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.     

Gender differences in the effects of personality traits on voter turnout

This study examines whether the Big Five personality traits have different effects on male and female turnout. Previous research has reported an association between personality traits and turnout, but their results have been inconsistent. Nevertheless, there is a solid evidence of gender differences in personality traits and past studies have not taken into consideration the option that personality–turnout relationship might be gender-differentiated. The current study empirically finds that conscientiousness and emotional stability can significantly increase female turnout, but have no effect on male turnout. Furthermore, openness to experience exerts opposite effects on male and female turnout. As openness to experience increases, men become more likely to vote, whereas women become less likely to cast their ballots. However, extraversion and agreeableness are not associated with turnout, regardless of gender. To sum up, this study provides robust evidence that the effects of personality traits on turnout vary by gender and suggests that any future study of the topic must include interaction between gender and personality in order to estimate the effect of personality on turnout in a more accurate manner.     

Personality and Political Discussion

Political discussion matters for a wide array of political phenomena such as attitude formation, electoral choice, other forms of participation, levels of political expertise, and tolerance. Thus far, research on the underpinnings of political discussion has focused on political, social, and contextual forces. We expand upon this existing research by examining how individual personality traits influence patterns of political discussion. Drawing on data from two surveys we investigate how personality traits influence the context in which citizens discuss politics, the nature of the relationship between individuals and their discussion partners, and the influence discussion partners have on respondents’ views. We find a number of personality effects and our results highlight the importance of accounting for individual predispositions in the study of political discussion.     

The Educational Correlates of Voting: A Cross‐sectional Study of Finnish Undergraduates’ Turnout in the 2014 European Parliament Election

Why do well‐educated citizens show high turnout in elections? Despite broad scholarly agreement that educational attainment predicts electoral participation, there is little consensus about which aspects of higher education account for this positive association. This study addresses this gap in the empirical literature by investigating the educational correlates of micro‐level turnout. To this end, the article first discuss two types of factors that prior research has suggested to connect higher education to voting: participation‐enhancing benefits; and the type of education. Using a unique, nationally representative survey of the 2012 cohort of Finnish undergraduates, the relative importance of and relationships between these competing factors in explaining the students’ intended voting in the 2014 European Parliament election are tested. It is found that turnout is positively associated with the student’s sense of political efficacy, which also mediates between an open classroom environment and turnout. Furthermore, students enrolled in the academic university track have stronger voting intentions – an effect that reflects their sense of civic duty. By contrast, no support is found for the effect of social network centrality. These results suggest that several, but not all, elements of higher education as discussed in the literature are relevant for electoral participation.     

The personality of stealth democrats: how traits shape attitudes towards expert-based governments

While some scholars call for mechanisms to give citizens a greater voice in politics, others critically question the demand for more citizen participation. Rather, they find that the people do not want to be involved in politics and prefer independent experts to make political decisions. This perspective is captured by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse in their concept of stealth democracy. They describe stealth democrats as people who think that political debates are unnecessary or who naturally avoid all sorts of conflict. Especially the latter argument points to a potential psychological underpinning of stealth attitudes, which forms the starting point of the investigation here. This article evaluates the personality of stealth democrats and makes use of a well-known concept to capture personality traits, the ‘Big Five’ model. Analysing unique survey data from Switzerland, the results reveal significant relationships between personality traits such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism and stealth attitudes.     

Politicians in Television

ABSTRACT

Television viewers, journalists and social influence analysts often use the term “television character” or “media-savvy person” when referring to people (also to politicians) who draw the viewers' attention and interest (Reeves, Naas, 2000). The purpose of the research presented herein is to answer two questions: (1) what are the differences in social perception of five main personality dimensions (“the Big Five”: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience [intellect]) of media-savvy politicians and those considered to belong to the non-media-savvy type; and (2) how traits attributed to media-savvy and media-un-savvy politicians remain connected with the viewers' political self-identification. A hundred journalism students, using an adjective list for “the Big Five” diagnosis (five dimensions of personality), were to identify their political beliefs as right wing, mixed, or left wing and to describe a politician they considered to be the most media-savvy and the least media-savvy person. Results indicate that media-avvy politicians are perceived to be more extrovert (dynamic), more open to experience, and more conscientious than their media-un-savvy counterparts; participants' (viewers') political beliefs reflect the importance of openness and conciliation in perception of media-savvy and non-media-savvy politicians.     

Personality traits,political attitudes and vote choice: Evidence from the United States

Past studies have documented the significant relationships between personality traits and voter turnout, but we know less about whether personality traits influence individual vote choices. This study examines whether such attitudinal factors as party identification, feeling thermometers toward the candidates, policy preferences and executive approval mediate the effects of personality traits on vote choice in the United States. Using data from ANES 2012, this study finds no direct relationship between personality traits and vote choice. More importantly, the results reveal that through previously mentioned attitudinal factors, higher levels of extraversion, conscientiousness and emotional stability indirectly decrease the probability of voting for Obama, whereas a higher level of openness to experience indirectly increases the probability of voting for Obama. Nevertheless, agreeableness only exerts an indirect, positive influence on vote choice via executive approval. Overall, this study provides insight into the relationship between personality traits and vote choice and makes up for the insufficiency in the study of personality and voting behavior.     

Political Mobilisation,Political Participation and the Power of the Vote

This article proposes a framework to recast our thinking about political participation. The approach adopted insists on the role of collective actors and their agents – the political elites – in the democratic process and, by implication, in determining the amount and forms of individual political participation. The proposed framework builds on a simple model of representative government and introduces some major changes in the political context which have become ever more conspicuous in the course of the last 30 years, and which are substantially modifying the conditions for conventional (electoral) and unconventional political participation. Prominent among these changes are the increasing role of the media in politics, and the decline of party control over the voters. These changes tend to enhance both electoral and non-electoral forms of participation. Another set of contemporary institutional changes reduces the electoral accountability of political decision-makers, with expected consequences that are more ambiguous for both electoral and non-electoral participation.     

The Relationship between Genes,Psychological Traits,and Political Participation

Recent research demonstrates that a wide range of political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors can be explained in part by genetic variation. However, these studies have not yet identified the mechanisms that generate such a relationship. Some scholars have speculated that psychological traits mediate the relationship between genes and political participation, but so far there have been no empirical tests. Here we focus on the role of three psychological traits that are believed to influence political participation: cognitive ability, personal control, and extraversion. Utilizing a unique sample of more than 2,000 Swedish twin pairs, we show that a common genetic factor can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and acts of political participation, as well as predispositions related to participation. While our analysis is not a definitive test, our results suggest an upper bound for a proposed mediation relationship between genes, psychological traits, and political participation.     

Personality and Political Participation: The Mediation Hypothesis

Recent analyses have demonstrated that personality affects political behavior. According to the mediation hypothesis, the effect of personality on political participation is mediated by classical predictors, such as political interest, internal efficacy, political discussion, or the sense that voting is a civic duty. This paper outlines various paths that link personality traits to two participatory activities: voter turnout in European Parliament elections and participation in protest actions. The hypotheses are tested with data from a large, nationally representative, face-to-face survey of the Spanish population conducted before and after the 2009 European Parliament elections using log-linear path models that are well suited to study indirect relationships. The results clearly confirm that the effects of personality traits on voter turnout and protest participation are sizeable but indirect. They are mediated by attitudinal predictors.     

Women's Participation in Rural China's Self‐Governance: Institutional,Socioeconomic, and Cultural Factors in a Jiangsu County

We examined women's participation in village self‐governance in an Eastern Chinese county. While they have more or less been universally participating in voting in village elections, their representation in the village self‐governance bodies remains low, and their political aspiration and sense of empowerment remain limited. A wide range of factors contribute to this situation. In general, women enjoy a much lower level of education and are economically dependent upon male members of their families. Social gender, or the stereotypes of women as less competent and are expected to stay away from public affairs, plays a very significant role too. Institutional problems, such as frauds and irregularities in election, lack of government's attention in promoting women's political roles, and the inability of state‐sponsored women organizations to influence local governance, all contribute to underrepresentation and inadequate participation of women. Policy responses must look beyond women's electoral participation and address these many deep‐rooted issues.     

The role of the political context in voting indecision

A substantive portion of the electorate declares in pre-electoral surveys that they are undecided. However, little has been done in trying to understand who these voters are and how they finally decide their vote. In this article, we try to advance the literature by disentangling the circumstances under which voters are more likely to be undecided. While the traditional approach to the study of electoral indecision has been to characterize which individual traits make voters more likely to be undecided, this article provides consistent evidence showing that key elements of the political context may also affect electoral indecision. Using long-term harmonized data from Spanish pre-electoral surveys over 30 years, we find that voting indecision is influenced by two different types of contextual factors. First, there are some political contexts that reduce voters' cognitive costs when deciding their vote, i.e. the level of electoral competitiveness and the number of parties competing in the elections. Second, there are other political contexts that increase voters' social or expressive costs, i.e. the level of government popularity, since costs of expressing preference for the party in government increases when its public image is undermined.     

Direct Democracy and Women's Political Engagement

What are the conditions that promote gender equality in political participation? In this article, I propose that the presence of direct democracy expands gender equality in political participation by signaling the system's openness to women's voice, confirming their political competency, and highlighting their stake in political decisions. To test this argument, I leverage a quasi‐experiment in Sweden in the aftermath of the introduction of universal suffrage, where the type of municipal political institutions was determined by a population threshold. My findings lend strong support to the effect of direct democracy on the political inclusion of women. I find that the gender gap in electoral participation was smaller in municipalities using direct democracy than in similarly sized municipalities that only had representative institutions.     

Interdependence Effects in Mixed-Superposition Electoral Systems: An Empirical Test on Women's Participation in Sub-national Elections

Mixed-superposition electoral systems, while devoid of compensatory mechanisms interconnecting their proportional and non-proportional sections, may create effective linkages that exert some impact upon the behaviour of political parties. This article examines the resulting interdependence effects with respect to women's electoral participation and legislative representation. It is hypothesized that if political parties embrace the logic of ticket-balancing when forming their candidate lists in the proportional representation sections of elections, they become more willing to nominate female candidates in majoritarian districts, which creates an important interdependence effect that ultimately contributes to the increased levels of women's representation. This hypothesis is empirically tested on a sample of 139 sub-national elections held in Russia in 2003–2011, with some additional information derived from the results of 81 previously held elections. The statistical analysis confirms the presence of interdependence effects with respect to women's political participation. The principal contextual factor that intermediates the observed effects is political regime. It is shown that electoral authoritarianism mitigates the interdependence effects of mixed-superposition electoral systems.     

The personality of populists: provocateurs,charismatic leaders,or drunken dinner guests?

Abstract

The ‘populist phenomenon’ has received a lot of attention in recent years. Yet little is known about the populists themselves: who are they? They are often described as bad-mannered provocateurs disrupting the political game, but also as charismatic leaders able to persuade and motivate. Can a populist ‘style’ or ‘personality’ be identified? This article assesses to what extent populists score differently from ‘mainstream’ politicians on established personality inventories. Using a new dataset based on expert ratings for 152 candidates (including 33 populists) having competed in 73 elections worldwide, it is found that populists score lower on agreeableness, emotional stability and conscientiousness. At the same time, populists score higher on extraversion, narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. These results have important implications for the study of the success of populists in contemporary democracies and beyond.     

A Participatory Personality? Examining the Influence of Personality Traits on Political Participation

The aim of this article is to examine whether core personality traits are associated with opinions on and engagement in political participation of either participatory or deliberative nature. The Finish National Election Survey 2015 is used to explore the link between the Big Five personality dimensions and a wide array of political opinions and behaviour. The results suggest that variations in personality to some extent affect what kind of activities one prefers and engages in. Personality traits seem to better predict actual engagement in participatory and deliberative activities rather than having favorable opinions about them. This suggests that there is a difference between being positive about an activity in principle and actually engaging in it. Extraversion and Openness are positively linked to engagement in both participatory and deliberative activities, while Agreeableness and Emotional stability are negatively related. There are stronger effects of personality traits in predicting opinions on and engagement in deliberative activities than for participatory activities. The traits associated with deliberation differ from traits associated with preferring more traditional forms of politics. Thus, the results clearly suggest that the impact of personality on participation should not be neglected.     

Economic adversity and electoral participation of vulnerable socioeconomic groups

Do economic hardships affect electoral participation? Using cross-sectional data for 44 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America between 1996 and 2013, we find that individual-level attributes and structural factors shape voters’ reaction to economic adversity. This paper presents empirical evidence showing that economic downturns affect electoral participation. However, macroeconomic fluctuations have heterogeneous effects. While poorer and less educated citizens are more likely to increase their level of turnout during periods of economic adversity, the rate of participation of individuals with a higher socioeconomic status is not affected by economic downturns. Moreover, we demonstrate that the negative impact of economic hardships on the likelihood of electoral participation of the most vulnerable socioeconomic groups is mostly found in countries that are less inserted into the global economy and in states that offer weaker welfare protections.     

Electoral participation in the Netherlands: Individual and contextual influences

Research into electoral participation has produced two traditions, one focusing mainly on individual level explanations while the second concentrates primarily on aggregate level explanations. By bringing these two research approaches together, we are not only able to explain individual electoral participation more thoroughly, but we also gain additional insight into the influence of aggregate level characteristics on individual behavior. We combine eight National Election Studies held in the Netherlands between 1971 and 1994 enabling us to study variation on the individual and the contextual (aggregate) level, including interactions between these two levels. Findings show that the addition of contextual characteristics form a significant improvement to an individual level model predicting electoral participation. Findings also confirm our expectation that the influence of individual characteristics such as education or political interest is dependent upon contextual characteristics describing for instance the salience of the election.     

More Choice,Higher Turnout? The Impact of Consideration Set Size and Homogeneity on Political Participation

Central to the emerging scholarship on how political supply influences electoral behavior is the claim that more choice leads to higher turnout. However, empirical tests of this proposition have been limited to the aggregate level. This article examines the relationship between the properties of electoral choice sets, as perceived by the voters, and electoral participation. Following recent advances in choice research, the article distinguishes between an awareness set, consisting of all choice options known to the voter, and a consideration set which includes only those alternatives that are seriously considered by the voter. We hypothesize that the cardinality, ideological homogeneity and distinctiveness of individual consideration sets are positively associated with electoral participation. The expectation is tested with individual-level data from three waves of the European Elections Study. Our results suggest that the relationship between the structure of political supply and participation is complex: while the number of choice alternatives in the consideration set is positively associated with turnout, the ideological diversity of choice options suppresses electoral participation.     

Electoral participation in the Netherlands: Individual and contextual influences

Abstract Research into electoral participation has produced two traditions, one focusing mainly on individual level explanations while the second concentrates primarily on aggregate level explanations. By bringing these two research approaches together, we are not only able to explain individual electoral participation more thoroughly, but we also gain additional insight into the influence of aggregate level characteristics on individual behavior. We combine eight National Election Studies held in the Netherlands between 1971 and 1994 enabling us to study variation on the individual and the contextual (aggregate) level, including interactions between these two levels. Findings show that the addition of contextual characteristics form a significant improvement to an individual level model predicting electoral participation. Findings also confirm our expectation that the influence of individual characteristics such as education or political interest is dependent upon contextual characteristics describing for instance the salience of the election.