Is it always the case that the less educated turn out to vote at lower rates then the highly educated? And, if so, which contextual factors can explain such inequalities? These are the central questions asked in Unequal Political Participation Worldwide by Aina Gallego. The book is a careful empirical investigation using both comparative survey data and experimental methods. It makes two main contributions to the field. First, Gallego uses descriptive data to show that inequalities in turnout related to education are far from a universal pattern. In some countries the lower educated turn out to the same extent as the higher educated. Moreover, the country that is most often discussed in the research, the US, appears to be an outlier with exceptionally high levels of educational inequality. Secondly, Gallego tries to explain which contextual factors can best explain the level of educational inequality in turnout. Gallego argues that, “Increasing the information and decision costs of voting results in lower turnout among less educated citizens, ultimately leading to larger differences in the turnout rates” (p. 198). Using survey data and experiments, she shows that the more cognitively demanding the voting procedure is, the more fragmented the government is, and the more complicated the media system is, then the higher the inequalities are in voting based on education level. Gallego also investigates whether the trade union density and the level of economic inequality can explain the inequalities in voting, but for these factors the empirical evidence is more ambiguous.

The book thus draws a number of important conclusions about the relationship between education, a number of contextual factors, and turnout disparities. There is no question that comparative political behavior scholars will learn a good deal from this book. But while the book makes excellent use of large comparative datasets such as the The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), as well as bringing some empirical evidence to the discussion, it has its limitations. The contribution is mainly empirical and Gallego is working her way through the different subfields in close partnership with previous research. This is for both good and bad. On the one hand, the reader gets a clear picture of what the different subfields look like and what the most up-to-date empirical analyses can offer in terms of new evidence. On the other hand, the book does not engage in a great deal of theory building, and lacks an original approach to tackling the research questions it asks. In addition, while the empirical investigations are very informative, a number of issues could have been dealt with in even greater detail. The main focus in the book is the contextual factors that are supposed to explain the inequalities in voter participation. The independent and dependent variables, conversely, play only quite subordinate roles. For example, Gallego largely treats education as the same kind of commodity in the different countries under study. But of course the different educational systems, the curricula, the teaching styles, and the educational experiences of persons in the different countries under study are very different from one another. When trying to explain why the lower and more highly educated in different countries participate in politics to different extents it is a bit surprising that Gallego does not search for the answer in the independent variable itself. Perhaps the reason for why some less educated people in some countries turn out to a larger extent than others is that they have received a higher quality of education that has prepared them better for participating in politics, even if their education level is low if measured solely by years of formal schooling. Likewise, the explanation for why the highly educated participate much more than the less educated in some countries could perhaps be that higher education is of better quality in some countries than in others.

Other questions also remain unasked in the book. For example, what role do different educational systems, the financing of education, and the distribution of educational credentials in the population play in shaping participation rates? This also leads us to a related question, which is whether education matters at all. An influential collection of studies have recently argued that it is not education per se that affects participation, but rather that education is only a proxy for other factors such as pre-adult socialization, intelligence, or social network centrality that are the true drivers of participation. Gallego does not deal much with these kinds of questions and as a result we know surprisingly little about what the independent variable is actually measuring and which aspects of it that are potentially important in triggering turnout.

Likewise, the dependent variable could have been explored in greater detail as well. While Gallego investigates the role of contextual factors at points, it nevertheless appears that she is treating voting as an activity more similar across different countries than it might actually be. For example, a central question that is given little attention is the supply of different voting options: do they actually meet what the voters want in the different countries? Here, I not only refer to the number of options but the qualitative aspects of the candidates and their positions in relationship to what the voters demand. Perhaps the reason why the less educated vote at lower rates in some countries is that they have no good parties or candidates to choose from that they feel represent their interests adequately. In short, the explanation for the inequalities in voting patterns of people with different educations in different countries could perhaps be better explained with reference to the different nature of the educational systems and political contexts in the different countries.

This kind of research often boils down to the question of whether inequalities in participation matter at all. Perhaps nonvoters and voters have fairly similar preferences and participation does not matter for representation and responsiveness? Gallego shows some evidence that voters and nonvoters with different educations indeed often differ in their political attitudes, indicating that inequalities matter for representation. But whether the inequalities in voting produce different policy outcomes and whether it actually matters for political responsiveness is beyond the scope of Gallego’s study. Hence, we are left without a clear idea about how far-reaching the implications of her results actually are. Nevertheless, this books brings much valuable empirical evidence to light concerning how educational inequalities are related to turnout and provides an excellent starting point for further discussions of the important issues it raises.