Political Participation Research Articles

Equal Representation: Challenges and Opportunities

This article explores the contours of the highly politicised and gendered spaces in Kenya that female aspirant leaders still struggle to overcome in order to participate fully as citizens. It aims to highlight the exclusionary nature of the political and democratic space in Kenya, notwithstanding constitutional and legal provisions for gender equity. We argue that enjoying a simple majority in terms of overall population figures (50.1%) has not necessarily translated into political capital for Kenyan women, who are perpetually locked out of meaningful political participation due to entrenched patriarchy and sexism. The introduction of political affirmative action through the two-thirds gender rule augmented female representation in parliamentary and other public and legislative offices. This was also meant to regulate the monopoly of any one gender in the occupation of political and public positions. The article utilises secondary data and related theories in supporting the argument that the insignificant number of female parliamentarians is, inter alia, a result of entrenched and skewed power relations. Outdated cultural practices, gender stereotypes, negative rhetoric and ethnicity, patriarchy, and a lack of economic and social capital have indeed adversely affected women’s trajectory in politics. Results of the past two elections (2013 and 2017) have indicated that gender skewing in parliament and other competitive positions in the public service is still an issue to reckon with. This, we observe, is tantamount to non-compliance with constitutional and legal provisions that were geared toward achieving an equal society. We suggest the implementation of the gender rule as envisaged in the 2010 Constitution. A conducive legal framework, coupled with collaborative efforts of relevant state and non-state actors, is paramount. A significant and current discussion should encompass new realignments aimed at disrupting and deconstructing the pervasive gendered relationships.

Federalism and Democracy: A Bibliometric Review and Future Research Agenda

This study aims to explore the complex relationship between federalism and democracy through bibliometric review through Scopus database from 1962 to 2024. Based on 522 articles extracted on “Federalism and Democracy” from Scopus database, highlights how these two political concepts interact across countries including United States, Ethiopia, and Nigeria and historical contexts, emphasizing the complementary yet potentially conflicting nature of their relationship. The paper points out the critical role of federalism in enhancing democratic principles such as accountable governments, increased political participation, and protection against majority tyranny. It also acknowledges the challenges and tensions arising from intergovernmental coordination and democratic governance within federal systems. Authors have done a comprehensive analysis, exploring the dynamics of fiscal policy, legal and constitutional frameworks, and the influence of federalism within the European Union. It further examines the application of federalism and democracy in specific national contexts, including the United States, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, to illustrate the diverse ways these concepts evolve and impact societies. Through this exploration, the paper provides insights into how federalism can either strengthen or weaken democracy based on factors such as party politics, fiscal decentralization, and the legal-institutional setup. This study sets a future research agenda by exploring 20 research questions spread across ten thematic clusters. These clusters cover a wide range of topics, from fiscal policy and party politics in federal systems to the role of political parties, elections, legal aspects of federalism, and new developments in European federalism. By outlining these future research directions, the paper aims to guide further scholarly exploration and understanding of the complex relationship between federalism and democracy.

Why are Older Israeli Arabs not Part of the Protests Against the Judicial Reform? A Qualitative Study.

In the protests against the proposed judicial reform that began in early 2023 in Israel, the lack of participa• Policymakers should make efforts to reduce the socioeconomic gaps between older people from minority and majority groups.tion of Israeli Arabs, especially the absence of older Israeli Arabs, was noticeable. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the attitudes of older Israeli Arabs regarding the proposed judicial reform in Israel and to explore the reasons for their absence from the protests. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 older Israeli Arabs. Thematic analysis revealed two main themes. The first pertained to the attitudes of this cohort in relation to the judicial reform. Participants unanimously opposed the judicial reform and believed it could seriously harm Israeli Arabs by increasing discrimination against them in employment, housing, and the receipt of social and health services. The second theme pertained to the reasons for Israeli Arabs' nonparticipation in the protests, which included: 1) perceiving the protests as an internal Jewish conflict; 2) being accustomed to discrimination; 3) a perceived lack of political efficacy 3) having concerns about openly expressing political positions; 4) being in poor health; and 5) being a woman. Our findings provide important insights regarding the barriers to participation in politics and decision-making processes among older people in minority groups.

Expression of political views by school teachers: Teachersʼ and parentsʼ perspectives and mindsets regarding the real and the ideal

The current study examines the perspectives and mindsets of Israeli teachers and parents pertaining to political participation and expression of political opinions by Israeli teachers. For that purpose, qualitative methodology was applied. The main findings showed that about one fifth of the teachers and less than a third of the parents could not even name a relevant restriction concerning political participation and expression of teachers. On the other hand, a vast majority of the teachers can indeed recognize the differences between political education and party education.

Revisiting the Origins of Felony Disenfranchisement in the United States

Abstract We trace the origin of felony disenfranchisement from the colonial period through Reconstruction. On the eve of the Civil War, three-quarters of states had criminal disenfranchisement statutes. These laws were based on “legal moralism” principles, which limited the franchise to those in good standing with the community. Efforts at disenfranchisement grew as access to the ballot increased and criminal justice reforms replaced capital and corporal punishment for imprisonment. We highlight important transformations in felony disenfranchisement during Reconstruction, specifically in new state constitutions and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. All but one Southern state included felon disenfranchisement in their new constitutions that the Republican-controlled Congress ratified for readmission to the United States. Radical Republicans in Congress and state legislatures were in most cases advocates of felony disenfranchisement to exclude former Confederates from political participation.

Are men and women contacted differently by electoral campaigns? A cross-national examination of gender gaps

Although a large literature investigates cross-national differences in party mobilization, little is known about cross-national gender differences in electoral campaign contacts. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral System Module 4, which includes data from 2011 to 2016 and 32 countries, I find gendered patterns in reported contacts across different activities performed by campaigns. I test two potential explanation for these variations: electoral systems and women’s political participation. First, I find that women’s likelihood of reported contacts increases to a greater extent than men’s when electoral systems provide incentives for campaigns to increase their contact rates, decreasing and even reversing gender gaps. Second, I find limited support regarding the impact of the percentage of women in legislatures on gender differences in reported electoral campaign contacts.

Treading carefully: the environment and political participation in science education

AbstractPolitics and science are inextricably connected, particularly in relation to the climate emergency and other environmental crises, yet science education is an often overlooked site for engaging with the political dimensions of environmental issues. This study examines how science teachers in England experience politics—specifically political participation—in relation to the environment in school science, against a background of increased obstruction in civic space. The study draws on an analysis of theoretically informed in-depth interviews with eleven science teachers about their experiences of political participation in relation to environmental issues. We find that politics enters the science classroom primarily through informal conversations initiated by students rather than planned by teachers. When planned for, the emphasis is on individual, latent–political (civic) engagement rather than manifest political participation. We argue that this is a symptom of the post-political condition and call for a more enabling environment for discussing the strengths and limitations of different forms of political participation in school science.

The Politics of Personal Crisis: How Life Disruptions Shape Political Participation

AbstractEconomic risk and instability are urgent and central facts in the lives of increasing numbers of Americans. Though experienced as “personal,” the causes of life disruptions like unemployment, eviction, and loss of health insurance are also deeply political. In this paper, we build on existing “single crisis” studies to offer a comprehensive theoretical and empirical picture of how life disruptions shape political behavior. We use several large surveys to show that personal crises generally dampen turnout but sometimes spur other political acts. We also find that highly politicized crises (such as those related to COVID) boost all forms of participation. Our findings speak to the importance of considering life disruptions in the study of political behavior, particularly in an era when the lives of Americans are especially precarious.

Gender Equality and Women's Rights : A Study in Indian Constitution

The concept of “Gender Equality” is a fundamental human right. Gender equality refers to the equality of responsibilities, rights, and opportunities for every human being. Every individual of the society yearns to achieve equal status and rights in their life. Indian Constitution gives fundamental rights and basics duties to the citizens of India. Women’s rights are recognized as a right in itself, a transformative tool for achieving progress in all other areas of social and economic development. In the present time women’s rights denote the gender equality, and that plays a pivotal role in society. Women’s rights in Indian Constitution leads to a transformation of the structural factors and that reduced gender inequality. Women are getting opportunities in every aspect in their lives, including political, social, economic and cultural. The main objectives of this research are to understand how women are getting their rights through Indian Constitution and to explore the issues and challenges for women.. This is a qualitative and secondary data based study. This paper also focused on how gender equality plays a role in Indian Constitution. Indian Constitutional articles defined equally rights for every human being; Constitution gives rights for being economically independent, for achieving equal status in society, and for equally participation in politics. This paper discussed about the important constitutional articles for gender equality in India. In this research some obstacles have defined on the path of women’s rights and gender equality. In the conclusion part, this paper has been described that Indian constitution mentions lots of articles for gender equality and human rights. Women’s social and economic conditions are improving through constitutional rights; now they have rights to live their life. But because of some strictly taboos and customs in society women are not utilizing their constitutional rights, and still they are facing gender inequality problems. And it can be seen that gender equality is a far cry. Women should be educated; through education, they will be aware of their rights and be able to utilize all those constitutional rights.

Analysis of Youth Empowerment Policies in Supporting Sustainable Development in Developing Countries

This research aims to analyze policies for youth empowerment in supporting sustainable development in developing countries. Through a literature review method, this study explores key factors influencing the effectiveness of youth empowerment policies, evaluates implemented strategies, and formulates relevant policy recommendations. Findings reveal that access to education and training, poverty alleviation and unemployment, as well as political participation and social engagement are crucial aspects of youth empowerment. Holistic, inclusive, and integrated policies are required to ensure effective and sustainable youth empowerment. Policy recommendations include expanding access to education and training, developing locally-based poverty alleviation programs, and strengthening political participation and social engagement of youth. The implementation of these policies necessitates cross-sectoral and intergenerational collaboration.

Segregation by Design: An Analysis of Apartheid-Enabling Constitutional Provisions

This paper is a critical examination of constitutional provisions that enable apartheid systems, with a focus on how they allow segregation and discrimination to be established and perpetuated. Despite the global condemnation of apartheid following its horrors in South Africa, similar traits are still visible across a number of jurisdictions today, notably in Israel's treatment of Palestinians and Myanmar's oppression of the Rohingya. This study investigates three of such highest laws of the land, analyzing the roles they play in legitimizing such regimes and how they are instrumentalized to sustain segregation by design. Employing a substantive and structural comparative analytical approach, the research scrutinizes the constitutions of South Africa, Israel, and Myanmar, unearthing common denominators that facilitate apartheid practices. These include the creation of identity-based citizenship conditions, provisions allowing discriminatory treatment, constraints on the political participation of marginalized groups, and the entrenchment of power that hinders reformative action. The findings reveal that apartheid-enabling provisions do not necessarily explicitly endorse segregation. Instead, they often afford broad legislative powers that can be exploited to this end, as was the case in Apartheid South Africa. Similarly, the constitutions of Israel and Myanmar offer constitutional protection to selected ethnic groups, legitimizing and institutionalizing segregation. The research concludes with the identification of at least four key elements common across the studied constitutions that contribute to the maintenance of apartheid systems: differentiated citizenship status, legitimized segregationist practices, limited political participation for certain demographics, and entrenched power structures resistant to change.

Civility and Environmental Politics

In this article, we offer a normative analysis of environmental politics through the lens of civility. First, we explain what civility is by identifying its three key dimensions: civility as politeness, moral civility and justificatory civility. We then examine various instances of environmental politics and activism through the lens of civility, by focusing on the complex intersections between its three dimensions as well as the hierarchical relationship that exists between them, with moral civility taking precedence over justificatory civility and the latter over civility as politeness. This analysis, we argue, can help us to formulate more nuanced judgements about the desirability of different instances of civil and uncivil environmental politics and activism, and to develop educational strategies for preparing policymakers, environmental activists and citizens more generally to be civil participants in environmental politics.

Dunaway, Johanna & Searles, Kathleen (2023). News and Democratic Citizens in the Mobile Era. Oxford University Press

The work under analysis is doubly indispensable in view of its disruptive component, but also as a relevant update to the debate around the social and political impact of DMs in contemporary societies. We categorise it as disruptive in that it uses data analysis methods from psychology, such as measuring skin conductance when paying attention to the news, which are still a minority in the field of communication sciences, as well as sociology. We also categorise the work as a powerful contribution to updating the debate around new and emerging forms of digital inequality, with widespread implications in the socio-economic and political spheres, conditioning access to political participation.

‘Expression is power’: Gender, residual culture and political aspiration at the Cumnock School of Oratory, 1870–1900

AbstractThis article investigates the ways in which late‐nineteenth‐century students at Northwestern University's Cumnock School of Oratory mobilised elocution training and parlour performance to foster mixed‐gender public discourse. I use student publications to reconstruct parlour meetings in which women and men adapted traditions of conversational speech to allocate artistic and political participation equally across genders. Women expanded their expressive range and political aspirations, while men gained new understandings of manliness and women's rights. With the onset of muscular masculinity in the 1890s, oratory students reworked their performance culture into an act of campus resistance and a blueprint for social reform.

The Public Purposes of Private Education: a Civic Outcomes Meta-Analysis

Since Plato and Aristotle, political theorists have discussed the important role of education in forming democratic citizens. They disagree, however, over whether public or private schools are more effective at nurturing citizenship. We conduct a statistical meta-analysis to identify the average association between private schooling and measures of four central civic outcomes: political tolerance, political participation, civic knowledge and skills, and voluntarism and social capital. Our search identifies 13,301 initial target studies, ultimately yielding 531 effects from 57 qualified studies drawing from 40 different databases. Using Robust Variance Estimation, we determine that, on average, private schooling boosts any civic outcome by 0.055 standard deviations over public schooling. Religious private schooling, particularly, is strongly associated with positive civic outcomes. The evidence is especially strong that private schooling is correlated with higher levels of political tolerance and political knowledge and skills. We discuss heterogeneities, robustness checks, and implications.

Vive la république européenne? Reading The European Balcony Project as artistic counter-public

ABSTRACT The article first contextualizes the European Balcony Project (EBP), a manifesto written by authors Ulrike Guérot, Robert Menasse, and theatre director Milo Rau who subsequently put it up for discussion in various public fora. On 10 November 2018, artists and citizens performed the manifesto and proclaimed the European Republic from (theatre) balconies and public places in 25 European countries. They encouraged a dialogue that sought to promote a more diverse public sphere. In my reading, the EBP emerges as a contemporary version of Oskar Negt’s and Alexander Kluge’s public counter sphere, as a real and imaginary community in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk in an arena of discursive interaction and democratic practice. By reading the texts in the context of a political avantgarde project, I show how the interventions aim to set a counterpoint to the resurgence of nationalism and promote a vision of a democratic continent based in shared values. My article thus illustrates how public art performances such as the EBP contribute to the thickening of imaginative relations throughout Europe and might aid in the construction of a larger European cultural identity.

The Complexity of Female Empowerment in India

On a global scale, India ranks very poorly in terms of gender equality. This overall indicator masks important heterogeneities across the separate measures of female empowerment. India scores very highly with regards to equality of civil liberties and the political participation of women. But the country falls well below the global average with respect to equal access to economic resources and protection from gender-based violence. These poorer empowerment indicators have persisted not only in the wake of strong economic progress, but also in the context of an impressive set of government led reforms and policies targeting women. These different initiatives have successfully augmented women’s agency in both the private and public spheres of life, but women and girls still face extreme discrimination and violence. The salience of restrictive local customs appears to be a core hindrance towards transformative change. This paper reviews the economics literature which examines this complexity across the different dimensions of female empowerment in India. It highlights the newly emerging research focused on ameliorating gender biased norms and discusses potential steps forward. JEL Classifications: J12, J16

The cost of politics: how money acts as a barrier for women in politics in the Caribbean

ABSTRACT This article explores the barriers to women’s political representation, focusing on financial challenges associated with political campaigns. It contributes to the emerging body of research on the gendered effects of money in politics, particularly in the Global South, by documenting the financial challenges faced by women political candidates in the Anglophone Caribbean. Data was collected through elite interviews with women politicians in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The women were asked, among other things, to i) identify the barriers to women’s political representation and ii) recount their experiences while seeking to enter politics. Financial constraints emerged as a critical barrier to women’s political entry and participation. Although some women manage to enter the political arena and win elections, they nonetheless find the costs associated with politics burdensome and a barrier to increasing political representation for women. We conclude that, like their counterparts elsewhere, the financial demands of engaging in politics are exorbitant for women in politics in the Anglo-Caribbean due to their general exclusion from influential funding networks predominantly controlled by the “old boys’ club”; reliance on personal resources; balancing childcare and other gendered roles with demanding fundraising activities; and navigating the system of political patronage. This burden was incredibly challenging for “political neophytes” or women newcomers.

The interactive effects of policies: Insights for policy feedback theory from a qualitative study on homelessness

AbstractThe policy feedback literature has long argued that policies influence politics. Several scholars have examined the interpretive and resource effects of policies on political participation. However, how different policy design characteristics – say their generosity and their delivery – interact to influence political engagement requires further attention. This article demonstrates that policy characteristics within and between policies interact and can have counteracting or complementary effects on engagement. Through a comparative study of homelessness in Melbourne, Australia and Toronto, Canada, and drawing on over 100 interviews with individuals experiencing homelessness, service providers, and policymakers, this article demonstrates the complex effects of policies. Qualitative interview data reveal that different characteristics of policy interact to influence the venue and form of participation, as well as the experiences associated. Anatomizing policies provides nuance to our understanding of effects and interactions with important contributions and areas of future research for policy feedback theory.

The Influence of Sexism and Incivility in WhatsApp Political Discussions on Affective Polarization: Evidence from a 2022 Multi-Party Election in India

In contemporary political discourse, the concern of affective polarization, often fueled by uncivil and sexist discourse, is notably evident in digital communication contexts like WhatsApp. In this study, we examined the potential effects of uncivil and sexist messages as well as moderator interventions against these messages coming from political in- and out-group members in such political groups through a survey experiment ( N = 1,464) fielded during the 2022 Uttar Pradesh (India) Legislative Assembly Elections. We investigate these questions and extend the prior work on affective polarization by introducing a new measure of Average Inter-party Affective Distance, which provides a single metric to index overall polarization in a multi-party election context. Our results showed that exposure to sexist uncivil messages had no discernible effect on affective polarization, political participation, and voting intention. Additionally, moderator warnings against incivility had no significant effects. However, we observed a variation in how respondents processed these messages based on their preexisting attitudes; notably, individuals with less sexist views were more inclined to vote after being exposed to sexist uncivil messages. These findings suggest that the influence of incivility and sexism in messaging platforms like WhatsApp on the wider electorate’s political behavior and attitudes is relatively limited. This research contributes to our understanding of the role of digital political communication, highlighting the importance of message content and preexisting individual differences in shaping affective polarization and mobilization.