Political Apathy Research Articles

Bowling Online, Not Alone: Online Social Capital and Political Participation in Singapore

Since gaining independence in 1965, the Singapore government has relentlessly pursued economic growth and prosperity, while at the same time exercising tight political controls, which has largely eroded traditional political participation among the citizens (George, 2003; Rodan, 1998). In the economic domain, Singapore’s performance has indeed been very impressive; the country was recently ranked as the second in the world regarding the Global Potential Competitiveness and rated as the Most Competitive Asian Economy, among numerous other accolades (Economic Development Board, 2007). At the same time, its democratic record has been less than stellar, earning Singapore a ‘‘partly free’’ rating in the Freedom in the World report (Freedom House, 2007) and a ‘‘noticeable problems’’ label regarding the state of media freedoms (Reporters Without Borders, 2007). Not surprisingly, several studies and reports have indicated high levels of political apathy in Singaporeans (e.g. Chan & Wong, 2001; Veloo, 2002; Yap, 2000). However, since Singapore has universal suffrage and all citizens over 21 are required to vote by law, this apathy has not been reflected in the election turnout rates. In recent years, researchers have suggested that the Internet may play an important role in reviving and rejuvenating civic and political participation in Singapore (George & Yee, 2007; Kluver & Soon, 2004; Tan, 2003; Yeo, 2003). Given Singapore’s estimated 90 percent literacy rate for above 15-year olds (U.S. Department of State, 2007) and highly developed information infrastructure with 99% connectivity (IDA, 2007), it can be argued that its populace is in a good position to take advantage of the new forms of social connectivity. Singapore’s

Education, Democracy and Digital Media

Social scientists have often claimed that the reason for the well-known and widespread phenomenon of juvenile political apathy is their thorough exclusion from actual democratic politics. Politics does not speak their language, nor do they speak the language of politicians. Therefore, the youth’s views and interests are not represented to any significant degree within or by the existing institutions. The question arises of how to reconnect the youth to politics. New media technology has this potential. The project "Youth in the Centre", discussed in the paper, shows how new media technology can be adopted in schools for the purpose of bringing up a new generation of active democratic citizens.

Winds of change in the Arab world: a comparative look at a political gratification and effects study of the Al-Jazeera satellite channel and Kuwaiti government television

A telephone survey was conducted of Kuwaiti citizens' preferences for two types of national news programmes. Of the 490 Kuwaiti respondents, about 82 viewed the Al-Jazeera satellite channel (JSC), a liberal television model that provides news and political programming, while 98 watched the news and political programmes on Kuwaiti Television (KTV), a government television model. Two factor analyses comparing gratifications sought and obtained from the two television models revealed that Kuwaitis were similarly gratified by both, but ranked importance and magnitude differently. While regression tests and partial correlations revealed that trust in the Kuwaiti government correlated with all gratifications obtained by watching KTV, they did not correlate with any of the gratifications obtained by viewing JSC. Political apathy was negatively predicted by the quality of the JSC's news coverage and by programme gratification, while it was positively predicted by the KTV's free provision of information. Endorsement of the establishment of political parties in Kuwait was predicted by the JSC's information gratification. The study concluded that the programming made available through the JSC might seriously provide the impetus for change in the Arab world.

Little Brother (review)

Reviewed by: Little Brother April Spisak Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. Tor, 2008 382p ISBN 978-0-7653-1985-2 $17.95 R Gr. 7–12 Marcus considers himself an average teen, if a bit on the tech-savvy geeky side, until a horrific terrorist attack in California (and an unfortunate misunderstanding about his role in the event) changes his life forever. After he and his friends are questioned for days without official charges, decent treatment, or even notification of their families, all but one are released and warned that they will now be under constant surveillance. The remainder of the volume is primarily a well-written and edgy radical technology how-to about all the ways teens (or adults) can resist governmental and police efforts to trample and abuse freedom. Marcus embarks on a quest to save his still detained friend, falls in love with an equally intelligent and progressive girl, and becomes the anonymous online leader of an underground movement to rein in the increasingly dictatorial powers that be, but his story is essentially background to the elaborate and clear descriptions of the individuals, technology, and methods that could all be researched and used by readers themselves. The hybrid of fiction and instructional guide could be an uncomfortable fit, but Doctorow makes it all so compelling, whether explaining how to hack an Xbox or waxing poetic on two otherwise brilliant teens negotiating the inevitably awkward but endearing pursuit of first love, that readers will be captivated by the whole complex mix. And if readers aren’t inspired to direct action by the book itself, then the intriguing and passionate afterwords by the original Xbox hacker, a security technologist, and Doctorow himself, who offers an informal annotated bibliography of important works, may nudge a few away from political apathy or measured, organized protests and into some radical acts of their own. [End Page 113] Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

From Quietism to Quiet Politics: Inheriting Emerson's Antislavery Testimony

While Ralph Waldo Emerson has been increasingly acknowledged as an American thinker influential in the evolution of nineteenth-century philosophy, his essays have largely failed to escape the charges of quietism and political apathy bestowed upon them in his lifetime. Yet if Emerson insisted on the importance of silence to the antislavery movement, it was perhaps due to his theory that one's deepest obligations become involuntarily part of the self and thus refuse to withstand representation in direct speech. My article reads Emerson's writing in this light, suggesting more broadly that the common notion that silence and politics are antithetical be reconsidered with regard to the possibility that what constitutes political speech need not be explicit — or even vocal.

Political apathy weakens our profession

Political apathy weakens our profession

Strong liberalism: habits of mind for democratic citizenship

In this age of total war on terrorism, many liberals fail to recognize the dangers of adopting the methods of their enemies - of meeting propaganda with propaganda, cruelty with cruelty, and violence with violence. Other liberals reject even modest efforts to teach and regulate good citizenship, fearing that in doing so they will come to resemble their enemies. Can liberal democracy be strengthened and secured without either compromising basic liberal principles or emasculating fundamental liberal purposes? The great totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century are gone, but the need for has never been more urgent.Jason A. Scorza argues that liberalism can generate an account of citizenship responsive to such pressing contemporary challenges as political fear, political apathy, and conformist political membership. Strong Liberalism is founded on understanding thoroughly the canonical defenders of liberal democracy (John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, and Judith Shklar), moving beyond the thinking of prominent contemporary theorists (Stephen Macedo, William Galston, and Thomas Spragens), and parrying the arguments of liberalism's critics (Benjamin Barber, Michael Sandel, and Mary Ann Glendon).Scorza imparts a sharp theory of that summons liberal philosophy to the battlefield of the inner life of politics and recalls it to its own essential but often overlooked strengths: civic friendship, political courage, political self-reliance, civic toleration, and political irreverence. The theory of strong liberalism accepts that civic strength is rooted in civic pluralism. Liberal democracy is best served by the cultivation of multiple examples of good citizenship rather than by the insistence that a single, ideal civic character can be identified and universally imposed through civic education.

Viewing and avoidance of the Al-Jazeera satellite television channel in Kuwait: a uses and gratifications perspective

Employing the uses and gratifications perspective, this study examined factors that motivated Kuwaitis to watch or avoid watching the Al-Jazeera satellite channel and their relationships with political interest and trust in government. Viewers obtained several gratifications that included opinion leadership, free marketplace of information, and surveillance. Those who avoided watching Al-Jazeera did so for partisanship, biased coverage and political apathy. The relationships between gratifications derived from watching Al-Jazeera with political interest and trust in government revealed that those who were very interested in politics were more likely to watch Al-Jazeera for its opinion leadership and surveillance functions. Importantly, the results of this study showed that trust in government was negatively associated with Al-Jazeera's role as a free marketplace of information, its credibility in news presentation, and Kuwait's image in the Arab world. The results of this study support and reinforce our understanding of the various postulates of the uses and gratifications theory. Satellite television networks such as Al-Jazeera have created a free marketplace of ideas and information that would eventually engender citizens to speak for themselves rather than allow authorities to speak for them. Furthermore, these networks have become open forums for average Arabs to express their ideas and exchange views.

Using the Classroom to Cultivate Student Support for Participation in Campus Life: The Call for Civic Education Interventions

Extracurricular campus activities mirror the effects of associational life on political participation (Kuh 1995; Pascarella, Ethington, and Smart 1988; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). As encouraging student participation in such activities can be difficult (Kuh, Schuh, Whitt, Andreas, Lyons, Strange, Krehbiel, and MacKay 1991), this project describes an effort to promote peer enhancement of campus life. Students in a persuasion course developed a campaign to increase participation on campus. Pre- and postsemester questionnaires, as well as focus groups, reveal that students anticipated participating in more campus and community activities, and their attitudes toward the purpose of college broadened. Self-efficacy regarding several political tasks also improved. Students in a control group experienced no similar changes, suggesting that classroom activities can address current college students' political apathy. The conclusion calls for political scientists, who are the most familiar with declining political participation and the ameliorating effects of associational life, to initiate interdisciplinary interventions with the potential to reach the most alienated college students.

Moral Rights: Diagnosis and Rehabilitation

The United States offers some of the strongest intellectual property laws in the world. Why then does U.S. law grant such weak moral rights protection? The answer is not simply political apathy. Rather, it stems from a long-standing perception that moral rights conflict with fundamental American cultural, historical, and legal traditions. The first part of this manuscript presents a brief history of moral rights law. The next part examines the varying forces that have contributed to the poor reception of moral rights in the United States. After an examination of the limited protection of the Visual Artists Rights Act, the paper shows that moral rights are more compatible with American socio-legal theory than currently believed. This article concludes that the more harmoniously moral rights are viewed, the more likely courts will interpret them less restrictively and Congress will offer less resistance to expanding moral rights protections.

Survival Always Trumps Ideology: A Case Study

Determining the extent to which democracy has taken root in Latin America represents a great challenge amidst the political changes seen in the region in the last decade. This paper explores the political views of families living in extreme poverty in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile, by analyzing their socioeconomic and political realities within the framework that establishes the characteristics of a democratic government. This longitudinal study used a multiple case study approach for this in-depth exploration and was framed around the concept of human agency. Results from this analysis show this population is keenly aware of politics and how they impact their social and economic environment. Political apathy reflects a discontent with gobernability and social and economic inequities and does not carry over into families' agency in terms of negotiating their survival and the possibility of a better future for their children. The theoretical and practical implications of adhering to democrat...

David Ost, The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe

Anger, bitterness, and frustration are inseparable from politics. In many ways, they are political feelings par excellence. They may lurk behind social and cultural criticism serving as a necessary impetus for the entire critical enterprise. At the same time, anger is capable of shaping or reshaping social and political reality. Ultimately, it makes social reality, as far as various subversive or revolutionary activities are concerned. A successful mobilization of anger may come as a promise of hope for the future, and even may result in radical sociopolitical and sociocultural change. Yet the long process of transformation that follows anger and enthusiasm unavoidably reveals another face of anger, one that exposes itself in total disappointment and political apathy or, worse, in self-contempt and hatred. Anger anticipates and signifies the arrival of the new epoch and even of the new world order manifesting itself as a politics of universal human fellowship, openness, and sympathetic understanding. At the same time, anger can mark the end of expectations and put forward a politics of disenchantment. This ambivalence of anger especially applies to East European politics and postcommunist Europe in general where the organization and mobilization of anger was instrumental in orchestrating fundamental sociopolitical change and also in providing a new social and moral order. The Solidarity movement in Poland, which on 31 August 2005 celebrated its 25th anniversary, may exemplify this better than anything else. It was with sound reason that Zbigniew Brzezinski, commemorating Solidarity in Warsaw and Gdansk on 29-31 August 2005, compared the Solidarity movement with such great events in the political history of humankind as the American Revolution and Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent struggle against British colonial rule. At the same time, Brzezinski called upon his fellow Poles to renovate the political life of the country, to lift it to the higher level in terms of ideas and

Rebooting Democracy: Youth Participation in Politics in the UK

ABSTRACTYoung people in the UK are increasingly disinterested in ‘conventional politics’. This has been illustrated by the alarmingly low turnout of 18-24 year olds in the 2001 and 2005 general elections as well as in the shrinking and ageing memberships of political parties. Yet, young people remain interested in politics (broadly defined) and are active in alternative modes of political participation. The problem is not, therefore, political apathy, but alienation from the political system. This article looks at existing literature on youth participation, and presents new research, which—from the perspective of young people themselves—offers diagnoses of the current situation and potential solutions to increase participation in the political process.

The pleasures of learning at work: Foucault and phenomenology compared

This paper provides a comparative account of two conceptualisations of pleasure. The first draws on Foucault’s analysis of bio‐power. The second provides a phenomenological account where pleasure is viewed as an aspect of our immediate consciousness. These conceptualisations are illuminated through an analysis of employees’ accounts of learning at work. Overall, the paper demonstrates how, in a Foucauldian analysis, pleasure disappears as it becomes a cipher for power whereas within the phenomenological account pleasure is foregrounded but power disappears. The concluding section focuses on the problems of both conceptualisations and explores whether we should simply accept that different analytical frameworks do different work for us or whether we should be more concerned at the losses, and gains, associated with theoretical choices. The conclusion further asks whether a concern to foreground pleasure in accounts of learning represents an antidote to the pessimism of much critical analysis or whether we should treat pleasure as a morally duplicitous category that encourages political apathy.

Analyse de l'élection présidentielle des 22 avril et 6 mai et des élections législatives des 10 et 17 juin 2007: une rupture politique?

Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in the 2007 French presidential elections represents a true rupture: rupture with years of political apathy, rupture with what was an escalating rise of political protest, rupture with a "law" that since 1981 seemed to require that every outgoing majority be beaten. Sarkozy's electoral victory was substantial. It was built on a notion that what the French were looking for was a strong sense of direction, and it gave rise to a dynamic of striking change right after the election (a political opening to the left, a shift in presidential style, disarray in the Socialist Party, and the marginalization of the National Front).

Participação, oportunidades e interesses

The objective of this article is to discuss the topic of participation trying to evaluate the relevancy of the theory assumptions on the deliberative democracy for the understanding of the participative experiences that have been institutionalized in the country, as the example of the managing board of public policies and experiences of Participative Budget. Because the deliberative democracy is characterized as a model that rescues the principle of popular sovereignty anchored on the ideals of participative equality and pluralism, the set of problems and limits of the participation that the studies have listed, defy the search for analytical instruments that contribute for the disruption of reducing analyses, either for reiterating or naturalizing a supposed generalized apathy of the population; either for not problematizing a supposed relation (immediate) between democracy and participation. Far from getting the complexity of combinations of variables that are placed on the participative phenomena, this article intends to analyze two issues that have been pointed out, among others, in literature, as problems that mine the deliberative democracy, which are: the political apathy, and the issue of the interests – and the conflicts – within the participative processes. Key words: Participation; Deliberative democracy; Interests; Political apathy.

A Survey Study of Voting Behavior and Political Participation in Zhejiang

Two existing models are used to conceptualize the constrained and limited participation in the communist system. The mobilization model suggests that participation was so mobilized by the party/state that it was largely meaningless, while the disengagement model supports the idea that many communist citizens adopted non-participatory behaviors such as non-voting as a means of protest. This paper attempts to demonstrate the importance of a third model – the emergent democratic culture model. The survey results show that the participation index is in proportion to the number of elections in which a villager is involved; and a growing number of voters in Zhejiang are developing citizen-initiated participation, with rights consciousness.This research finds that the level of participation is influenced by three major factors: the perceived worth of the election itself, regularity of electoral procedures, and the fairness of electoral procedures. It also finds that parochial political culture and political apathy still exist, and the emergent democratic consciousness falls short of an ideal democratic standard. While a highly democratic culture helps to develop village democracy, the apathetic attitude continues to support the authoritarian leadership and structure in many villages. The paper also gives an account of survey research in rural China and offers a thoughtful critique of the use of voting and non-voting as the sole indicator of political participation.

Patty and Me: Performative Encounters between an Historical Body and the History of Images

This essay responds to Michael Bowman's call for “performed memories” that challenge the production and reproduction of knowledge. The author performs memories of her changing relationship to the Patty Hearst archive in order to resist the postmodern knowledge that nostalgia is (1) uniform and (2) the enemy of progressive political action. The author animates feminist nostalgia for Patty Hearst in order to demonstrate that encounters between viewers and cultural images are an integral if little understood aspect of subject formation and the ongoing, uneven process of coming into historical consciousness. The author performs memories before the Patty Hearst archive in order to see what inventional options can be created from old pictures. In so doing, she hopes to challenge a theoretical image that circulates in postmodern cultural theory and criticism: the amnesiac viewer doomed by her lack of history and addiction to fashion, to political apathy and/or commercial cooptation.

Cosmopolitan Aspirations: New Media, Citizenship Education and Youth in Latin America

A wide variety of supranational organizations and networks are currently promoting educational initiatives aimed at disseminating particular values and notions of citizenship in Latin America via new media and in particular the Internet. These organizations exercise a growing influence on educational objectives and techniques in the region. Despite the fact that access is still modest among many sectors in Latin America, the hope is that these new media will contribute to the eradication among young people of undesirable behaviour such as delinquency and political apathy, and instead foster a stronger sense of civic responsibility. That sense might underpin a more constructive, entrepreneurial global youth culture espousing universal, multicultural values rather than particularistic, parochial ones. The Internet is presented in such initiatives as possessing intrinsically educational, entrepreneurial and democratizing properties. The article explores the activities of supranational organizations and networks operating in Latin America, and seeks to provide a glimpse of the idealised youth identities that they envision. It is argued that the new roles assigned to education are shaped by new media optimism, cosmopolitan aspirations and a post-national rather than nationally anchored conception of citizenship. Theories of governance and governability are used to understand how these developments can be seen in terms of the globalization of politics and the ensuing changes in the forms, rationalities and techniques of governance in a wide range of issue areas, including education.

Learning about Power through Service: Qualitative and Quantitative Assessments of a Service-Learning Approach to American Government

Scholars of public opinion and socialization have documented extensively the declining levels of political knowledge and the increasing levels of political apathy and individualism among young people. The purpose of this paper is to assess an American Government course's ability to affect young people's perceptions of power in the political system and their role as citizens through the use of service-learning. The analysis includes qualitative data collected from students as well as from the community organization involved. Additionally, the results of a quasi-experiment conducted during one semester are presented. The results raise interesting questions not only about service-learning and its impact but also about how we should assess such programs.