What is the meaning of Abstention? Concept, Definition of Abstention

Abstention: Compendium of definitions and concepts

Definition of abstention

Abstention means lack or deprivation to do, exercise or consume something, to apply to the most diverse fields. It is a failure to do volunteer, by which someone remains passive to a stimulus. For example who refrains from eating to perform a fasting or drinking alcoholic beverages or consuming drugs.
Applies many times in politics to refer to electoral abstention, where the town refuses to vote. In countries with mandatory suffrage, if this happens, the elector may be liable of a sanction; Therefore, to demonstrate their disagreement, usually vote, but make it blank or null form, not refraining incurs, but elect a particular candidate. Sometimes the abstention of cover is not voluntary but that there is some impediment to doing so: health, distance reasons, not be built-in to the registry, etc.
Radicalism in Argentina, practiced electoral abstention in 1931, as a protest against the veto to the formula Alvear-Güemes as candidate to the Presidency of the nation, the Government dictatorial, position he held until 1935. This abstentionist policy was that also used the radicalism to combat electoral fraud that took its denouement in the Sáenz Peña law that eliminated the Sung vote.
In certain professions, may also exist a right or a duty of abstention. For example, in the first case if a lawyer fails to defend a potential customer because the fact repugnant to its moral, and in the second case, if a judge must decide the dispute where one of the parties is a relative of yours.

Concept of abstention

Abstention means lack or deprivation to do, exercise or consume something, to apply to the most diverse fields. It is a "do voluntary", by which someone remains passive to a stimulus. Abstention, derived from la voz Latin "Abstentio", is a failure to do or not act that normally it does not produce any legal effect, although sometimes can be considered as the externalisation of a determined will and accordingly be taken into account by the law. In political science, is the Act by which a potential voter in an election decides not to exercise its right to vote, either in a general election or if, in a parliamentary procedure, the representative is present at the vote but does not vote.
In both cases, the subject adheres to the result of the vote of the electors who voted yes, as it happens with the white vote or the null vote. Even when in democratic regimes is associated with citizenship a duty civic or moral vote, which in some legal systems becomes legal duty, the electoral abstentionism appears with the same franchise. It simply consists of non-participation in the Act of voting of those entitled to do so. The electoral abstentionism, which is part of the broader phenomenon of participatory apathy, is an indicator of participation: shows the percentage of non-voters on the total of those who have voting rights.
Although for the purposes of quantifying the degree of popular through abstention ignorance, considered abstention to both collects the votes of those who say unfamiliar (apolitical) political issues and those who does not meet the system itself or any of the candidates or parties who are present, so many times is difficult to discern the abstention by ignorance and the abstention of protest. Today there are countries with significant abstention rates in the ballot issue, as it is the case of Venezuela, however, there are campaigns on both sides of the race with the intention that the citizen is active and go to bounce to collaborate with the decision that in the end is all.

Definition of abstention

Abstention, in political science, is the Act by which a potential voter in an election decides not to exercise its right to vote, either in a general election or if, in a parliamentary procedure, the representative is present at the vote but does not vote. In both cases, the subject adheres to the result of the vote of the electors who voted yes, as it happens with the white vote or the null vote.
Although the abstention does not usually consider one of the options before a collective decision-making, a high abstention is generally regarded as a lack of interest or discomfort among the body of voters that can become politically delegitimize the elections or the political system itself. That's one of the reasons why sometimes the law establishes compulsory suffrage. Sometimes, the political nature of the abstention is reinforced if necessary a specific quorum (percentage of actual voters on the electoral body total) to validate the result.
The first studies about the abstention as a political practice established distinctions of voters for the reason that they themselves gave for not going to vote. Later, different authors have gone mainly distinguishing two types of abstention, a volunteer and other involuntary, and within the first type, a subdivision that included one abstention with political significance, which would be active.
The typology generally accepted part of this subdivision to distinguish two types of abstention:
• Passive or sociological abstention: caused by own lack of interest in politics in general or in the specific choice that is at issue, or resulting from, geographic or social isolation of the voter.
• Active or ideological abstention: regarded as a political act of rejection of the legitimacy of the political system. In the latter case sometimes is considered as voters also voters casting vote blank or null. The latter case especially when from a political party or a social sector advocates non-participation in a referendum as a political stance of protest, 7 even requesting perform null vote to do so.