-in-hand, the paper highlights that incongruencies between them are not rare; they have appeared across time, space, and demographic groups. In the contemporary moment, they mainly affect categories such as non-resident citizens, non-citizen residents, young people, and convicted felons.
Based on an analysis of MER data, the authors find that suffrage incongruencies persist. In 2020, almost half of all positive cases of non-citizen resident suffrage at the local level were voting-only incongruencies. For non-resident citizens, about a third of cases with electoral rights at the national level were incongruent.
Further, the paper explores the origins of suffrage incongruency through two case studies: the United Kingdom and Switzerland. In the UK, candidacy-only incongruency for non-resident citizens arose unintentionally due to legacy electoral rules that did not anticipate non-resident candidacy. This incongruency persisted until voting rights were extended in 1985, driven by the vote-maximizing interests of political elites. In Switzerland, voting-only incongruency for non-citizen residents emerged due to a lack of public support for candidacy rights. The electorate was more willing to share voting rights than candidacy rights, reflecting a higher threshold for allowing non-citizens to hold public office.
As the authors note, these incongruencies have implications for political representation and democratic equality. For instance, do individuals feel like "second-class" citizens if they can vote but are barred from running for office? Does the lack of candidacy rights depress voter turnout? Moreover, suffrage incongruency may hinder the substantive representation of affected groups, as candidacy rights are a prerequisite for descriptive representation.
