Norm Internalization and Political Collective Action

States, firms, and many other types of societal organizations rely on the internalization of norms that guide individual behavior to realize more cooperative outcomes. Norm internalization implies that even after a law is abolished, levels of collective action exceed what we would observe if individuals had not experienced this legal norm. We examine norm internalization in the context of a severely sanctioned and long-standing compulsory voting law in the Swiss canton of Vaud from 1900 to 1970. The introduction of compulsory voting increases turnout in federal referendums massively, by 30 percentage points on average, if compared with a counterfactual Vaud that did not introduce compulsory voting. Yet, turnout differences quickly return to zero after voting is no longer compulsory. Moreover, compulsory voting had at most a negligibly small effect on the outcomes of federal referendums. We also examine spillovers on related forms of political collective action that remained voluntary and find only minor contemporaneous effects. Our findings challenge established theories of norm internalization and participation spillovers in the context of political collective action and add to our knowledge about the (in-)efficiency of compulsory voting norms.