Shifting inequalities? Patterns of exclusion and inclusion in emerging forms of political participation

Previous research has found a steady increase in the number of people involved in emerging forms of civic engagements such as Internet campaigns, protests, political consumerism, and alternative lifestyle communities. Verba et al. (1995) have established that various forms of political participation in the United States follow a pattern of structural inequality, based on income, education, gender and civic skills. The growing popularity of emerging action repertoires forces us to re-evaluate the claims of this literature. Do these patterns of inequality persist for the emerging action repertoires across advanced industrialized democracies, or are they becoming even stronger, as Theda Skocpol (2003, 2004) argues? The results of this cross-national analysis with longitudinal comparisons suggest that gender inequalities in emerging political action repertoires have substantially declined since the 1970s, whereas other forms of inequality have persisted. However, contrary to the more pessimistic claims about a "participation paradox", there is no evidence that inequality based on socio-economic status has substantially increased since the 1970s. --

Trusting strangers - the concept of generalized trust in perspective

'Generalisiertes Vertrauen ist eine wichtige gesellschaftliche Ressource und ist als integraler Aspekt und Messinstrument des sozialen Kapitals anerkannt. Dieser Artikel gibt einen Überblick über das Konzept des generalisierten Vertrauens. Hierzu wird zunächst generalisiertes Vertrauen mit anderen Formen von Vertrauen in der interdisziplinären Literatur verglichen, wie strategisches oder rationales Vertrauen, identitätsbezogenes Vertrauen sowie moralisches Vertrauen. Diese Vertrauensmodelle unterscheiden sich in der Auffassung darüber, was Vertrauen ist, wie es entwickelt wird, und hinsichtlich der Zahl von BürgerInnen, die in das Vertrauen miteinbezogen werden. Zum zweiten werden die Erkenntnisse der Vertrauensmodelle benutzt, um den Ursprung und die Ursachen des generalisierten Vertrauens zu identifizieren. Dabei wird zwischen zwei Ansätzen unterschieden: der zivilgesellschaftliche und der institutionelle Mechanismus. Die empirische Forschung konnte die Annahmen über die Relevanz von Vereinen für die Entwicklung von generalisiertem Vertrauen nicht in der ursprünglichen Form bestätigen. Stattdessen spielen institutionelle Aspekte wie Gerechtigkeit und Unparteilichkeit eine größere Rolle für generalisiertes Vertrauen, wobei allerdings weitere Forschung das Kausalitätsproblem entflechten muss.' (Autorenreferat)'Generalized trust is an important societal resource and recognized as an integral aspect and measure of social capital. This article gives an overview of the concept of generalized trust and makes two contributions. First, generalized trust is compared to other forms and notions of trust in the interdisciplinary literature, particularly strategic or rational trust, identity-based trust as well as moral trust. These trust models differ in relation to what trust is, as to how it can be generated, and in the extent to which it expands to include various circles of people. Second, the insights of the existing trust models will be used to examine the sources and causes of generalized trust. Two important sources of generalized trust are distinguished: societal and institutional mechanisms. Empirical research suggests that the assumption of social capital theorists as to the efficacy of voluntary associations in producing generalized trust should be taken with caution at best. Selected features of political and social institutions such as fairness and impartiality are found to have profound effects on generalized trust. However, further research is needed to disentangle the problem of causality.' (author's abstract

Shifting Inequalities? Patterns of exclusion and inclusion im emerging forms of political participation

"Previous research has found a steady increase in the number of people involved in emerging forms of civic engagements such as Internet campaigns, protests, political consumerism, and alternative lifestyle communities. Verba et al. (1995) have established that various forms of political participation in the United States follow a pattern of structural inequality, based on income, education, gender and civic skills. The growing popularity of emerging action repertoires forces us to re-evaluate the claims of this literature. Do these patterns of inequality persist for the emerging action repertoires across advanced industrialized democracies, or are they becoming even stronger, as Theda Skocpol (2003, 2004) argues? The results of this cross-national analysis with longitudinal comparisons suggest that gender inequalities in emerging political action repertoires have substantially declined since the 1970s, whereas other forms of inequality have persisted. However, contrary to the more pessimistic claims about a 'participation paradox', there is no evidence that inequality based on socio-economic status has substantially increased since the 1970s." (author's abstract

Aiding Ukraine in the Russian war : unity or new dividing line among Europeans?

Published online: 12 October 2023The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused a seemingly high level of unity amongst Europeans in support of Ukraine. However, this article uncovers some inter- and intra-country fault-lines in public opinion across and within 16 EU countries and the UK regarding pro-Ukraine aid initiatives by using a two-wave design with data from the EUI-YouGov survey conducted in April and September 2022. Findings show that support is relatively stable but varies a lot depending on the specific measure and between countries. We uncover lowest support for measures that go against the self-interest of Europeans such as deploying troops and accepting higher energy costs. Frontrunners of Ukraine support are geographically close to Russia and located in both Western and Eastern Europe (though not exclusively), whereas laggards are countries of Eastern and Southern Europe with a history of Russian ties during the Cold War. Yet within countries, Ukraine support does not follow a simple pre-determined ideological pattern of the left and right. Most countries with lower overall support for Ukraine display a higher level of polarization between supporters of the incumbent versus the opposition party. Understanding these fault-lines is important for insights on current and future levels of Ukraine aid across Europe.This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - Springer Transformative Agreement (2020-2024

Scriptural legitimation and the mobilisation of support for religious violence: experimental evidence across three religions and seven countries

In their attempts to mobilise supporters and justify their actions, violent religious extremists often refer to parts of scripture that legitimize violence against supposed enemies of the faith. Accounts of religious extremism are divided on whether such references to scripture have genuine motivating and mobilising power. We investigate whether references to legitimations of violence in religious scripture can raise support for religious violence by implementing a survey experiment among 8,000 Christian, Muslim and Jewish believers in seven countries across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa. We find that priming individuals with isomorphic pro-violence quotes from Bible, Torah or Quran raises attitudinal support for religious violence significantly. Effect sizes are particularly large among those with a fundamentalist conception of their religion. Our results show that religious scripture can be effectively used to mobilise support for violence. The findings thus mark a counterpoint to theoretical arguments that question the causal role of religion and have important implications for de-radicalization policies

EUI-YouGov survey on European solidarity (2022)

1 data file, 1 documentation fileThe EUI-YouGov Survey on European solidarity (2022) was designed by the EUI 'Solidarity in Europe' research team (the data creators) and implemented by YouGov UK. It was conducted using an online interview administered to members of the YouGov Plc UK panel of 800,000+ individuals who agreed to take part in surveys. Emails are sent to panellists selected at random from the base sample. The e-mail invites participants to take part in a survey and provides a generic survey link. Once a panel member clicks on the link they are directed to the survey that they are most required for, according to the sample definition and quotas. (The sample definition could be (eg) "GB adult population" or a subset such as "GB adult females"). Invitations to surveys do not expire and respondents can be directed to any available survey. The responding sample is weighted to the profile of the sample definition to provide a representative reporting sample. The profile is normally derived from census data or, if not available from a census, from industry accepted data

Handling Planned and Unplanned Missing Data in a Longitudinal Study

While analyzing data, researchers are often faced with missing values. This is especially common in longitudinal studies in which participants might skip assessments. Unwanted missing data can introduce bias in the results and should thus be handled appropriately. However, researchers can sometimes want to include missing values in their data collection design to reduce its length and cost, a method called ``planned missingness.'' This paper review the recommended practices for handling both planned and unplanned missing data, with a focus on longitudinal studies. The current guidelines suggest to either use Full Information Maximum Likelihood or Multiple Imputation. Those techniques are illustrated with R code in the context of a longitudinal study with a representative Canadian sample on the psychological impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic