Social representations and the politics of participation

Recent work has called for the integration of different perspectives into the field of political psychology (Haste, 2012). This chapter suggests that one possible direction that such efforts can take is studying the role that social representations theory (SRT) can play in understanding political participation and social change. Social representations are systems of common-sense knowledge and social practice; they provide the lens through which to view and create social and political realities, mediate people's relations with these sociopolitical worlds and defend cultural and political identities. Social representations are therefore key for conceptualising participation as the activity that locates individuals and social groups in their sociopolitical world. Political participation is generally seen as conditional to membership of sociopolitical groups and therefore is often linked to citizenship. To be a citizen of a society or a member of any social group one has to participate as such. Often political participation is defined as the ability to communicate one's views to the political elite or to the political establishment (Uhlaner, 2001), or simply explicit involvement in politics and electoral processes (Milbrath, 1965). However, following scholars on ideology (Eagleton, 1991; Thompson, 1990) and social knowledge (Jovchelovitch, 2007), we extend our understanding of political participation to all social relations and also develop a more agentic model where individuals and groups construct, develop and resist their own views, ideas and beliefs. We thus adopt a broader approach to participation in comparison to other political-psychological approaches, such as personality approaches (e.g. Mondak and Halperin, 2008) and cognitive approaches or, more recently, neuropsychological approaches (Hatemi and McDermott, 2012). We move away from a focus on the individual's political behaviour and its antecedents and outline an approach that focuses on the interaction between psychological and political phenomena (Deutsch and Kinnvall, 2002) through examining the politics of social knowledge

Performance-based vs socially supportive culture:a cross-national study of descriptive norms and entrepreneurship

This paper is a cross-national study testing a framework relating cultural descriptive norms to entrepreneurship in a sample of 40 nations. Based on data from the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness project, we identify two higher-order dimensions of culture – socially supportive culture (SSC) and performance-based culture (PBC) – and relate them to entrepreneurship rates and associated supply-side and demand-side variables available from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Findings provide strong support for a social capital/SSC and supply-side variable explanation of entrepreneurship rate. PBC predicts demand-side variables, such as opportunity existence and the quality of formal institutions to support entrepreneurship

Human resource management and productivity in the "Trust Game Corporation"

Contemporary production activity is crucially determined by the performance of complex tasks with the characteristics of corporate trust games. In this paper, we outline a productivity paradox showing that, under reasonable conditions, the non cooperative solution, that yields a suboptimal firm output, is the equilibrium of corporate trust games when relational preferences are not sufficiently high. We show that tournaments and steeper pay for performance schemes may crowd out cooperation in presence of players preferences for relational goods. These findings help to explain firm investment in workers' relationships and the puzzle on the less than expected use of such schemes

Collective Representation as a Mobilizer: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Their Intersections at the State Level

Prior research has found that descriptive representation by race, ethnicity, or gender increases political action, but it has paid less attention to how the intersection of these identities influences participation. We extend this literature by assessing the effects on voter turnout of collective descriptive representation in U.S. state legislatures on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and their intersections. We argue that members of historically excluded groups respond to the overall composition of their state’s legislature. We test this proposition in seven elections (2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012). Our results are consistent with the minority empowerment literature, as overall collective representation does substantially increase turnout among previously excluded groups. However, the impact varies intersectionally. For white women, gender trumps race, as higher collective gender representation, regardless of race or ethnicity, increases voter turnout. For African Americans, race trumps gender, as both black men and women respond most consistently to higher levels of collective racial representation. For Latinos, we find less consistent results, but note a collective ethnic turnout effect for 2002 and 2006. We conclude that collective representation, especially at the intersection of identities, is an important factor influencing levels of turnout among previously excluded groups

Collective Representation as a Mobilizer: Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Their Intersections at the State Level

Prior research has found that descriptive representation by race, ethnicity, or gender increases political action, but it has paid less attention to how the intersection of these identities influences participation. We extend this literature by assessing the effects on voter turnout of collective descriptive representation in U.S. state legislatures on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and their intersections. We argue that members of historically excluded groups respond to the overall composition of their state’s legislature. We test this proposition in seven elections (2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012). Our results are consistent with the minority empowerment literature, as overall collective representation does substantially increase turnout among previously excluded groups. However, the impact varies intersectionally. For white women, gender trumps race, as higher collective gender representation, regardless of race or ethnicity, increases voter turnout. For African Americans, race trumps gender, as both black men and women respond most consistently to higher levels of collective racial representation. For Latinos, we find less consistent results, but note a collective ethnic turnout effect for 2002 and 2006. We conclude that collective representation, especially at the intersection of identities, is an important factor influencing levels of turnout among previously excluded groups

Dynamics of relational goods

Relational goods, Intertemporal consumer choices, Time allocation, D91, J2,