Types Of Political Participation Research Articles

From theory to practice: how to apply van Deth’s conceptual map in empirical political participation research

In a time when digitally networked and unconventional activities challenge our understanding of political participation, van Deth (Acta Polit 49(3):349–367, 2014) has developed a map to consolidate previous attempts at conceptualizing political participation. He suggests a framework operating with four distinct types of political participation that apply across time and context and therefore potentially may lead to higher comparability of results in participation research. However, his map faced criticism for not accounting for digital and other recent participatory activities, and so far, it remains a theoretical endeavor that needs to prove its utility when applied to the diverse set of participatory activities. Our study empirically tests how recently emerging participatory activities, such as crowdfunding or urban gardening, can conceptually be combined with more traditional forms of participation. We use 27 participatory activities from a national survey conducted in Denmark (N = 9125) to test van Deth’s framework. A confirmatory factor analysis demonstrates the existence of four distinct types of political participation, based on the sphere, the target, and the intention of activities. Our model furthermore indicates that the distinction between online and offline activities has decreased in relevance and that new and unconventional participation activities can be subsumed under van Deth’s four types of political participation.

Tipos de participación política y bienestar subjetivo: Un estudio mundial

El bienestar subjetivo ha sido descrito como, tal vez, “la variable dependiente fundamental” de las ciencias sociales, por lo cual no resulta sorpresivo que una buena parte de la literatura empírica sobre el tema se ha enfocado en identificar sus correlatos. En este trabajo evaluamos la relación entre distintos tipos de participación política y bienestar subjetivo utilizando la sexta ola de la Encuesta Mundial de Valores para sesenta países levantada entre 2010 y 2014. Nuestros resultados sugieren que, controlando por el grado de libertad de los diferentes países, existen diferencias sustantivas en la fuerza y dirección de la asociación entre distintos tipos de participación política y el bienestar subjetivo de los ciudadanos. Nuestra investigación confirma parcialmente la hipótesis de que formas convencionales de participación se asocian de manera significativa y positiva con la satisfacción individual con la vida, mientras las formas menos convencionales y más conflictivas, muestran una relación opuesta. Por otra parte, la naturaleza democrática de las instituciones, está universal y consistentemente asociada a mayores niveles de bienestar subjetivo de los individuos.

Local and more local: Impact of size and organization type of settlement units on candidacy

Following current debates on the study of the quality of local government, this article focuses on the effects of settlement unit size and organizational type on candidacy in local elections within the Czech Republic. Municipal size and institutional design are traditionally seen as important factors influencing political participation at the local level. However, citizens in differently defined settlement units included in a municipality are disadvantaged differently by these factors and thus, de-motivated to participate in politics. The unit of analysis within the article is a settlement unit within a municipality. The article uses Poisson regression to estimate the effect of the absolute and relative size of the settlement unit and different organizational types of settlement unit on the relative number of candidates in the unit. The analysis is based on data from 6,124 Czech municipalities over three sets of elections. The results of the analysis show that increasing absolute size and decreasing relative size of settlement unit have negative effects on the number of candidates in units. Also the institutionally disadvantaged units (defined by the location of the municipal office within the settlement unit) produce smaller number of candidates. The results show the importance of structural factors on the traditionally neglected type of political participation (candidacy) within this field. This allows the formulation of recommendations for local government reforms, not only in the Czech Republic, but also for amalgamated municipal systems.

Political participation, personality, and the conditional effect of campaign mobilization

Why are some people more responsive to campaign mobilization than others? I argue that the composition of a person's core personality makes some people more responsive to mobilization cues than others. However, the degree to which personality alters the effectiveness of mobilization also depends on the type of political participation for which people are being mobilized. I explore the determinants of political participation by looking at the interaction between the Big-5 traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability and the intensity of campaign environments. This paper demonstrates that despite the possible ameliorative effect mobilization has on unequal patterns of political participation, an enduring source of participatory inequality may very well be rooted in a person's core psychological structure.

Cross-Cutting Exposure on Facebook and Political Participation

Abstract. This experiment (N = 193) explores the effects of cross-cutting exposure via social media on two types of political participation. The results reveal that exposure to cross-cutting social media news can motivate cheap participation better than costly participation. Moreover, the mobilizing effects of cross-cutting exposure are mediated by anger and anxiety, as suggested by affective intelligence theory and appraisal theories of emotion. The mediating effects of anxiety are also moderated by online incivility. Implications are discussed in terms of the role of social media use and cross-cutting exposure in participatory democracies.

Ethnic and immigrant politics vs. mainstream politics: the role of ethnic organizations in shaping the political participation of immigrant-origin individuals in Europe

ABSTRACTPrevious scholarship has reported contradictory results regarding the impact of involvement by immigrant-origin individuals (IOIs) in ethnic organizations on political participation. In this article, we assess the effect of involvement in different types of organizations (ethnic, pan-immigrant and native) on participation in various types of political activities. We use cross-national micro-data from a population survey undertaken in 2004–2008 to IOIs in nine European cities. Our findings indicate that ethnic organizations perform an integrative function for IOIs in the political sphere, but they mainly affect participation linked to immigration-related issues concerning specific ethnic groups and IOIs. Moreover, most effects of involvement in ethnic organizations on the different types of political participation examined are similar in closed and in open political opportunity structures (POS). We only find evidence that involvement in ethnic organizations depresses conventional political action in open POS settings while it increases political action in closed POS settings.

Representativeness and Motivations of the Contemporary Donorate: Results from Merged Survey and Administrative Records

Only a small portion of Americans make campaign donations, yet because ambitious politicians need these resources, this group may be particularly important for shaping political outcomes. We investigate the characteristics and motivations of the donorate using a novel dataset that combines administrative records of two types of political participation, contributing and voting, with a rich set of survey variables. These merged observations allow us to examine differences in demographics, validated voting, and ideology across subgroups of the population and to evaluate the motivations of those who donate. We find that in both parties donors are consistently and notably divergent from non-donors to a larger degree than voters are divergent from non-voters. Of great interest, in both parties donors are more ideologically extreme than other partisans, including primary voters. With respect to why individuals contribute, we show that donors appear responsive to their perception of the stakes in the election. We also present evidence that inferences about donor ideology derived from the candidates donors give to may not closely reflect the within-party policy ideology of those donors. Overall, our results suggest that donations are a way for citizens motivated by the perceived stakes of elections to increase their participation beyond solely turning out.

Political Dissatisfactions and Citizen Involvement: Political Participation in Europe during the Early Stages of the Economic Crisis

This article examines the links between three kinds of political dissatisfaction and four types of political participation during the early stages of the economic crisis in 2008-2009. Since economic crisis exacerbates negative political attitudes and thereby strains the legitimacy of the political system, it is im-portant to examine how citizens convey their grievances to political decision makers during such crisis. Recent decades have witnessed changes in patterns of political participation entailing that citizens abstain from traditional political participation in favor of non-institutionalized activities, but the implications for democracy are disputed since it is unclear what drives non-institutionalized participation. To ascertain what the changes mean for democracy during times of economic crisis, it is helpful to distinguish different kinds of political dissatisfaction with diverse implications for democracy. The data comes from the fourth round of the European Social Survey and include a total of 47489 respondents in 25 European democracies. The results suggest that only some kinds of political dissatisfaction affect the pro-pensity for political participation while others lead to passivity. Additionally, political dissatisfaction is not necessarily a major driving force behind the popularity of non-institutionalized participation since satisfied citizens are also involved in these.

Culture, Citizenship Norms, and Political Participation: Empirical Evidence from Taiwan

AbstractThis study investigates the role of religion in shaping the norms of citizenship from a cultural perspective for an East Asian country that exhibits fundamental differences in social contexts from Western advanced democracies. Using data drawn from the Taiwan Social Change Survey, we find that the Eastern religions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Folk Religions are important for explaining the formation of the concept of being a good citizen. This study further examines the relationships between citizenship norms and various conventional and unconventional types of political participation. The empirical results herein suggest that duty-based citizenship and engaged citizenship have significant differences in their effects on political participation.

Civic engagement and political participation among American Indians and Alaska natives in the US

ABSTRACTWithin the growing literature seeking to understand civic and political engagement among racial and ethnic minorities, our understanding of political behavior among American Indian and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) remains limited. We use the Current Population Survey Civic Engagement and Voting and Registration supplements (2006–2012) to compare AI/AN voter registration, voting, and overall civic engagement to other racial and ethnic groups and to assess whether factors that predict higher levels of civic engagement vary across these populations. We find a few key socioeconomic status indicators that predict civic and political engagement uniquely for AI/ANs, but they are not consistently significant across all years or all types of political participation. We find marital status, age, household size, education, and veteran status to be important in predicting civic engagement for AI/ANs. However, for voting and registration, we find that family income, age, marital status, household size, and residential stability to be important contributors. Although we find AI/ANs are less likely to register and vote compared to non-Hispanic whites, we find that the difference is not statistically significant in congressional years, which may suggest that AI/ANs are engaged in local politics and vote for representatives who will represent their tribal interests in national politics.

Does social capital enhance political participation of older adults? A multi-level analysis of older Finns and Swedes

This article contributes to the literature on political gerontology by analysing the role that social capital plays in the political participation of older adults. More specifically, the aim is to test the importance of individual-level and contextual-level social capital for different types of political participation of older adults in a Scandinavian setting by using survey data from Finland and Sweden (N= 6838). The results show that even though membership in voluntary associations, intense social networks and high levels of interpersonal trust tend to be positively correlated with political participation of older adults as a whole, the explanative logic differs between them depending on the kind of political engagement. The only type of social capital with a robust positive impact on all dimensions of political participation was individual-level membership in voluntary associations.

A Deeper Look at the Relationship between Political Knowledge and Political Participation: Evidence from Presidential and Legislative Elections in Taiwan

This study examines the effects of political knowledge on various types of political participation by focusing on five recent presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan. The empirical findings indicate that political knowledge has positive effects on some types of political participation but the effects of political knowledge on different types of political participation vary by the types of electoral systems and elections. Besides, although the interviewer's assessment of the respondent's level of information has been widely used as an effective indicator of political knowledge, this study shows that the interviewers tend to rate men and partisans as politically knowledgeable, which might lead to a biased estimate of political knowledge. Overall, this study provides insight into the relationship between political knowledge and political participation in Taiwan.

College education and attitudes toward democracy in China: an empirical study

The modernization theory contends that there is a link between education and democracy. Yet few empirical studies have been done to investigate the role of higher education on promoting democratic values in the Chinese context. Using China General Social Survey 2006, this paper generates several findings which are not completely consistent with the existing theoretical explanations on political development. Specifically, the college-educated Chinese citizens not only agree that there is need to improve democracy, but support various types of political participation and resist the government-oriented petitioning. However, though entrepreneurial elites (private business owners) and political elites (Chinese communist party members) demonstrate preference to democracy in principle, empirical evidence suggests that they are much less likely to support political participation that challenges the authoritarian regime in China compared to knowledge-based elites (college-educated adults).

Corruption and Political Participation in the Americas and the Caribbean

This article deals with an issue as yet little explored in the vast literature about political participation: the role of corruption in political engagement. It investigates whether the coexistence, the values and the perception of citizens in relation to corrupt practices and actors have effects on political activism, and it verifies the direction in which this is evolving, whether it is in the direction of engagement in or withdrawal from politics. The unit of analysis is the individual, the geographic sector includes the Americas and the Caribbean, and the time frame includes biennial intervals between 2004 and 2012. A theoretical discussion and empirical analysis of the data from the Americas Barometer is used. Five distinct types of political participation were identified: contact with political and governmental actors, community activism, partisan and electoral activism, voter turnout and protest activism. The article concludes that the experience with corruption and the tolerance for bribe increase the chances of engagement in participative activities, going against the principal contributions of the specialized literature.

Citizenss Conceptions of Democracy and Political Participation in Germany

While extensive research focused on citizens’ disaffection and tools to cure the ‘democratic malaise’, very few studies paid attention to the connection between citizens’ preferences for democratic alternatives and their desire to get involved in new participatory procedures. To fill this gap and to advance the understanding of such a linkage, our paper aims to investigate how preferences of German citizens for types of democracy influence their retrospective as well as prospective involvement in political will formation and decision‐making. This paper discusses the conceptions of democracy and assesses the effects of these preferences on several types of political participation (voting, protests, referendums, deliberative procedures). Our study draws on data from a survey conducted in autumn 2014 on a probability representative sample at national level in Germany. Findings illustrate that citizens favoring representative democracy are less inclined to take part in participatory devices, whereas citizens favoring a citizen‐oriented concept of democracy are more willing to get involved in them. Those citizens who favor a more expert oriented democracy, show mixed participation intentions.

Determinants of non-conventional participation in Brazil

The present work aims to analyse participation in demonstrations, petitions and boycotts in Brazil. Using data from both World Values Survey and a Brazilian survey ran by the University of Sao Paulo, we perform logistic regressions to assess the impact of variables such as political efficacy, political trust and education on these different types of political participation. Following previous theoretical propositions and empirical evidences about the determinants of political participation, we found that education and political interest are powerful predictors of all types of action hereby studied in many of the models we tested. The size of the city presented some interesting results: in some models it is positively related with participation, and it is more significant for activities such as petitions where the relationship seem more intuitive, such as demonstrations, suggesting that bigger cities provide not only more opportunities for political action, but are also more susceptible to this type of action due to other factors, such as cultural variables that are not usually included in the political participation models

Civil Society and Political Participation: What Type of Political Participation is Influenced by Community Level Involvement in Civil Society?

AbstractThe aim of this paper is thus to further explore the relationship between involvement in voluntary associations at the community level and specific forms of political participation. We pose the following questions. Do voluntary associations contribute to specific forms of individual political participation in a consociational context? Do voluntary associations encourage forms of political participation aimed at directly interacting with the policy process, or do they promote extraparliamentary forms of protest? The study contributes with testing three different measurements of community level involvement in voluntary associations and their correlations with individual level political participation. The empirical data is based upon a mulitilevel sample of 4232 individuals located in 33 different Swedish municipalities. Results show that only direct contacts with local elites are significantly correlated with community level participation in civil society organizations. This result may be interpreted as indicating that local voluntary associations contribute to the local political culture.

Environmental Activism: relationship with psycho-social and psycho-political variables among activists and non-activists from Argentina / Activismo ambiental: relación con variables psicosociales y psicopolíticas en activistas y no activistas de Argentina

This work is framed within the field of Political and Environmental Psychology. It aimed to analyse environmental activism as a pro-environmental behaviour and as a type of political participation within socio-environmental organizations. Specifically, it was interesting to analyse the differences between a group of activists and a group of non-activists in terms of certain psycho-social (environmental risk perception, environmental concern, social values and knowledge about environmental problems) and psycho-political variables (individual political participation and political ideology). 401 young and adult citizens from the city of Córdoba (Argentina) participated in the study (54.6% female), of which 86.3% were non-activists. In order to achieve the goals of our research, we carried out a correlational study. With a view to finding possible differences between the activist and non-activist groups we applied an ANOVA and a Chi Square analysis to the psycho-social and psycho-political variables. Results show differential psycho-social and psycho-political profiles between activists and non-activists.

Extra-representational types of political participation and models of trade unionism: a cross-country comparison

Applying multi-level modelling to the four rounds of the European Social Survey currently available (2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008), our paper provides evidence of crosscountry divergence in the empirical association between extra-representational types of political participation and trade union membership. Cross-national differences in union members’ political participation of this kind, we argue, can be explained by the existence of models of unionism that differ with respect to the institutionalization of trade union activity and the opportunities for left-wing parties to gain access to executive power.

Political participation of older adults in Scandinavia - the civic voluntarism model revisited? A multi-level analysis of three types of political participation

This article examines political participation among older adults in österbotten, Finland, and Västerbotten, Sweden. Two specific hypotheses are tested. First, we anticipate that older adults are loyal voters but less avid in engaging in politics between elections. Second, we expect individuallevel resources to explain why older people participate in politics.
 The article offers two contributions to the literature on political participation of older adults. First, it corroborates earlier findings by showing that older adults indeed have a higher inclination to vote than to engage in political activities between elections, but it also shows that the latter engagement is more diversified than one could expect. Second, although the findings largely support the resource model, they suggest that we need to consider also other factors such as the overall attitude towards older people.