Lower education levels goes hand in hand with support for direct democracy

What role does education play in the type of political system that citizens would like to see implemented in their country? Hilde Coffé presents results from a study, in collaboration with Ank Michels, using survey data in the Netherlands. The research shows that while all education groups have similar levels of support for representative democracy, those with lower levels of education are far more supportive of direct democracy and other alternative systems. The findings suggest that this support is not linked specifically to a desire for greater participation in politics, but instead reflects the fact that lower educated groups are simply more willing to back alternatives to the current form of representative democracy used in the country

Measuring the bridging nature of voluntary organizations: a note on the importance of association size

Recently, a distinction between cross-cutting (or bridging) and closed (or bonding) networks has been proposed in the social capital literature. One approach to empirically operationalize this distinction builds on connections between voluntary associations through individuals with multiple memberships. However, simply counting the number of members’ additional memberships in other associations, as in previous work, is inappropriate. Indeed, we illustrate that this is biased towards finding that large associations are more bonding. We then propose a technique to alleviate this bias and illustrate that the proposed correction is crucial to avoid erroneous conclusions in tests of the hypothesis that membership in bridging or bonding associations is differently related to individuals’ civic attitudes. -- Seit kurzem wird in der Literatur zu Sozialkapital eine Unterscheidung zwischen heterogenen (cross-cutting oder bridging) und homogenen (bonding) sozialen Netzwerken vorgenommen. Eine Möglichkeit, diese Unterscheidung empirisch umzusetzen, setzt an Verbindungen zwischen verschiedenen Vereinigungen über Personen mit mehreren Mitgliedschaften an. Wie in vorangegangenen Arbeiten ausschließlich die Anzahl der zusätzlichen Mitgliedschaften in anderen Vereinen als Maß der Verbindung zwischen einzelnen Organisationen zu zählen, erweist sich jedoch als ungeeignet. Zunächst zeigen wir, dass in diesem Fall die Schlussfolgerung begünstigt wird, große Vereine als homogener (bonding) zu beurteilen. Wir schlagen ein Verfahren zur Verminderung dieser Verzerrung vor und veranschaulichen, dass diese Korrektur ausschlaggebend für das Ergebnis von Hypothesentests ist, die auf den Zusammenhang zwischen der Mitgliedschaft in heterogenen (bridging) verglichen mit homogenen (bonding) Vereinigungen und dem sozialen Verhalten von Individuen schließen sollen.Bridging and bonding,flemish municipalities,methodology,social capital,voluntary associations

Dutch citizens with lower education levels are more likely to support direct democracy

What role does education play in the type of political system that citizens would like to see implemented in their country? Hilde Coffé presents results from a study, in collaboration with Ank Michels, using survey data in the Netherlands. The research shows that while all education groups have similar levels of support for representative democracy, those with lower levels of education are far more supportive of direct democracy and other alternative systems. The findings suggest that this support is not linked specifically to a desire for greater participation in politics, but instead reflects the fact that lower educated groups are simply more willing to back alternatives to the current form of representative democracy used in the country

Towards an empirical characterization of bridging and bonding social capital

"In vielen empirischen Arbeiten werden die günstigen Auswirkungen des Sozialkapitals im Allgemeinen unterstrichen. Neueste Veröffentlichungen sind indes dazu übergegangen, ausdrücklich die Bedeutung der Unterscheidung zwischen verschiedenen Arten von Sozialkapital hervorzuheben. Ganz besonders unterscheidet man zwischen homogenen (oder bonding) und heterogenen (oder bridging) Netzwerken, wobei argumentiert wird, dass letztere mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit positive externe Effekte erzeugen als die ersten. Die empirische Operationalisierung dieser theoretischen Unterscheidung ist jedoch bisher eher unterentwickelt. In diesem Papier wird ein erster Schritt zur Lösung dieser Frage getan, indem die Diversität von (freiwilligen) Verbandsmitgliedschaften im Hinblick auf einige sozio-ökonomische Charakteristika untersucht wird. Die vorgeschlagene Methodologie wird auf Daten einer flämischen Erhebung zu freiwilligen Vereinsmitgliedschaften angewendet. Diese Analyse zeigt, dass Freizeitclubs und humanitäre Verbände wie z.B. das Rote Kreuz zu den heterogeneren (bridging) Vereinigungen, während Frauengruppen und Seniorenclubs zu den homogeneren (bonding) gehören." (Autorenreferat)"Though a vast amount of empirical work stresses the beneficial effects of social capital, the recent literature has explicitly recognized the importance of distinguishing different types of social capital. Particularly, a distinction has been made between homogeneous (or bonding) and heterogeneous (or bridging) networks under the argument that the latter are more likely to generate positive externalities than the former. The empirical operationalization of this theoretical distinction has thus far, however, remained underdeveloped. We take a step to resolve this issue by assessing the diversity of (voluntary) association membership on a number of socio-economic traits. The proposed methodology is applied to Flemish survey data on voluntary association membership. This analysis indicates that hobby clubs and humanitarian associations such as the Red Cross are among the most bridging associations, while women's groups and associations for retired people are among the most bonding groups." (author's abstract

Public Support for Increasing Women and Minority MPs

Most democracies fail to provide equal representation and tend to have an overrepresentation of men from the upper class and the majority racial or ethnic group. We investigate public support for increasing the number of women and indigenous Māori members of parliament (MPs) in the New Zealand Parliament, both in general and through specific mechanisms such as quotas and reserved seats. We offer three explanations: descriptive (group identity), substantive (issue alignment), and symbolic (socioeconomic and political equity concerns). Using data from the 2014 New Zealand Election Study, we found that shared identity (descriptive) matters for all measures of increased representation, but especially for Māori respondent support of increased Māori MPs. Support for increasing the proportion of Māori MPs is also strongly driven by substantive concerns, as measured by support for keeping the Treaty of Waitangi in law. Support for increasing the number of women MPs is driven most strongly by symbolic concerns (measured as increased government social spending and efforts to reduce income differences). Overall, respondents favor retaining the current number of reserved seats for Māori MP representation, whereas informal efforts (rather than quotas) are strongly preferred for increasing the number of women MPs.<br/

Are all politics masculine? Gender socialised personality traits and diversity in political engagement

Most research studying gender and political participation fails to problematise the measure of gender identity. Using 2012/13 Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences panel survey data, we investigate how gender-socialised personality traits relate to various types of political engagement. Baseline models show that, when significant, self-assessed socialised agentic/masculine traits are positively, and communal/feminine traits are negatively, related to political engagement, though only to activist types of engagement. Multivariate analyses reveal the positive link between agentic/masculine traits and very agentic forms of activity, including engaging with political parties and politicians and going to public hearings. Furthermore, the categorial gender/sex gap in participation matters independently of agentic/masculine traits and communal/feminine traits but the direction and size of the gap differs depending on the type of engagement considered.</p

MPs with both an educational and occupational background in STEM are the most likely to demonstrate engagement with STEM issues in Parliament

Joshua Myers and Hilde Coffé investigate the effect of having a STEM background on both the likelihood of MPs proposing a STEM Private Members’ Bill and the proportion of proposals an MP dedicates to such bills. They find that having a STEM background does not affect the likelihood of proposing a STEM bill. However, MPs with both an educational and occupational STEM background are more likely to spend a higher proportion of their bill proposals dedicated to STEM issues. They also find that having a STEM educational background matters more strongly for women than for men