The empathy gap: understanding why some people don’t vote

Not everyone votes. Using data from the 2015 Finnish National Election Study, Kimmo Grönlund and Hanna Wass look at what factors make a person less likely to go to the polls or get involved in politics. They warn against assuming non-voting is a matter of personal choice and suggest ways to overcome the ‘solidarity deficit’ that emerges when some sections of society have no say in politics

Experimental methods

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Poliittisen osallistumisen eriytyminen : Eduskuntavaalitutkimus 2015

Kirjan otsikko ”poliittisen osallistumisen eriytyminen” kuvaa siitä, miten poliittinen aktiivisuus tai siitä syrjään jääminen kattaa yhä moninaisemman joukon erilaisia muotoja. Osallistumisen ja poliittisen vaikutusvallan eriytyminen heijastaa myös laajempaa yhteiskunnallista eriarvoistumiskehitystä. Tutkimuksen keskeisenä tavoitteena on innostaa lukijaa pohtimaan, miten poliittisen osallistumisen ja vaikuttamisen käytännöistä voitaisiin tehdä mahdollisimman avoimia erilaisista lähtökohdista tuleville kansalaisille. ”Poliittisen osallistumisen eriytyminen” on Suomen kansallisen vaalitutkimusohjelman neljäs peräkkäinen tutkimus. Se perustuu pääosin eduskuntavaalien 2015 jälkeen kerättyyn haastatteluaineistoon. Teos julkaistaan oikeusministeriön sarjassa ja on ladattavissa sähköisenä myös vaalitutkimusportaalin (www.vaalitutkimus.fi) kautta. Vaalitutkimusportaalin verkkosivuilta löytyy lisätietoa vaalitutkimusohjelmasta ja vuosien 2003, 2007 ja 2011 eduskuntavaalien jälkeen tehdyistä vastaavista tutkimuksista. Poliittisen osallistumisen eriytyminen on pääraportti akateemisesta tutkimushankkeesta, jossa oikeusministeriö toimi aineistonkeruun ja toimitustyön rahoittajana. Suomen kansallinen vaalitutkimusohjelma on organisoitu pääosin kolmen yliopiston konsortioksi. Konsortion tieteellistä työtä johtaa johtoryhmä, jonka puheenjohtajana toimii professori Kimmo Grönlund Åbo Akademista ja jäseninä johtaja Sami Borg yhteiskuntatieteellisestä tietoarkistosta, dosentti Åsa von Schoultz Åbo Akademista ja akatemiatutkija, yliopistonlehtori Hanna Wass Helsingin yliopistosta. Vuoden 2015 tutkimuksen suunnittelua varten muodostettiin kysymyksiä hiomaan erityinen lomaketyöryhmä, jota johti yliopistonlehtori Elina Kestilä-Kekkonen Tampereen yliopistosta. Työryhmän muina jäseninä toimivat dosentti Kim Strandberg ja tutkija Jussi Westinen Åbo Akademista, tohtorikoulutettava Aino Tiihonen Tampereen yliopistosta ja Hanna Wass. Vuoden 2015 vaalitutkimuksen koordinointi on ollut Åbo Akademissa, joka kilpailutti aineistonkeruun. Tarjouskilpailun voittanut voittanut TNS Gallup Oy haastatteli henkilökohtaisesti 24.4.–7.7.2015 välisenä aikana 1587 satunnaisesti valittua äänioikeutettua suomalaista. Kerättyä aineistoa käytetään tämän tutkimuksen lisäksi useissa muissa tieteellisissä julkaisuissa ja Suomen demokratiaindikaattoreiden päivittämisessä. Kirjan luvuissa hyödynnetään myös Tilastokeskuksen tuottamaa yksilötason aineistoa äänestämässä käynnistä, virallisia vaalitilastoja, muita kyselyaineistoja ja tutkijoiden itsensä kokoamia media-aineistoja. Teos koostuu 21 luvusta, joissa 28 kirjoittajaa tarkastelee paitsi vaaleja, myös laajasti äänestäjien arvoja ja asenteita, poliittisen kiinnittymisen muotoja ja demokratian toimivuutta. Monissa luvuissa on myös vertailua aiempiin eduskuntavaaliaineistoihin ja muihin maihin. Tutkimuksen ovat toimittaneet Kimmo Grönlund ja Hanna Wass. Heitä on avustanut toimitustyössä Erkko Vanhakartano Åbo Akademiss

Empathy in a Citizen Deliberation Experiment

Despite increased scholarly attention, there is still limited knowledge on how empathy works in democratic deliberation. This article examines the role of empathy in citizen deliberation with the help of a deliberative experiment on immigration. First, a random sample of citizens was surveyed regarding their opinions on immigration. Based on their opinions, they were then divided into a permissive or a non-permissive enclave, and randomly assigned into like-minded or mixed-opinion groups for deliberation. After deliberation, they were surveyed anew. The study analyzes: (a) empathy differences between permissive and non-permissive participants; (b) changes in outgroup empathy toward immigrants as a result of deliberation; and (c) differences in prosocial behavior (i.e., donating to charity). The results show that the permissive respondents had more empathy, especially toward immigrants, than the non-permissive respondents. Among participants, outgroup empathy increased during deliberation. Regarding prosocial behavior, the permissive participants donated more often to charity at the end of the experiment

Can politicians and citizens deliberate together? : Evidence from a local deliberative mini‐public

In a deliberative mini‐public, a representative number of citizens receive information and discuss given policy topics in facilitated small groups. Typically, mini‐publics are most effective politically and can have the most impact on policy‐making when they are connected to democratic decision‐making processes. Theorists have put forward possible mechanisms that may enhance this linkage, one of which is involving politicians within mini‐publics with citizens. However, although much research to date has focussed on mini‐publics with many citizen participants, there is little analysis of mini‐publics with politicians as coparticipants. In this study, we ask how involving politicians in mini‐publics influences both participating citizens' opinions and citizens' and politicians' perceptions of the quality of the mini‐public deliberations. We organised an online mini‐public, together with the City of Turku, Finland, on the topic of transport planning. The participants (n = 171) were recruited from a random sample and discussed the topic in facilitated small groups (n = 21). Pre‐ and postdeliberation surveys were collected. The effect of politicians on mini‐publics was studied using an experimental intervention: in half of the groups, local politicians (two per group) participated, whereas in the other half, citizensdeliberated among themselves. Although we found that the participating citizens' opinions changed, no trace of differences between the two treatment groups was reported. We conclude that politicians, at least when they are in a clear minority in the deliberating small groups, can deliberate with citizens ithout negatively affecting internal inclusion and the quality of deliberation within mini‐publics.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Public Deliberation or Popular Votes? Measuring the Performance of Different Types of Participatory Democracy

There is a growing body of empirical research on democracies with strong or weak deliberative and/or direct democratic features. But how do these features affect the performance of a country? How do participatory types of democracies differ considering system performance, democratic performance, and social performance? Which type is more successful? Although these questions are most crucial and pressing in democracy research, they remain mostly unexplored. Our explorative study is a start to fill this gap. It analyzes which participatory types of democracies perform better: countries with less or more deliberation, countries with less or more direct democratic elements, countries that score high or low on both features. Based on several datasets and applying different statistical tools, we show that the associations between these types of democracy and performance are multifaceted. The most important finding, however, is clear-cut. Democracies with strong deliberative as well as strong direct democratic features perform better than other democracies. Combining deliberation with direct democracy seems to be the optimal formula to guarantee high social, system, and democratic performance. However, many questions remain open and we discuss the need for future research

The influence of legislators’ endorsements in party leadership elections

In the 2010 election for the post of leader of the British Labour party, almost all members of parliament endorsed one of five leadership candidates. I investigate the effect of these endorsements on the votes cast for candidates in each Westminster constituency. I find that an MP’s endorsement caused an average increase of 7.5 percentage points in the vote share of the endorsed candidate in that MP’s constituency

Deliberative Mini-Publics: Core Design Features

This working paper identifies core design features of a deliberative mini-public (DMP). It aims to provide clarity on what distinguishes a DMP from other forms of citizen engagement and participation by characterising its normative foundations and setting out its key features under a series of discrete headings that can be used as a resource by anyone designing, implementing, or studying DMPs. </p

A Model for Social Networks

Social networks are organized into communities with dense internal connections, giving rise to high values of the clustering coefficient. In addition, these networks have been observed to be assortative, i.e. highly connected vertices tend to connect to other highly connected vertices, and have broad degree distributions. We present a model for an undirected growing network which reproduces these characteristics, with the aim of producing efficiently very large networks to be used as platforms for studying sociodynamic phenomena. The communities arise from a mixture of random attachment and implicit preferential attachment. The structural properties of the model are studied analytically and numerically, using the $k$-clique method for quantifying the communities.Comment: 15 pages (Latex), 6 figures (Postscript