Inequalities In Political Participation Research Articles

Populism, participation, and political equality

AbstractThis article analyses the relationship between populist attitudes and political participation. We argue that populist attitudes can be a motivation for participation through their identity, emotional, and moral components, and that they have the potential to narrow socioeconomic gaps in participation. Using survey data from nine European countries, our results show that populist attitudes are positively related to expressive non-institutionalized modes of participation (petition signing, online participation and, in some contexts, demonstrating), but not to turnout. In addition, populist attitudes are found to reduce education-based gaps and even reverse income-based inequalities in political participation. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Moved to Vote: The Long-Run Effects of Neighborhoods on Political Participation

How does one's childhood neighborhood shape political engagement later in life? We leverage a natural experiment that moved children out of disadvantaged neighborhoods to study effects on their voting behavior more than a decade later. Using linked administrative data, we find that children who were displaced by public housing demolitions and moved using housing vouchers are 12 percent (3.3 percentage points) more likely to vote in adulthood, relative to their non-displaced peers. We argue that this result is unlikely to be driven by changes in incarceration or in their parents' outcomes, but rather by improvements in education and labor market outcomes, and perhaps by socialization. These results suggest that, in addition to reducing economic inequality, housing assistance programs that improve one's childhood neighborhood may be a useful tool in reducing inequality in political participation.

Vývoj vzdělanostních nerovností v účasti na politice v Česku a na Slovensku a jejich důsledky pro reprezentaci postojů

Vývoj vzdělanostních nerovností v účasti na politice v Česku a na Slovensku a jejich důsledky pro reprezentaci postojů

Levels and Determinants of Youth Political Participation: Regional Inequalities and Northeastern Slovenia

Category: 1.01 Original scientific paper Language: Original in English (Abstract in English and Slovenian, Summary in Slovenian) Key words: political participation, determinants, youth, Slovenia, regional inequalities, democracy, civic participation, democratization, democratic consolidation, post-communism Abstract: The main purpose of our study was 1) to analyse previously unexamined regional inequalities in four dimensions of political participation among Slovenian youth (self-reported voter turnout, non-electoral conventional participation, protest participation and civic participation); 2) to examine macro-determinants of regional inequalities in political participation; and 3) to examine regional variation in individual-level determinants of political participation. We found several substantial regional inequalities in youth political participation, although the extent of inequalities differed depending on examined participation dimension. Regional inequalities exist particularly in voter turnout and civic participation, while at the same time, regions that score higher on one dimension in some cases score lower on other dimensions.

De lokale democratie en het probleem van participatieve ongelijkheid

Abstract Local democracy and the problem of participatory inequalityThe growing responsibilities of Dutch local governments for policy that was originally carried out by the national government raise the question to what extent local democracy is up to these tasks. Citizen participation is a central demand in any representative democracy. Participation ought to be not merely high, but also equal and non-selective, so that the voice of all societal groups is heard proportionally loud. This is particularly important when societal groups differ in their political preferences.This article studies the extent to which citizen participation in Dutch municipalities is indeed non-selective, by analyzing the first Dutch Local Election Survey 2016. It shows that not all citizens participate equally by casting their vote in local elections or via other local forms of participation. Particularly those groups that are underrepresented in political activities are more likely to support direct democracy in their municipality. The inequality in political participation along policy preferences cannot be reduced to demographic differences, implying that demographic representation is not the solution to participatory inequality.

Social Class and Political Engagement in the United States

AbstractThe relationship between class and political engagement in the United States is well‐established: people with lower incomes, who have less education, or who work outside the professional and managerial occupations do less of all forms of political engagement. They vote less than better‐off people, are less likely to give money to candidates, pay less attention to politics, and contact their representatives less often than those with more resources. They are also less likely to believe they can influence political decisions or to feel entitled to participate in politics. This article reviews the dominant (individualist and institutionalist) approaches to explaining inequalities in political participation and highlights recent “relational” work that offers a more integrated perspective on political engagement and class position.

“Since this is the editorial section I intend to express my opinion”: Inequality and expressivity in letters to the editor

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the argumentative style and the characteristics of writers of newspaper letters to the editor. Writers are more likely to be White, male, older, more politically active, and less likely to be politically moderate than the local population. Inequality in political participation persists in this forum. Gender and sense of local political efficacy influence how letter writers make their points. Letters to the editor mostly display inequalities similar to other forms of political participation.

Social Inequality in Political Participation: The Dark Sides of Individualisation

Has the participatory gap between social groups widened over the past decades? And if so, how can it be explained? Based on a re-analysis of 94 electoral surveys in eight Western European countries between 1956 and 2009, this article shows that the difference in national election turnout between the half of the population with the lowest level of education and the half with the highest has increased. It shows that individualisation – the decline of social integration and social control – is a major cause of this trend. In their electoral choices, citizens with fewer resources – in terms of education – rely more heavily on cues and social control of the social groups to which they belong. Once the ties to these groups loosen, these cues and mobilising norms are no longer as strong as they once were, resulting in an increasing abstention of the lower classes on Election Day. In contrast, citizens with abundant resources rely much less on cues and social control, and the process of individualisation impacts on their participatory behaviour to a much lesser extent. The article demonstrates this effect based on a re-analysis of five cumulative waves of the European Social Survey.

Voter Turnout and Political Equality: Testing the ‘Law of Dispersion’ in a Swedish Natural Experiment

According to the ‘law of dispersion’, the level of inequality in political participation is higher when voter turnout is low. We empirically test this hypothesis by evaluating levels of voter turnout in the 2010 Swedish election to the Västra Götaland county council and in the 2011 re-election for the same county council. The re-election voter turnout was reduced by almost half, from 80.6 per cent to 44.1 per cent. Our results support the law of dispersion: the level of inequality in participation substantially increased between young and old, rich and poor, low and high educated and politically interested and uninterested.

Racial Differences in the Gender Gap in Political Participation in the American South, 1952–2004

The integration of women and African Americans into the politically active southern electorate in the 1960s and the 1970s was a turning point in the rise of the “New South” and essential to the establishment of a democratic political process in the region. Whereas there are numerous studies of the reenfranchisement of African Americans in the South in the literature, temporal changes in the gender gap in southern political participation have received less attention. Gender inequality in voting has historically been greatest in the South and was more resistant to change over time. This study is the first to examine the intersection of gender and racial inequality in political participation in the South over a period spanning several decades. Building on previous theories of political participation, including the civic voluntarism model and the strategic mobilization perspective, we develop and test a conceptual model based on the interplay between individual characteristics and the broader institutional context. Using data from the American National Election Studies, we examine racial differences in the gender gap in southern political participation over time using hierarchical age-period-cohort analysis. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications for the study of gender and racial inequality in political participation.

Varieties of Capitalism, Education and Inequalities in Political Participation

The positive association between education and voting participation is well-documented in the literature. What has not been studied so far is the variation of the micro-level effect of education across countries and whether the institutional set-up of the political economy might contribute to explaining this variation. The core claim of this chapter is that the degree of economic coordination influences the impact of education on participation on the micro level – on top of a host of alternative explanations. Relative to those with basic training, individuals with a vocational education are more likely to participate in elections in coordinated market economies compared to liberal market economies. We offer two explanations for this robust effect, centering on the impact of social networks and psychological effects. The empirical basis for this article is a multi-level analysis of survey data from the European Values Survey (2008).

Logiques de Mobilisation et Inégalités Sociales de Participation Électorale en France, 2002-2012

The presidential election of 2012 produced a high turn-out. Only 20 percent of the electorate abstained. This significant mobilization, however, hides renewed social inequalities in political participation that seemed to have previously disappeared. Based on national and local data surveys, this paper shows that certain kinds of people are less likely to vote than the average citizen. While traditionally more prone to abstain than other voters, many young, poorly educated, and suburban people participated in the presidential election in 2007, but not in 2012. In this later case, they seem to have not been interested in the electoral campaign.

Class Inequalities in Political Participation and the ‘Death of Class’ Debate

The aim of this article is to offer an empirical contribution to the debate on the political significance of class, and especially the relationship between class position and political participation. The ‘death of class’ debate has primarily addressed only one aspect of politics — voting. The perspective offered here widens the scope of analysis to include the main forms of political action available to citizens in modern democracies. In this article, a comparative cross-national approach is adopted, using data on 20 European countries that are included in the first wave of the European Social Survey. Using log-linear models as a descriptive device, the article identifies a basic pattern of association between class and participation, points out the main national deviations from that pattern and makes a comparative assessment of the relative magnitude of overall levels of class inequalities in participation in different forms of political activity. The results bear out the continuing relevance of class as a source of differentiation of political behaviour and tend to confirm previous research regarding the validity of empirical generalizations on class patterns of political participation.

Explaining the Persistence and Eventual Decline of the Gender Gap in Voter Registration and Turnout in the American South, 1956–1980

Recent studies of the gender gap in politics tend to focus on candidate choice rather than registration and turnout. This shift in focus away from gender inequality in political participation may be due to the finding in several studies of U.S. voting behavior since 1980 that differences in rates of registration and voting between men and women are modest and not statistically significant after controlling for traditional predictors of participation. However, we argue that researchers have overlooked the substantial gender gap in registration and voting in the South. While the gender gap in participation virtually disappeared outside the South by the 1950s, substantial gender differences in rates of voter registration and turnout remained in the South throughout the 1950s and 1960s. We test several explanations for the persistence of the gender gap in registration and voting in the South in the 1950s and 1960s and why it began to decline in the 1970s. These explanations include female labor force participation, resources, mobilization, and political engagement. Using American National Election Studies data for every presidential election year from 1956 to 1980, we employ heteroscedastic probit models within a cross-classified multilevel age-period-cohort framework to examine the declining gender gap in voter registration and turnout in the South. The results indicate that the decline of the gender gap is due to converging rates of political engagement and employment for women and men in the South during this time period. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications.

The Inequality of Participation: Re-examining the Role of Social Stratification and Post-Communism on Political Participation in Europe

This article compares the determinants of political participation, from voting and signing petitions to boycotting, across 23 European coun- tries, posing the question whether and to what degree social inequalities in political participation differ between post-communist and Western countries. The data for the analysis is from the second round of the ESS survey, con- ducted in 2004-2005. The analysis focuses on the role of education, occupa- tion, and gender in shaping the chances of engaging in political action, while also controlling for a range of sociological, political, and demographic vari- ables. Interaction effects between individual variables and a post-communist dummy variable are used to directly compare the statistical signifi cance of the difference in coeffi cients between post-communist and Western countries. The article fi nds that the observed effects of the post-communist context are actually accounted for by the indirect effects of a number of individual-level variables. In particular, education, occupation, and gender have stronger ef- fects in post-communist countries than Western countries on many forms of political participation; in other words, the post-communist countries exhibit somewhat larger inequalities in political participation than in the West.

Digital Disempowerment in a Network Society

The objective of this article is to examine how the inequalities of participation in network society governmental systems affect the extent that individuals are empowered or disempowered within those systems. By using published data in conjunction with theories of communication, a critical secondary data analysis was conducted. This critical analysis argues that the Digital Divide involves issues concerning how democracy and democratization are related to computer-mediated communication (CMC) and its role in political communication. As the roles of CMC/ICT systems expand in political communication, existing Digital Divide gaps are likely to contribute to structural inequalities in political participation. These inequalities work against democracy and political empowerment for some people, while at the same time producing expanded opportunities of political participation for others. This raises concerns about who benefits the most from electronic government in emerging network societies.

From the Gap to the Chasm

This article focuses on gender and ethnic inequalities in political participation across non-Hispanic whites and Mexican Americans. Using a mainstream model of participation, the authors find that differences in the levels of resources, motivations, and opportunities effectively account for gender gaps within the two populations. However, this mainstream model leaves largely unexplained the chasm in participation across non-Hispanic whites and Mexican Americans. The authors incorporate socialization experiences specific to Mexican Americans to identify the roots of participatory inequality across these groups. Differences in linguistic, educational, and general assimilation account for participatory differences across Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites. Equalizing these factors closes the chasm in participation.

Marketization, Democratization, and Women's Participation in Village Elections in Contemporary Rural China: A Study of a North China Village

ABSTRACT This research attempts to understand women and politics in the context of market reforms and democratic elections in a rural Chinese village. More specifically, it examines how marketization, which started in 1978, and democratization, which was initiated in 1987, together have influenced women's participation in local village elections. Based on qualitative information collected from interviews and focus groups conducted over a three-year period between 2002 and 2004, it is evident that although women's political participation is strong, there is gender inequality in political participation at this grassroots level. Further, political participation is mediated by interactions between the state, the community, and individual families.

Unequal at the starting line: Creating participatory inequalities across generations and among groups

We investigate how inequalities in political participation are shaped across generations by considering the influence of family background-in particular, parents' education and political involvement-on political participation. We pursue this issue, first, for individuals, investigating the effects of parental characteristics on the participatory profile of their offspring. Then, we use what we have learned to understand how group differences in political participation-between women and men and among Latinos, African Americans, and Anglo Whites-are rooted in the legacy of class and political background and in experiences throughout the life cycle.

Socioeconomic inequality in voting participation and self-rated health.

This study tested the hypothesis that disparities in political participation across socioeconomic status affect health. Specifically, the association of voting inequality at the state level with individual self-rated health was examined. A multilevel study of 279,066 respondents to the Current Population Survey (CPS) was conducted. State-level inequality in voting turnout by socioeconomic status (family income and educational attainment) was derived from November CPS data for 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996. Individuals living in the states with the highest voting inequality had an odds ratio of fair/poor self-rated health of 1.43 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.22, 1.68) compared with individuals living in the states with the lowest voting inequality. This odds ratio decreased to 1.34 (95% CI = 1.14, 1.56) when state income inequality was added and to 1.27 (95% CI = 1.10, 1.45) when state median income was included. The deleterious effect of low individual household income on self-rated health was most pronounced among states with the greatest voting and income inequality. Socioeconomic inequality in political participation (as measured by voter turnout) is associated with poor self-rated health, independently of both income inequality and state median household income.