European Inclusion: Electoral Differences and Individual Participation in European Parliament Elections

This book investigates electoral procedures and their effects on individual participation in different elections within multi–level political systems. My basic research expectation is that electoral differences – i.e. differences in electoral procedures, for example between the 2009 European Parliament (EP) election and the previous national parliamentary elections in the member states of the European Union (EU) – reduce the individual understanding and thus participation in the EP election. As I show, the individual voter knows less about the EU than about her domestic politics, due to the EU’s lower political salience. Instead, the multi–level structure of the EU and its member states enables the individual to resort to political knowledge acquired on the domestic level, using it as a proxy for knowledge of the EU. That is, the individual employs a domestic perspective on the EU. But electoral differences cause this domestic perspective to fail, due to inappropriate reliance on other political knowledge. As a consequence, individual political knowledge about the EU is lower, reducing the individual understanding of the EU and the EP election. On the one hand, this lower understanding implies that political knowledge is more relevant in the context of electoral differences. It increases the individual’s awareness of electoral differences, enabling her to overcome the consequences of such differences for the EU and the EP election. On the other hand, electoral differences also mean that greater political knowledge has a demobilizing effect. If the consequences of the differences are not in line with the individual’s political preferences, they discourage her from casting a ballot for the EP. In short, electoral differences matter, diminishing the individual understanding of the EU and reducing individual participation in the EP election

Wir Machen Daten FAIR

Das Datenarchiv für Sozialwissenschaften, eine Abteilung von GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, besitzt eine über Jahrzehnte hinweg aufgebaute Expertise in der Aufbereitung, Dokumentation und Kuratierung von Daten großer (internationaler) Umfrageprogramme ebenso wie in der Entwicklung und Anwendung internationaler Standards in diesem Rahmen. Steigenden Anforderungen zur Generierung FAIRer (Forschungs-)Daten, etwa durch Forschungsförderer, begegnet das Datenarchiv mit der Bereitstellung der GESIS Datenservices rund um die Archivierung quantitativer sozialwissenschaftlicher Umfragedaten. In einem internen Projekt wurden ab 2016 Dienstleistungen des Datenarchivs systematisiert und professionalisiert. So entstand ein Angebotsportfolio (größtenteils) kostenpflichtiger Datenservices, die seit 2019 von allen, die entsprechende Daten generieren, aufbereiten, dokumentieren, aufwerten und archivieren möchten, in Anspruch genommen werden können. Der vorliegende Beitrag skizziert die Konzeption und Bepreisung dieser Datenservices und erörtert die Vorteile derartiger Angebote für Forschende, Förderer und die Forschungsgemeinschaft in der Praxis

Marital status CSES3 and BES10

This project harmonizes the CSES Module 3 (2006-2011) variable 'Marital status' with the British Election Study 2010 variable 'Marital status'.This project harmonizes the CSES Module 3 (2006-2011) variable 'Marital status' with the British Election Study 2010 variable 'Marital status'