Patterns Of Political Participation Research Articles

Citizen political participation in Kenya: a cross-sectional analysis

ABSTRACTCitizen participation in politics continues to be an issue of concern for the Kenyan democracy, which needs to be understood to be addressed. Much of the existing literature on this topic focuses on demographic factors, with no sufficient scholarship interrogating political culture and its influence on citizen political participation. In this thesis, I employ an empirical analysis of the determinants of political participation among Kenyans using primary data I collected through an online survey. My main argument is that political culture matters in determining the patterns of political participation among Kenyans. Results from probit regression analyses illustrate that political culture significantly predicts the levels of political participation among Kenyans, across age cohorts. These findings bring up the discussion on the current rate of citizen participation in politics in Kenya, especially in a world in which democracy is increasingly under threat, and promotes case study analyses, and understanding of participatory democracy.

Still proud at the polls? LGBT+ rights don't dilute the sexuality turnout gap

AbstractRecent research has shown that sexual and/or gender minority voters are prone to mobilizing when LGBT+ issues are on the political agenda. This increased level of political engagement is attributed to the experience of discrimination, understood both in legal and social terms, which spurs LGBT+ individuals to participate with the aim of advancing their rights. However, a crucial question remains unanswered: do these gaps in participation persist in contexts where core LGBT+ rights are protected? Drawing from comprehensive and verified data on the population of Sweden, this study finds evidence of a positive and sustained sexuality‐driven voter turnout gap across multiple elections. This gap manifests itself both shortly and a decade after the enactment of same‐sex marriage and shows no tangible signs of abating. In addition to improving our knowledge of political participation patterns among sexual minorities, these findings underscore the potential role of minority rights protection as a mechanism to ensure enduring inclusion of social minority groups within democratic processes.

Hong Kong Adolescents’ Participation in Political Activities: Correlates of Violent Political Participation

The present study aimed to examine Hong Kong junior secondary school students’ participation in different types of political activities, to identify profiles of adolescents based on their political participation, and to examine potential protective and risk factors associated with adolescents’ violent political participation during the social unrest in Hong Kong from a positive youth development perspective. A total of 2,016 students (age = 13.92 ± 1.10 years) recruited from 24 secondary schools in Hong Kong participated in an online survey six months after the social unrest subsided. The findings provide a comprehensive descriptive profile of Hong Kong adolescents’ political participation. Four clusters of adolescents with homogeneous patterns of political participation were identified: (1) “Politically Inactive” (42.6%); (2) “Legal Participant” (27.5%); (3) “Radical/Violent Activist” (13.0%); and (4) “Peaceful Activist” (17.0%). Logistic regression analysis showed that being female, born in Hong Kong, having a weak local identity and a strong national identity, a high level of bonding, prosocial involvement and prosocial norms, a low level of parental psychological control and family conflict, and a good parent–child relationship were associated with a low risk of adolescents’ violent political participation. The findings point to the needs to further promote social cohesion in Hong Kong society, to help adolescents avoid the potentially essentialized dichotomy in their identity construction, and to develop programs targeting the identified risk and protective factors to prevent adolescents from engaging in political violence and to promote their civic participation.

Striving towards democracy? Political participation in post-Soviet countries

ABSTRACT The formation of political systems in the post-Soviet region remains a relevant topic even thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Due to social, economic, and cultural factors, the political regimes continue to move from the general communist in the past towards different political futures dominated by either authoritarian or democratic frames. This study aims to investigate the patterns of political culture and participation, focusing on the binary categorization of political regimes prevalent across post-Soviet countries and the application of media trust and the freedom index to outline the patterns of political participation. It focuses on eight post-Soviet countries, four authoritarian and four hybrid political regimes, using WVS/EVS 2017–2020 survey data. The findings specify the importance of media trust in the formation of political participation habits across countries with unconsolidated democracy. It shows that the levels of media trust exert diverging impacts depending on the type of political participation. The freedom index has also been integrated as a moderator due to the importance of freedom for the media to mobilize society. The moderation analysis revealed the distinctive patterns of political participation in countries with lower and higher levels of freedom.

How Citizenship Norms and Digital Media Use Affect Political Participation: A Two-Wave Panel Analysis

A centrally important question for researchers of media and communication is whether any type of individual-level behavior (e.g., digital media use) or normative attitude (e.g., norms of good citizenship) contributes to equalizing patterns of political participation, which often favor higher-status groups. Drawing on a two-wave repeated panel telephone survey that uses a nationally representative sampling frame, the study’s research design facilitates a robust analysis of how citizenship norms and digital media use affect political participation, with a focus on comparing higher- and lower-status groups. Specifically, the study analyzes a survey conducted in 2018 (Wave 1) and 2019 (Wave 2) among Israeli citizens, with a representative sampling of the generally higher-status Jewish majority and the lower-status Arab minority. The findings indicate that citizenship norms and digital media use in Wave 1 have a time-ordered positive effect on nonelectoral participation in Wave 2 for both Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. However, the findings also show that for voting, the only statistically significant determinant is citizens’ Jewish or Arab identity. At a time when many democracies are facing severe challenges due to democratic erosion and social disintegration, this study contributes a normatively encouraging finding that key factors identified in the literature on citizenship norms and digital media use do not contribute to participatory inequalities between the Jewish majority and Arab minority in Israel. The findings also show, however, that it is essential to look beyond digital media use patterns to mobilize lower-status groups to become politically engaged in electoral-oriented politics.

THE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF CHINESE OVERSEAS IN INDONESIA AND MALAYSIA

Political participation plays an important role in protecting the interests of the Chinese overseas in Indonesia and Malaysia. This journal is qualitative research with a library approach method. This research aims to find 1) political participation patterns of Chinese Oversees in Indonesia and Malaysia; 2) factors that influence the political participation of Chinese Oversees in Indonesia and Malaysia. Chinese overseas in Indonesia and Malaysia do not actively participate in politics as the local ethnic majorities, however with the development of democracy, the Chinese overseas mainly take part in the political field by voting in national elections and regional elections, participating in political parties, joining various associations, and building close relationships with government officials. In political participation, Chinese overseas is mainly influenced by the level of democracy, political awareness, and relations with local ethics.KEYWORDS: Political Participation, Chinese Overseas, Indonesia, Malaysia

Determinants of political participation in Thailand: An analysis of survey data (2002–2014)

AbstractThis article aims to explain changes in the patterns of political participation in Thailand between 2002 and 2014. Relying on four waves of survey data taken from the Asian Barometer (2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014), it proposes an analytical framework composed of several factors that include not only socioeconomic status (SES) but also various psychological, attitudinal, and mobilization factors to test and seek for factors that affect a likelihood of being a passive or active political participant. This article shows that apart from some SES, there are various factors, such as political interest and self‐efficacy, party attachment, and group membership that affected the participatory actions of Thai citizens during this period. Moreover, because group membership is only one factor having a significant impact on political participation for all the four waves of survey data, this article found that political participation of Thai citizens is largely a result of their learning and experiences obtained from the interaction within their respective groups.

Digital Issue Movements: Political Repertoires and Drivers of Participation among Belgian Youth in the Context of ‘School Strike for Climate’

It often remains unclear how young citizens are combining various forms of political participation, as well as why they choose some over others, especially within a single-issue movement. Moreover, little is known about how social networking sites (SNS) fit into the political repertoires of citizens. Therefore, this study explores youths’ political participation patterns in the context of the 2019 youth-led climate strikes. We rely on data from a paper and pencil survey among 498 high school students in Belgium. To identify different types of activists, the study used latent class analysis (LCA). In addition, a multinomial logistic regression was conducted to assess how identified participation types differ from each other. Four different participation repertoires regarding the climate issue were identified, each distinctive in the way they rely on different forms of political participation. In addition, membership to each of the different classes is associated with a unique set of characteristics (in terms of political efficacies, climate issue involvement, and online expression motives). The article shows how SNS make up a crucial part of youths’ issue-specific participation patterns and sheds light on the mechanisms underlying their participation choices within the climate movement.

Government Effectiveness from a Citizen View: Linking Public Participation and Information Sources

Recently, evaluations of government effectiveness gained a lot of scholarly attention and developed into a major research area in public and performance management research. This study builds on the rather new approach away from analyzing mere macroeconomic government performance indicators towards addressing the issue on a rather perceptional, citizen-based level. By combining the concepts of deliberative democracy and open government with media and communication theories (media richness, media malaise and virtuous circle), we argue that different forms of (i) getting engaged in decision-making processes and (ii) receiving public information can determine individually perceived government performance. Subsequently, interaction terms are established in order to analyze (iii) whether political participation possibilities can be linked to the consultation of different sources of information and in turn play a decisive role in influencing government effectiveness. Using data from the World Value Survey, multilevel regression estimates delivered significant outcomes for both interaction and main effects indicating that individual information source usage and patterns of political participation depend on each other and consequently affect levels of perceived government effectiveness.

The Changing Pattern of Political Participation in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Implications for Democratic Citizenship Education

한국사회에서 소위 ‘4차산업혁명’으로 불리는 최근의 급격한 기술발전은 다양한 소셜네트워크 플랫폼을 통한 시민들의 ‘비관습적’ 정치참여를 증가시키는 양상으로 나타나고 있다. 이러한 비관습적 정치참여의 증가는 직접민주주의를 활성화시킴으로써 민주주의 발전에 긍정적으로 작용할 수 있다. 하지만 동시에 새로운 미디어 환경에서 나타나고 있는 허위조작정보의 급속한 확산으로 인한 충동적이고 파괴적인 정치참여는 공동체와 민주주의에 치명적인 위협을 가할 수도 있다. 4차산업혁명 시대에 이러한 정치참여 양상의 변화는 정치참여 자체의 형식과 양뿐만 아니라 정치참여의 질과 내용에 대한 시민교육적 차원의 체계적인 대응이 필요해지고 있음을 함의한다. 이러한 논의를 토대로 현행 초·중·고등학교 사회과 교과서에서 다루어지고 있는 정치참여 관련 교육 내용을 살펴보면, 정치참여는 그 자체로 긍정적이고 바람직한 것으로 주로 서술되고 있으며, 정치참여 방법은 관습적 참여뿐만 아니라 다양한 비관습적 참여 방식도 제시되어 있는 것으로 나타나고 있다. 학교 수준의 정치참여 교육에서 다양한 비관습적 정치참여 방식을 포함하고 있는 것은 4차산업혁명 시대의 정치참여 양상과 일정 부분 조응한다고 할 수 있으나 정치참여의 복합적 의미와 결과에 대한 내용은 좀 더 정교해질 필요가 있다.

Türkiye'de Gençlerin Siyasal Katılımı: Motivasyon Olarak Sosyal Medya

The literature mainly underlines that young people are apathetic; they are not interested in politics, and they only give attention to the matters that directly affect their lifestyles. However, these assumptions miscalculate the changing patterns of political participation and the complexity of the channels that young people can reach in this time. The Internet has opened new ways of political participation by lowering the cost and providing the opportunity to access information from all over the world, enhancing the spectrum of political participation. Young people may not be members of political parties, but they are active in civil society groups; they may not hold general elections, but they do comment on certain issues. This situation provides new opportunities for young people to become politically active and mobilized. The main aim of this study is to see the impact of internet/ social media on the political participation of youth in Turkey, and to analyze the social media as a motivation of political participation among the young members of political parties and civil society. The main argument is that social media motivates young people to participate in political parties by seeing and reading about their activities while motivating young people to participate in civil society by encouraging civic duties. To investigate this, we made an interview with 30 executive members (10 from each organization), from AK Party, CHP, and GoFor (Gençlik Örgütleri Forumu) and analyze the content via MaxQda software. The finding of the study is that young people who tend to care about political issues and the ones who read, research, and become engaged in politics are also the ones reading, researching, and engaging in political issues in the online arena in Turkey.

Manifestações brasileiras e o Movimento Vem Pra Rua: breve análise dos acontecimentos

A intensificação de manifestações de rua e em rede nos últimos anos marca uma mudança nos padrões de participação política. No Brasil, grandes manifestações eclodiram em 2013 e 2015, com demandas diferentes, mas em comum a forma de organização: prioritariamente por meio da internet. Essa nova dinâmica participativa traz novos atores, movimentos sociais que usam a internet para sua organização. Dentre eles destacamos o Vem Pra Rua, um dos principais articuladores das manifestações de 2015, criado por dois empresários paulistas e que conquistou grande apoio de famosos e políticos. Nesse artigo fizemos um retrospecto das manifestações brasileiras elencando o papel do movimento Vem Pra Rua nos atos mais recentes. A metodologia adotada constituiu um levantamento bibliográfico sobre o tema, bem como coleta de dados nas redes sociais e publicações sobre o movimento. Percebemos, conforme demonstramos, o importante papel da internet na organização dos atos enquanto um mecanismo que proporciona inovações e mudanças nos padrões de participação política e como os novos movimentos sociais utilizaram esse mecanismo para isso.

Latino Political Participation by Citizenship Status and Immigrant Generation

ObjectiveUsing the complementary 2012 American National Election Study and 2012 Latino Immigrant National Election Study, we examine Latino political participation by citizenship and immigrant generation status.MethodsWe use logistic regression to examine three political participation modes—voting, campaign activity, and civic participation—across four Latino subgroups (noncitizens, naturalized citizens, second generation, and third‐plus generation), and non‐Latino whites. We assess whether political participation patterns can be explained by demographics and standard political predictors (i.e., religiosity, partisanship, political efficacy, and social trust) and whether patterns differ for older and younger adults.ResultsAcross all political participation modes, third‐plus‐generation Latinos and non‐Latino whites participate equally. Second‐generation Latinos demonstrate a political participation disadvantage: their political participation is as low as, or lower than, that of noncitizen Latinos—a disadvantage driven mostly by younger Latinos.ConclusionResults suggest diverging patterns of Latino political incorporation, and raise concerns that young second‐generation Latinos may not fully integrate into American political life.

Ecological city-zenship

ABSTRACTCity-based citizenship (city-zenship) and its ecological ramifications increasingly inform people’s social and political lives, rendering the link between ecological citizenship and political city-zenship a topical subject for analysis. The questions analyzed here are: How can and how do citizens of cities promote sustainable urban development? What are their goals and motivations? And how do these forms of engagement reflect the theory of ecological citizenship in cities? The research is based on semi-structured and in-depth interviews with environmental and political activists in German and Israeli cities. The analysis indicates that the city is a meaningful political arena for ecological citizenship, with distinct patterns of political participation in relation to a city’s particular identity. However, political participation in cities is not independent of the state, but dependent on the political and civic rights enshrined therein.

Affordable Care Act Moving to New Stage of Public Acceptance.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in a deeply polarized context, and it has endured multiple challenges to its implementation and its very existence that continue to this day. Yet, we find that the law is entering a new phase of acceptance among the American public, such that it presents political risks to politicians who would dare to weaken it. We have conducted a panel study of Americans' public opinion on the ACA since 2010, returning to the same respondents every two years to ask the same questions. This approach, which is essential for tracking change, reveals that support for the ACA is growing and the most intense opposition is receding. It also shows that Americans' sense of the law's impact on their lives is at least holding steady and in some respects growing. Most strikingly, those who feel favorably toward the law are more engaged politically than those who oppose it, and they are more likely to take it into account when they vote. These trends indicate that the law, despite the legal and political obstacles it still confronts, is becoming more firmly established in public opinion and through patterns of political participation.

Democratic Stress and Political Institutions: Drives of Reforms of Bicameralism in Times of Crisis

ABSTRACT Traditional patterns of political participation and party representation in Europe have been put to the test by the so-called crisis of representative democracy: mainstream parties have been perceived as more unfit to govern; the level of electoral participation has decreased; and voters have shown increasing dissatisfaction with representative institutions. In several cases, these changes have pushed governing elites to (seek to) redefine the ‘rules’ of the political process, in response to the challenges posed by new party contesters. In particular, in different European countries political actors have stressed the need to undermine the role of second chambers as veto players. This article focuses on both successful and failed attempts of reforms of bicameralism between 2006 and 2016 in seven EU countries (Belgium; Germany; Ireland; Italy; Romania; Spain; UK). It tries (1) to understand if political elites in Europe have pursued parliamentary reforms as a reaction to ‘democratic stress’ and (2) to single out the circumstances of success and failures. A discussion of the detectable trends of institutional reforms during democratic crises and some tentative explanations are finally provided.

Youth political participation in the EU: evidence from a cross-national analysis

ABSTRACT Youth political disengagement continues to be a major issue facing contemporary democracies that needs to be better understood. There is an existing literature on what determines youth participation in terms of socio-demographic factors, however, scholars have not given much consideration to the macro-level determinants. In this paper, I outline an empirical analysis of what determines political participation among young people using the Eurobarometer 375 survey data from 28 European Union countries. I argue that while socio-demographic factors are crucial for youth political participation, context matters in shaping levels of political participation among young people. The results from the logistic regression analyses indicate that democratic maturity influences patterns of political participation among young people in the EU. The results show that youth engagement in different modes of political participation varies significantly across distinctive democracies, where individuals situated in established EU democracies are more likely to be politically active. The findings raise fresh concerns about existing levels of young people’s engagement in politics in advanced and new democracies. This paper also contributes to the comparative research on young people’s participation in politics.

Considering the Orange legacy: patterns of political participation in the Euromaidan Revolution

ABSTRACTThe proximity of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004) andEuromaidan Revolution (2014) provides an opportunity to considerwhy some individuals remain active across protest cycles whileothers defect. Many social movement scholars explain differentialparticipation in terms of micro-structural, biographical, or cognitivefactors. Others rely on rational choice theories of collective actionbased on coordination. Testing competing explanations arecomplicated because the variables included in structural andagency-based models are often the same, although the underlyingcausal mechanisms are different. In this article, I argue that thekey to understanding the role of agency and structure in protestparticipation is to relax strong assumptions about the unified natureof society and consider the multiple paths to participation. Thisapproach suggests that both structural and agency-based causalmechanisms can influence political engagement depending onindividual experiences, identities, and perceptions of events.

Updating citizenship? The effects of digital media use on citizenship understanding and political participation

ABSTRACTIs there a connection between increased use of digital media and changing patterns of political participation? This study tests how the use of online media for different purposes (social interaction, creative expression, online news use, social media news use) is related to three types of political participation. It examines whether mobilizing effects are partly indirect due to different understandings of citizenship (dutiful, optional, individual, collective) that may be fostered by digital media use. The study is based on a survey of a sample of the Danish population (n = 1322), including data from two online survey waves and a smartphone-based media diary that documents respondents’ social media use. Results indicate support for a new pathway to participation, but the relationship depends on whether citizens are socialized in a digital media environment.

The Curse of Knowledge? Education, Corruption, and Politics

Education has consistently been found to be positively related to political participation, electoral turnout, civic engagement, political knowledge, and democratic attitudes and opinions. Previous research has, however, not sufficiently acknowledged the large existing between- and within-country variations in institutional quality when studying this relationship. This study asks the question: how do highly educated, well-informed, and critical citizens react to a political system with low-quality institutions; a system with high levels of corruption? Researchers have in recent years started to acknowledge corruption as a relevant factor in explaining democratic attitudes and behavior. However, how corruption interacts with individual characteristics in shaping political behavior is largely unexplored in the literature. This paper focuses on the interaction between corruption and education with regard to different political attitudes and democratic behavior. Using both individual- and country-level data from 31 democracies the results show that corruption thwarts many of the positive effects of education with regard to politics: The results indicate that when corruption is high, educated and politically sophisticated citizens are as likely as low-educated citizens to feel resignation with regard to formal political institutions. This, in turn, is likely to affect patterns of political participation among these citizens.