Project at HIAS
Protest Voting: An Electoral Ethics of Resistance
Protest voting is subject to considerable political and moral controversy. Protest voters or those who abstain in protest from elections are often portrayed as irresponsible, unduly uncompromising, selfish, or excessively concerned with their own moral purity. Yet protest voters or abstainers often respond to significant injustices, failures of political representation, or deficiencies in democratic legitimacy, and sometimes do so without effective alternatives of having their voices heard. This project distinguishes different types of protest electoral conduct and offers a theoretical framework for assessing when such conduct is morally permissible and when it aligns with ideals of democratic citizenship. The project addresses two core challenges against protest voting: namely, that it is a form of contribution to impermissible harming, and that it is an abuse of the franchise as its use does not align with democratic principles. Attila Mráz’s project culminates in a research monograph that shows to what extent, and how, the political ethics of non-ideal liberal democracy can accommodate this particular tool in the toolkit of radical electoral politics. The project draws on democratic theory, the ethics of voting, and the political ethics of resistance within political philosophy, and the ethics of permissible harming in moral philosophy, as well as on the rich literature in empirical political science on protest voting.
His Tandem Partner is Peter Niesen, Professor for Political Science at the University of Hamburg.
Website
Funding
The HIAS Fellowship is provided by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by the University of Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.
Tandem
Prof. Dr. Peter Niesen, Political Science, University of Hamburg
Biography
Attila Mráz is Assistant Professor at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Institute of Philosophy. He has been the PI of the research project “Electoral Ethics: New Perspectives”, funded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Since 2025, he has led the ELTE research group ARTCOMP – Agency and Responsibility at the Crossroads of Morality and Politics. He is an elected member of the Hungarian Young Academy (2025-2030) and co-coordinates its International Affairs Committee in 2026-27. He held postdoctoral research positions, among other places, at Harvard University’s E. J. Safra Center for Ethics, Sciences Po Paris CEVIPOF, and Stockholm University’s Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War & Peace. Earlier research affiliations include New York University, the University of Arizona, and the University of Warwick. He also held visiting positions at the Université Catholique de Lille and Stockholm University’s Stockholm Center on Global Governance.
Attila Mráz’s research lies at the intersection of philosophical democratic theory, the legal theory of political rights, and non-ideal political ethics. He has published widely on political equality (including disability, gender, and race perspectives), the right to vote (its justification and capacity- and competence-based restrictions), democratic defense (also in the context of European democracy), and the ethics of voting and of political participation more broadly. His current project brings reflections on non-ideal democratic participation, the moral and strategic challenges of individual and collective struggle against political and social injustices, and themes from the ethics of resistance, to bear on one another.
Attila Mráz’s HIAS Fellowship is provided by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by the University of Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.