Traditional Forms Of Political Participation Research Articles

Digital and socio-civic skills development and young people’s perceptions of digital citizenship in the UK

Digital Citizenship is an emerging field of research but there is still a lack of knowledge into what works and how to implement educational practices to develop digital citizenship. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between young people’s participatory profile and their perceptions of the development of digital and socio-civic skills, and to understand how young people exercise their citizenship in the United Kingdom. The study consists of 124 responses to an online questionnaire. The analysed data suggests that the current framing of citizenship education curriculum in the UK is still focused on more traditional forms of political participation and more work needs to be done in terms of developing citizenship education for a digital era.

Fungible Citizenship

Fungible Citizenship

Emerging Repertoires of Political Participation in Lithuania: A Latent Class Analysis

Most scholars argue that the decline of citizen participation and confidence in political institutions might be explained as the transformation of traditional forms of political participation to new ones. However, some authors indicate that citizens are not exclusively oriented towards institutionalized or de-institutionalized forms of participation and use all available mechanisms of influence by participating in various forms of action. The focus of this article is an empirical investigation of repertoires of political participation in Lithuania. The article, which is based on the data of the fifth wave of the European Values Study, concludes that repertoires of political participation in Lithuania are diversified and complex. They are significantly associated with gender, age, education, income, place of residence, interpersonal trust, confidence in political institutions, materialist/postmaterialist values, authority orientations, democratic support, autocratic orientations, and family socialization. The repertoires of the all-around activists, the duty-based participants, and the low-involved protesters are mixed and include all forms of political participation. However, there is a slightly noticeable trend toward the repertoire of an assertive citizen among the low-involved protesters and the apolitical volunteers.

The concept of political participation within western political thought: evolution and current status

The article explores the approaches to interpreting the concept of political participation. The research is based on the scientific works of western political thought theorists, who made a significant contribution to the study of this socio-political phenomenon. It was proved that socio-economic changes, rapid democratization, the development of information and communication technologies along with many other factors have influenced society, changing its attitude to politics in general and the role of the citizen in political decision-making. Therefore, there appeared a need for scientific study of the category of political participation; factors influencing the involvement of citizens; forms and types of participation; reasons for political apathy and mistrust. Despite the fact that currently, there is no unified definition of political participation, as new forms of citizen activity that encourage scholars to view them as a form of political participation are increasingly emerging, the article analyzes the genesis of the subject of study and the modern forms of political participation within western political thought. At the same time, traditional and modern forms of political participation are distinguished. It has been determined that in the mid-twentieth century, the concept of political participation goes beyond the usual approaches. If earlier, when researching forms of political participation, first of all were singled out voting, now they emphasize that it is non-electoral forms of participation that give citizens more opportunities to control politicians. According to the conducted research, the author comes the conclusion that non-institutionalized forms of political participation are becoming increasingly popular, especially among young people, while information and communication technologies make it possible to convert them into an online space, increasingly blur the line between consumer and creator of information, leading to the displacement of traditional forms of political participation.

Young People's Political Participation: New and Old Forms in Contemporary Spain

This article is related to the literature concerning the decline of traditional forms of political participation in young people. It seeks to understand younger Spaniards' attitudes towards active participation in democratic processes and, more specifically, differences between those young people engaged in citizen-oriented political actions related to political parties and those engaged in cause-oriented activities. The main goal of this paper is to explain the relationship between young people and politics, focusing on three types of comparisons: (i) between young people, adults and seniors, (ii) in both kinds of actions, and (iii) across three theoretical models that scholars have been used indiscriminately to testing different models explaining why people became active in politics, each of them influenced by different political science research traditions. Data show a great disparity in the explanatory power of independent variables among age groups. A better performance of civic volutantism model and also in cause-oriented participation.

Young Rebels Who Do Not Want a Revolution: The Non-participatory Preferences of Fridays for Future Activists in Finland

Young people’s lack of participation in elections has been taken as a sign that the young are wary of representative democracy and reject traditional authorities. Instead of election participation, it is expected that the young want more possibilities for direct involvement in political decision-making. Fridays for Future (FFF) is a global, youth-led climate movement that has been able to mobilize millions of young people around the world into political action (de Moor et al., 2020; Wahlström et al., 2019) in times when youth participation is generally declining, especially in traditional forms of political participation. While many have taken this as evidence that young people dismiss representative democracy in favor of a more participatory democracy, in-depth studies of their motivations are still lacking. This article helps fill this lacuna by providing a case study on Finnish FFF participants. Through semi-structured interviews and theory-guided content analysis with 15- to 20-year-old climate activists, the Finnish FFF participants’ attitudes toward political participation are examined. The data consists of 11 one-on-one in-depth theme interviews with young people, who participated in the FFF movement by attending at least one protest in Finland in 2019. The interviews focused on the following themes: motivation for participation in the FFF movement, interviewee’s background, and the participant’s ideas regarding politics, democracy, and political participation. The interviews were combined with material from various news sources to contextualize the information in the analysis phase. Based on the empirical evidence, I argue that although these young citizens have become politically active in a climate protest movement, it does not necessarily mean that they want major reforms to the representative democracy toward a more participatory system. Instead of more participatory possibilities, the Finnish climate activists want a better-functioning representative system with politicians who listen to their demands.

Political Activism in Serbia

AbstractThe authors examine the characteristics and factors shaping political activism in Serbia. Their analysis is based on a national representative sample (N = 2,211). Their research findings show that in general, Serbian citizens are more inclined to pursue certain unconventional or newer forms of political activism such as ethical and political consumption and petition-signing than older forms of political participation. Certain traditional political activities are still practised, such as membership of political parties and making direct contact with politicians, while newer ones like occupation of public spaces and protest activities are relatively rare. The analyses demonstrate that participation in both traditional and newer forms of politics becomes more likely as resources available to individuals increase, both economic and educational. Traditional forms of political participation tend to be increasingly preferred as people become older, while the unconventional forms are more popular among the younger generation.

Referandum Sonucunun Seçmenlerin Yerel Yönetime Tutumu İle Tahmin Edilmesi

In recent years, the referendums play an important role in modern democracies. With the rapid changes in globalization, information and communication technologies and the increasing complexity of economic and social problems caused by intense competition, especially the referendums that are held to maximize the legitimacy of the decisions taken by the public will are seen as direct participation of citizens in the political process when traditional forms of political participation are declining. This study present a method to predict how citizen will vote in the referendum only by starting from their attitude towards local governments. For this purpose, a qualitative research was designed and 2446 voters were interviewed in Kilis Province Center of Turkey. In the study, Support Vector Machines, which is a nonparametric classification method based on statistical learning theory, was used to estimate the referendum results that would be voted as yes or no. At the end of the study, by using twenty-six variables, the rate of people voting in the referendum was predicted by 81%. This results guide the survey companies' efforts to predict the results of the referendum

Salient Ballot Measures and the Millennial Vote

We explore the relationship between ballot measures on issues salient to Millennials and their turnout in presidential and midterm elections. Both scholars and observers in the media have worried about decreasing levels of citizen participation, particularly among young voters. We demonstrate that one way to engage Millennials into traditional forms of political participation is through ballot measures that focus on issues salient to their generation (marijuana liberalization and higher education reform). We show that not only do these measures increase Millennial voting, but they erase difference in turnout levels between Millennials and older generations. This effect is primarily concentrated in low-turnout contexts such as midterm elections, indicating that these measures may be playing a similar mobilization role in midterm elections as presidential campaigns do in turnout out low-propensity voters.

Life stories and formation of subordinate subjectivity. Note on social research in Italy by Danilo Montaldi

The social research performed by Danilo Montaldi (1929-1975) represented an interpretation of great interest in understanding the transformations of neo-capitalism between the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the ambit of a very critical militancy towards the traditional forms of political participation, his attention to subordinates is marked, in our view, by a significant pedagogical aspect. On the one hand, in fact, he focuses on the political and social processes through which subordinate subjectivity is formed, with particular regard to the role played by the institutions, while on the other hand, he examines strategies with regard to his own emancipation from that condition of oppression, based on the idea of education intended as liberation. Where the educational commitment and political commitment merge in the same project of reconstruction of society, looking beyond the drifts of neocapitalism in view of a world capable of recognizing the rights of all respecting each other’s differences. This, as has been observed by several commentators, seems to be the most significant legacy of Danilo Montaldi’s intellectual commitment.

Tracing and archiving ‘constructed’ data on Facebook pages and groups: reflections on fieldwork among young activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa

This study triangulates offline and online research methods to examine how and why young activists in Zimbabwe and South Africa use Facebook for political purposes. It demonstrates that like traditional participant observation, which was popularized by classical anthropologists, algorithmically ‘occurring’ data gathered through social media ethnography provides some of the richest information to burrow into the everyday political lives of young activists (who are generally presented in mainstream literature as having disengaged from traditional forms of political participation). Building on Postill and Pink’s (2012) typology of social media ethnography, this study proposes a seven stage criteria for conducting online participant observation on Facebook in the era of data ‘deluge’. These stages include: background listening, friending/liking, interacting, observing, catching up, exploring, and archiving. Based on the author’s multi-sited fieldwork experiences in Zimbabwe and South Africa, this study argues...

European Togetherness is not for Granted

Looking at the past decade of the European Union as a developing economic and political integration project, this article first provides an overview of both positive developments as well as negative or threatening factors that the supranational institution has been subject to, indicating a spiralling cycle of political, economic and security crises. Second, it analyses the role of young European generations, who tend to engage less in traditional forms of political participation but seek out new forms and, surprisingly, express stronger belief in EU integration and higher levels of European citizenship awareness than older generations. The article points to citizenship and global education as well as lifelong learning as answers to the challenges posed by decreasing trust and belief in the European idea.

What Matters? Changes in European Youth Participation

During the twentieth century, theoretical and empirical studies aimed to analyse changes in individual participation and in social and political dynamics. A great emphasis was attributed to the process of individualization. Young people were described as a generation with a limited political involvement, especially considering traditional forms of political participation, but more and more likely to search an “individualized” way towards the participation. Furlong and Cartmel bring back the youth identity to the thesis about the reflexive rebuilding of identity, according to which the individualization is a process due to some structural characteristics of post-industrial society. Employing data from European Values Study researches, we test if and how structural variables and contextual dynamics affect political involvement and its changes, with particular attention on youth involvement. Actually, participation takes the form of a multifaceted reality and youth individual profiles are heterogeneous. The process of individualization has, in this sense, different effects and various consequences on participation’s profiles. According to these considerations, this analysis shows the incidence of structural, contextual and cognitive dimensions on individual choices to participate, focusing on longitudinal plan and cohorts. A second step compares the causal importance of structural and cognitive dimension on different typologies of involvement.

Assessing party membership figures: the mapp dataset

Assessments of party decline and decline of traditional forms of political participation often rely on the argument of party membership decline. Most studies analysing trends in party membership over time focus on aggregate country-level data at a few points in time. While they allow grasping general membership trends, they are not without shortcomings. This article presents the Members and Activists of Political Parties (MAPP) dataset related to the MAPP project. The dataset makes a large amount of data on party membership available to the larger public. The dataset provides 6,307 party membership data observations (M) covering 397 parties in 31 countries, mostly between 1945 and 2014. The article discusses the existing literature and data on party membership trends, how membership trends have been assessed so far, and the potential added value of the MAPP dataset.

Predicting Online Political Participation

Although we have a broad understanding of the factors that predict traditional forms of political participation, we know comparatively less about the determinants of online political participation. Among the limited research that explores the predictors of online political participation, news seeking is often found to be an important factor; however, many studies fail to consider selective exposure and the distinct influence of differing types of information. In this study, I ask, “What factors predict online participation, and what role does selective exposure play in this relationship?” Using a nationally representative sample ( N = 2,250) and a selection model to correct for biased estimates of online political participation, I find that online political participation is not well predicted by the same resource-related determinants that influence traditional participation; specifically, income and age are unrelated to online political participation among Internet users. Second, I find that exposure to political information that reinforces one’s point of view predicts higher levels of online political participation when compared with differing information or information with no point of view. Finally, I conduct a subset analysis of partisan identifiers to examine differences in these relationships among Republicans and Democrats.

E- migrant: technological, geographical and social spaces. New actors and spaces for political participation?

This article is based on the results provided by the research project named “A study of recent migratory movement from Spain to Uruguay. New technological, geographical and social spaces for citizen vincluation” (Olivera et al., 2014) and, by using the concept of “e-migrant”, it analyses if the introduction of ICTs enables the renewal of the traditional forms of political participation and public decision-making. Having the concept of e-migration as a starting point, the article aims at identifying what are the forms and the type of communication networks used by the new Spanish migrants as well as the way they connect and communicate (politically, socially and culturally) in Uruguay. It also aims at problematizing these issues under the light of the Social Sciences theories, following the critical investigative line of research about the “Information Society”. The authors argue that the ways new Spanish migrants connect to each other in Uruguay are dialectic relationships and are also a result of a social process that depends on the decisions and on the significances given by individuals. These decisions and subjectivities are not determined solely by the structures that are inherent to their condition as migrants, neither are they totally contingent to this condition; they move in a space of possible configurations in order to be re-signified in concrete situations.

From the Secret Ballot to the Public Vote: Examining Voters’ Experience of Political Discussion in Vote-by-Mail Elections

Considerable research on political discussion has focused on identifying its antecedents and outcomes. The rise of voting by mail provides an opportunity to examine the subject in a new context—one in which voters discuss their views and electoral choices with others while filling out their ballots. We explored the possibility that conventional predictors of political engagement would predict who partakes in such discussions. Past research also suggested that those voters most likely to report changing their minds as a result of discussion would perceive their discussants as holding contrary views and higher levels of political sophistication. We further hypothesized that less politically engaged voters would seek out discussants they rated as more knowledgeable than themselves, whereas the more politically sophisticated voters would seek out like-minded discussants. Past research also suggested that the least partisan voters would be those most likely to report disagreement in their absentee discussions. To test these hypotheses, we analyzed telephone survey data from two elections conducted in Washington State. Results showed that the factors that predict traditional forms of political participation and discussion do not explain who engages in discussion during vote-by-mail elections. We also found that independent voters were more likely to talk with ideologically divergent discussants, whereas less knowledgeable citizens sought discussants who knew more about politics than they did. Many voters reported that these discussions shaped their vote choices, with the highest rates of perceived influence coming from those who viewed their discussion partners as more knowledgeable and more ideologically divergent.

Whither slacktivism? Political engagement and social media use in the 2013 Czech Parliamentary elections

This article examines the relationship between online political expression and offline forms of political participation in the context of the 2013 Czech Parliamentary elections. It draws on the rapidly growing but still very much inconclusive empirical evidence concerning the use of new media and social network sites in particular for electoral mobilization and social activism, and their impact on more traditional forms of civic and political engagement. The theoretical framework of the paper is inspired by the competing perspectives on the role of social media for democratic participation and civic engagement, the mobilization vs. normalization thesis, as well as by the popular concepts of clicktivism or slacktivism (Morozov, 2009), denouncing online activism for allegedly not being complemented by offline actions and having little or no impact on real-life political processes. With the intention to empirically contribute to these discussions, this study uses data from a cross-sectional survey on a representative sample of the Czech adult population (N=1,653) which was conducted directly following the 2013 Parliamentary elections. The study was driven by the main research question: Is there a link between online political expression during the election campaign and traditional forms of political participation among Czech Facebook users? Furthermore, the analysis examined the relationship between online political participation and a declared political interest, electoral participation and political news consumption. The results obtained from an ordinal logistic regression analysis confirm the existence of a significant positive relationship between the respondents’ level of campaign engagement on Facebook and their political interest, political information seeking as well as traditional (mainly offline) participation activities, including voting.

Social Media and Symbolic Action: Exploring Participation in the Facebook Red Equal Sign Profile Picture Campaign

This study investigates symbolic action on popular social media platforms by empirically exploring the subjective experiences and motivations of participants in an exemplary campaign. Previous debates regarding the relationship between symbolic action and more traditional forms of political participation suggest a binary between up-the-ladder “civic culture” engagement and down-the-ladder “slacktivism.” Interviews with participants in the Facebook red equal sign profile picture campaign for marriage equality provide some evidence to support the former (particularly in terms of building an identity-focused political movement), and comparatively little to support the latter. However, a third model suggests how sympathetic citizens who would not otherwise take on organizational commitments are brought into the circle of participation by contributing to aggregate projects of mediated public advocacy.

Digital Media and Political Participation

Political interest is a potentially important moderator of the relationship between digital media use and traditional forms of political participation. We theorize that the interaction between interest and digital media can be either positive or negative, depending on whether the action is voting, an elite-directed act, or a self-directed act. To test our expectation, we use British Election Studies data from 2001, 2005, and 2010. We find that digital media use is positively and consistently associated with political talk for those lower in political interest. For voting, we find a similar relationship that appears to be strengthening over time. For the elite-directed acts of donating money and working for a party, we find a highly variable moderating effect of political interest that can be positive, negative, or nonexistent.