Economic crisis and non- institutionalised political participation

Abstract

Introduction In 2008, the global financial and economic crisis that hit Europe initiated the worst recession Europe had experienced since the Second World War. In the wake of this so-called “Great Recession” (Cho and Newhouse, 2013; Elsby et al., 2010; Verick and Islam, 2010), millions of jobs were lost resulting in rising levels of unemployment in most European countries. A wave of protests erupted particularly in those countries that were most severely affected by the consequences of the crisis. At first sight, this observation is in accordance with the grievance theory which predicts that people who experience collective deprivation express their grievances by “raising their voice or by exciting” (Kriesi, 2012, p. 518). However, the economic crisis did not affect all citizens in the same way. Preliminary results indicate that particularly men, less educated citizens and younger citizens suffer under rising unemployment (Elsby et al., 2010; Eurostat, 2013; Verick, 2009). There are several explanations for why these specific groups were so severely affected by this crisis. First, it has been argued that men were especially vulnerable because they are more concentrated in those sectors that were most affected by the crisis (Eurostat, 2013; Verick, 2009). In addition, sectoral differences also depend on education, which can explain the higher vulnerability of low-skilled workers (Cho and Newhouse, 2013). Moreover, scholars argue that less educated workers are disadvantaged due to their lower average productivity (Cho and Newhouse, 2013). Finally, younger citizens might not always find sufficient opportunities to gain access to the labour market in times of crisis (Verick, 2009). The aim of this chapter is to investigate whether the heterogeneity in the social composition of groups of citizens affected by the crisis is reflected in the social composition of citizens that participate in the political protest. In line with grievance theory, we would expect particularly those citizens to be active, who were most vulnerable to the consequences of the crisis. If this reasoning holds true, this crisis will alter the traditional composition of participants in non-institutionalised forms of political participation and consequently affect political equality in countries that were hit by the crisis. Hence, the question we aim to answer is whether the financial and economic crisis affected thestratification of non-institutionalised political participation in Europe. We focus on non-institutionalised political participation because in the literature grievances are most strongly linked to forms of political participation that can be counted as non-institutionalised forms of engagement such as protest, involvement in social movements or boycotts (King, 2011; Klandermans, 1997; Opp, 1988, 2000). This is a very important issue as a more equal distribution of political participation implies more political equality, which is a fundamental goal of every democracy. Participatory equality is of crucial importance if a society wants to achieve equal consideration for the legitimate interests of all citizens (Schlozman et al., 1999). However, no contemporary democracy fully lives up to this ideal. The reason is that substantive inequality in the use of political opportunities remains present even if a democracy ensured perfect equality in political rights. There is a wealth of literature indicating that individuals differ in the level and the intensity of political participation. Among the most prominent stratification factors that distort the equal distribution of political participation acts are sex, education level and age (Verba et al., 1995). We assume that the financial and economic crisis has affected the distribution of non-institutionalised political participation along those factors. We aim to contribute to the literature on participatory equality by focusing on the effects of the economic crisis in Europe. The way the crisis affected highly developed democracies provides us with a unique opportunity to test this research question by comparing the impact of the economic downturn among different European countries. To answer this research question, we use the cumulative data from the European Social Survey (ESS 2002-2010) and combine it with economic indicators from the World Bank. This allows us to compare the social composition of participants in 25 European countries before the beginning of the crisis in 2008 with the situation in 2010 when the economic indicators were strongly negative. To this end, we conduct a multilevel analysis and examine whether the effect of the economic crisis on non-institutionalised political participation differs depending on the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. In the following section, we give a brief introduction to the grievance theory. Subsequently, we review the literature on inequality within non-institutionalised political participation and relate it to the preliminary findings on the effects of the economic crisis on different segments of the population. Then we present the data and methods we use to answer the research question, before we elaborate on what our results imply for the evolution of participatory equality within noninstitutionalised political engagement in Europe.