Beyond Membership: A Sense of Community and Political Behavior

Why does community matter for political participation? In this paper, I consider how community psychology, particularly “sense of community” can be used to address questions of political behavior. Individuals’ perceptions about their significance in a given community can have meaningful effects on the way in which communities influence politics. Using a unique survey instrument designed to capture individual’s perceptions of community connectedness and political behavior across five contexts (workplace, church, associations, neighborhood, and circle of friends (i.e., an informal network) I analyze data from 822 respondents and examine how sense of community influences two types of political behavior: voting in local elections and political discussion. The empirical analyses presented demonstrate that sense of community contributes to explaining voting and discussion, even after controlling for demographic, personality, and other political factors.     

Conflict and Identity: Explaining Turnout and Anti-integrationist Voting in the Danish 2004 Elections for the European Parliament

This article investigates electoral participation and the antecedents of anti-integrationist voting (AIV) in the Danish 2004 European parliamentary elections. First, it focuses on the effects of the campaign and assesses the importance of social demographics and political predispositions vis-à-vis mediated and interpersonal communication on turnout. Second, it investigates AIV, focusing on 'hard' utilitarian predictors and 'soft' cultural predictors. It draws on the European Election Study (EES) post-electoral voter survey and a media content analysis of the most important news media outlets. Its findings corroborate previous research on political participation and shows significant positive effects of interpersonal political discussion and exposure to news media that portrayed the European elections as a conflict-laden contest on turnout. The analysis of AIV highlights the importance of proxies (lack of trust and dissatisfaction with the incumbent government) and political ideology, but also feelings of identity. The latter provides evidence from the Danish context in support of an emerging body of literature emphasizing 'soft' explanations of euroscepticism.     

An Empirical Test of the Relative Education Model in Sweden

Numerous studies show that education has a positive effect on political participation at the individual level. However, the increase in aggregate levels of education in most Western countries over the last decades has not resulted in a corresponding increase in aggregate levels of political participation. Nie et al. (Education and democratic citizenship in America, 1996) propose the relative education model as a possible solution to this paradox. According to this model, it is not the skills promoted by education that have positive effects on political participation. Rather, education influences individuals’ social status, which in turn influences political participation. The relative education model expects that the individual-level effect of an additional year of education will decrease as the mean level of education in the environment increases. This article evaluates this theory using Swedish election surveys (1985–2006) and it thus provides the first in depth evaluation of the relative education model outside the US. On voting and political participation related to political parties, support is found for the relative education model.     

Political Action Committee Spending and Senate roll call voting

This paper addresses how PAC spending affects the roll call voting behavior of U.S. Senators. Using a theoretical framework which draws broadly on the voting literature, we develop models that explain Senatorial voting behavior in a pre-PAC and post-PAC world. Testing both models we find weak support for a Downs-Black view of voting participation in the first model. The second model supports the alteration of voting incentives resulting from PAC spending. We find that PACs have a positive effect on voting participation. The conjecture remains whether PACs change voting outcomes, but it is clear that they buy voting participation.     

Mapping the production of political communications: a model to assist in understanding the relationships between the production and consumption of political messages

High public interest today in political communications such as ‘spin’ and in political participation such as electoral turnout suggests that there may be value in exploring the processes by which political messages are produced and consumed, and their inter‐relationship with participation. It may be that what citizen‐voters think of message production influences how they consume political news and publicity (through observing and evaluating), and that the propensity to political participation is subsequently affected. This paper offers a model which traces the production of political communications, starting at their origins in the political class, and flowing via traditional political journalism or controlled media and new media to citizen‐voters who both observe and evaluate them (ie consume them) before, during and after making any political choices. It is hypothesised that the observation and evaluation of message production and content by political consumers influences both their types and levels of participation. Research of this nature into political organisations is relatively rare. Similarly, there is little evidence of investigations into other aspects highlighted in the model: attitudes of the political class towards political communications, the production of political communications before they reach the media and how they are received by the media, and their consumption by citizen‐voters in relation to the propensity to participate in politics. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Vote with your rabbi: The electoral effects of religious institutions in Israel

How do religious parties mobilize local support and what impact does different political strategies have on neighborhoods? Previous literature focuses on the social welfare benefits distributed by religious parties. In this paper, I analyze how religious political parties in Israel generate grassroots support among voters by allying with Jewish religious institutions. Using original data, I examine the association between the timing of entry of religious institutions into neighborhoods and local voting patterns for Israeli national elections. I find that religious institutions are associated with a 4-percentage point increase in the local vote share for religious parties, where this effect is larger for religious institutions with connections to political parties. My results suggest that the primary mechanism driving these results are that these institutions influence the vote choice of existing residents by distributing tangible goods. In contrast, changes to the composition of the neighborhood through in-migration has a more limited effect on voting patterns. These findings highlight the impact of religious institutions on the social and political fabric of local communities.     

An ideology of rights: Support for civil liberties among political activists

This paper examines support for civil liberties among a large and diverse set of political activists during the Reagan era: financial donors to party and political action committees (PACs). While these activists are more tolerant than the mass public, support for civil liberties is not evenly distributed among them. Liberals and Democrats are far more tolerant than their conservative and Republican counterparts. Tolerance is related to support for substantive rights and rooted in cosmopolitan demography, and it is not linked to greater political or social participation. Thus, among political activists, tolerance is associated with broader political alignments and not elite statusper se.     

Voting,non‐voting and consumer buying behaviour: non‐voter segmentation (NVS) and the underlining causes of electoral inactivity

This paper examines some of the issues and debates surrounding the voting and non‐voting of the UK electorate. It attempts to compare and contrast voter behaviour from both a political science perspective and a consumer buying behaviour perspective. In particular, the paper details the output of primary research into non‐voter behaviour and attempts to cluster these motivations and rationales into psychographic segments of non‐voting behaviour. Issues such as alignment and dealignment, social and inherited values are debated in detail, with particular attention being paid to party identification, issue voting and social determinant theory. The paper both challenges and supports previously presented arguments regarding political issues and voting. In addition, electoral turnout and voter participation are analysed and the consequences for democracy discussed. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Activist and Citizen Political Repertoire in Spain: A Reflection Based on Civil Society Theory and Different Logics of Political Participation

Abstract

Citizen participation in Spain has significantly increased, and its repertoire has broadened as a result of the 15M Movement. From assemblies and acampadas (occupations) to the current proliferation of new political parties, there has been constant movement through a wide range of techno-political actions and experimentation with means and political tools used by civil society and activists. This article aims to reflect on this complex and novel political repertoire from a theoretical framework of civil society. This framework is complemented with the differentiation of (horizontal versus vertical) political logics used in social movement studies.     

The Elite Politics of Media Advocacy in Human Rights

ABSTRACT

Advocacy nongovernmental organizations based in the North adopt digital tools to bypass repressive regimes, raise awareness amongst global publics, sustain grassroots activists in the South, and engage in political action. Social media was expected to offer innovative platforms for mobilizing participants to act on behalf of “distant others.” But the practices of some organizations signal that something else is at play. Rather than empower individuals, digital campaigns reify elite politics, using outsider strategies to support insider lobbying. Through communicative processes of mediatization, organizations pay homage to the existence of a movement, but only afford thin forms of participation. Using the framework of media advocacy to explore Human Rights Watch and the Enough! Project, we argue that social media becomes a top-down platform that exacerbates the elite design of organizations, enabling them to assert legitimacy for political actions, while disingenuously marketing themselves as democratic with bottom-up credibility.     

Effectiveness of Connected Legislators

Important work has been done to measure legislative effectiveness in the U.S. Congress and to explain the individual characteristics that drive it. Much less attention, however, has been devoted to study the extent to which legislative effectiveness depends on the legislators' social connections. We address this issue with a new model of legislative effectiveness that formalizes the role of social connections, and we test its predictions using the network of cosponsorship links in the 109th–113th Congresses. We propose a new empirical strategy that addresses network endogeneity by implementing a two-step Heckman correction based on an original instrument: the legislators' alumni connections. We find that social connections are a significant determinant of legislative effectiveness. We also study the influence of legislators' characteristics in shaping the network effects. In doing so, we provide new insights into how social connectedness interacts with factors such as seniority, partisanship, and legislative leadership in determining legislators' effectiveness.     

Healthy voting: The effect of self-reported health on turnout in 30 countries

Based on five rounds of European social survey (ESS), we examine both the direct and indirect effect of health, channelled by social connectedness, on turnout in 30 countries. Our analysis is the first attempt to make a comprehensive account of the magnitude of health in electoral participation. The results show that health has an effect on turnout and that it is notably larger among older people. The impact of health is partly mediated by social connectedness, which suggests that attenuated health may weaken an individual's social network which in turn depresses voting.     

Social networks and mass media as mobilizers and demobilizers: A study of turnout at a German local election

This paper explores the impact of informal communication in voters’ social networks and the formal communication of the mass media on individuals’ propensity to take part in elections. Analyzing survey data from a recent local election in Germany it shows how both forms of communication may not only mobilize, but also demobilize voters. On the whole, personal communication appears more influential than mass communication. The media’s effects are generally weaker than those of social networks. Moreover, they are mediated by attitudes, while social networks have strong direct effects. These originate mainly from information conveyed through personal contact with voters and abstainers in one’s immediate social environment. Social voting norms are only influential, if they originate from persons’ families and are in favor of electoral participation.     

‘Voice and Equality’: Young People’s Politics in the European Union

Academics and policy-makers have highlighted the increasing disconnection between citizens and electoral politics in Europe. Declining citizen involvement in traditional forms of politics has manifested itself in lower voter turnout and a dramatic shrinkage in the membership of political parties. Citizens have turned to alternative forms of civic and political engagement. These trends are most marked amongst young people. Whilst a number of studies have examined the nature of political participation in Europe, and the participation of young people in individual countries or specific political activities (such as voting), hardly any research has looked at patterns of engagement ‘within’ a generation of young people across different democracies. This article examines the political participation of young Europeans in national democracies in 15 European Union member states. Previous studies have shown that citizens are increasingly moving away from electoral forms of participation towards alternative forms of engagement that are (for the population as a whole) much less socially equal. Using data from the European Social Survey, this article finds that the social inequalities of participation are (with the major exception of voting) much less profound for young people. This latter finding has important implications for public efforts to promote greater youth participation in democracy.     

Activist knowledges in queer politics1

Abstract

This paper examines the politics of knowledge production in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism. It situates the development of LGBT activist research capacity within a broader shift towards evidence-based policy-making. The paper presents case studies of LGBT organizing from the US and Canada to demonstrate how LGBT activists utilize established social science methodologies such as statistics to claim legitimacy and render queer worlds visible in the policy process. The paper argues that this development in LGBT advocacy is marked by struggles over the kinds of queer realities that may be enacted through social scientific inquiry. The paper also explores the deployment of auditing and benchmarking in LGBT activist knowledge production. It demonstrates the way in which LGBT activists are using these privileged modes of knowledge production to produce truths regarding the nature, extent and effect of homophobia and heterosexism. The relationship between such calculative technologies and the emergence of LGBT active citizenship practices is considered. The paper concludes by emphasizing the decidedly mixed political implications of the increasing reliance on social science and calculative practices in queer activism.     

Does Television Personalise Voting Behaviour? Studying the Effects of Media Exposure on Voting for Candidates or Parties

Scholars have long argued that politics has become personalised throughout the post Second World War era. Increasingly, focus shifts from policy to politicians' personal traits. The media – particularly television, it is argued – is the driving force in the process by focusing more on individual politicians and their personal traits than parties and their policy proposals. Empirically, it is not known whether the personalisation of media content affects the political behaviour of voters. Based on survey data from the 2009 Danish local elections (N = 3,336), this article explores the determinants of preferential voting – that is, voting for a specific candidate rather than a party. The findings show that institutional factors and individual characteristics are far better predictors of personalised voting behaviour than any measure of media exposure – and that viewing the main national news bulletins, as well as reading regional newspapers, have a similar positive effect. Thus, the study provides answers to the highly debated but rarely studied question of whether and how the media possibly personalise politics with regard to voting behaviour.     

Overlapping publics and the negotiation of legitimacy in South African and Namibian sexual politics

ABSTRACT

This article explores how and why social movement organizations negotiate their presence in, and demands on, multiple public spheres. We analyse the strategies of two social movement organizations, Free Gender in Cape Town, South Africa, and Sister Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia. Free Gender elected to withdraw participation from a governmental task team convened to address the issue of homophobic violence, despite the opportunity this offered the organization to participate in national politics. Sister Namibia, by contrast, decided to maintain its public presence despite experiencing political homophobia from the ruling party, the South West African People’s Organisation. We contribute to the literature on public spheres and social movements by demonstrating the need to consider the overlapping nature of public spheres in South Africa and Namibia at the local, national, and transnational levels to account for activists’ strategic decisions.     

Explaining Contextual Effects on Vote Choice

How are individual voters influenced by their social surroundings? Though numerous studies establish that voting behavior can be influenced by the social context, we lack a full understanding of how the actions of individual voters can be influenced by the composition of their social environment. In this paper, I develop and test a micro-level model of the operation of contextual influences on political behavior. The model specifies the effects of both personal contact and individual perception of the partisan nature of the local environment. The data show little support for personal contact as a mechanism of contextual influence, but reveal that perception of partisan dominance markedly enhances the impact of partisan identification on vote choice.     

Open versus closed primaries and the ideological composition of presidential primary electorates

Many journalists, political reformers and social scientists assume that electorates in open versus closed primaries are distinctive, especially in terms of their ideological orientations. Because voting in closed primaries is restricted to registered partisans, voters in this setting are assumed to be more ideologically extreme. Independents voting in open primaries are seen as moderating the ideological orientation of these primary electorates. However, our research demonstrates that the ideological orientations of voters in these two primary settings are quite similar. Prior research demonstrates the influence of primary laws on voters’ self-identifications as partisans or independents. We expand upon this research to show how this influences the number and ideological positions of partisans and independents as they vote in presidential primaries held under differing participation rules.     

Civic activism and Korean democracy: the impact of blacklisting campaigns in the 2000 and 2004 general elections

Abstract

For the general elections in 2000 and 2004, civic groups in South Korea joined forces to stage the so-called ‘blacklisting campaign’ or ‘defeat campaign’ against allegedly corrupt, incompetent or anti-reform politicians. The campaigns not only played a significant role in thwarting many politicians from getting nominated or elected but also heralded a new era in Korean politics: civic groups have now emerged as a major political force, capable not only of challenging party policies and pending legislation but also taking on an agenda-setting prominence in a wide array of policy areas. In analyzing the success of NGO political activities in the 2000 and 2004 general elections, this paper draws on resource mobilization theory to show how the civic groups effectively utilized various resources, including leadership skills, communications and office facilities, and access to the mass media, to achieve their objective rather than relying simply on the spontaneous participation of voters. In comparing the efforts of civic groups in the two elections, the paper also explains the factors that made their endeavors relatively less successful in 2004 (e.g. a splintering of alliances among the civic groups). On the whole, the paper argues that the greater political involvement by civic groups is likely to lead to a more pluralistic, open and competitive form of democracy, and that the vibrant civic activism in Korea is an indication not only of maturing democracy but also a more secure entrenchment of civil society.