The UK and Malta have historically-similar institutions, but dramatically-different rates of participation in elections. In contrast to the UK's declining turnout for elections, Malta boasts the highest -non-compulsory - turnout in the democratic world, reaching more than 96%. The objective of my trip was to assess why the two countries have diverged so dramatically. Practical difficulties in comparing the two councils of Oxfordshire and Valetta are worth highlighting. Oxfordshire is bigger, both in terms of population and landmass, than the whole of Malta. Oxfordshire CC employs almost 19,000 staff, while Valetta Council employs just five. Still, the strength of Malta as a case study is its smallness of scale. As an archipelago of three main islands, with a population of almost 400,000, and the third-highest population density in the world, it can be studied at a level of detail impossible in larger countries.
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