Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article investigates if civic education can spur a sense of duty to vote and, in this way, help to augment the number of voters and diminish inequality in participation. I perform a systematic cross-country analysis of the link between different forms of civic education and civic duty, using the data from the 2016 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) that include 23 countries. The results show that three key civic education mechanisms—civics courses, active learning strategies and open classroom environment—exert an influence on civic duty but that civics courses have the strongest effect. Country-level analyses confirm that civics courses are more influential on civic duty than the other types of civic education. This evidence elucidates which channels of school socialization may help to develop a sense of duty in adolescents, as well as the relative effect of each mechanism.

AbstractWhile some candidates use music in some of their campaign ads to shape individuals' perceptions of their competence or compassion, for example, it is unclear whether the relationship between music and trait perceptions is empirically valid. Considering the importance of knowing where trait perceptions—which represent important determinants of the vote—come from and the extent to which it is possible to manipulate trait perceptions by means of music, this study investigates the effect of music on trait perceptions using data from an online survey experiment conducted between October 30 and November 12, 2020. In this experiment, 362 individuals were exposed to a random sequence of five campaign ads, either with their original music or with no music. Following each campaign ad, individuals were asked to evaluate the candidate's competency, honesty, leadership, and compassion. The analyses reveal that music marginally affects perceptions of competency, honesty, and leadership. Moreover, music exerts no significant effect on perceptions of compassion.

AbstractWhile recent research has produced robust objective evidence of unequal representation in democracies, there is little evidence about whether this inequality is consistent with individuals' subjective perceptions of their own political efficacy. To answer this question, we use all available data on political efficacy from the International Social Survey Programme modules for 46 countries (1996–2016) to investigate trends and correlates of external and internal political efficacy. We focus on socio-demographic characteristics that are central to recent literature on unequal representation: gender, education, and income. Our individual-level findings show that education and income are positively associated with both external and internal efficacy while being female is associated with lower levels of internal efficacy but unrelated to external efficacy. We complement these individual-level analyses with a contextual investigation of how descriptive representation contributes to efficacy gaps. Focusing on gender, we show that women feel that they have more of a say in governmental decisions in contexts with a higher level of female representation among elected representatives. We conclude by noting how future research can leverage cross-national data to identify contextual mechanisms that may have an impact upon persistent social gaps in political efficacy across contexts and over time.

This article examines people's assessments, ex post, of whether their decision to vote or to abstain in a given election was the right one. We use 22 surveys conducted in 5 different countries (Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland) in national, supra-national and sub-national elections between 2011 and 2015. We find that the great majority of those who voted were satisfied with their decision to vote while non-voters were more doubtful about the wisdom of their decision to abstain. We also find that those who are interested in politics, who feel that they have a moral duty to vote in elections, and who feel close to a party are more prone to be satisfied with their decision to vote and to be dissatisfied if they chose to abstain.

AbstractA close connection between public opinion and policy is considered a vital element of democracy. In representative systems, elections are assumed to play a role in realising such congruence. If those who participate in elections are not representative of the public at large, it follows that the reliance on elections as a mechanism of representation entails a risk of unequal representation. In this paper, we evaluate whether voters are better represented by means of an analysis of policy responsiveness to voters and citizens in democracies worldwide. We construct a uniquely comprehensive dataset that includes measures of citizens' and voters' ideological (left–right) positions, and data on welfare spending in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries since 1980. We find evidence of policy responsiveness to voters, but not to the public at large. Since additional tests suggest that the mechanism of electoral turnout does not cause this voter‐policy responsiveness, we outline alternate mechanisms to test in future research.

AbstractThis research note presents the RepResent Belgian Panel (RBP). The RBP is a voter panel survey consisting of four waves fielded to a sample of voters in Belgium around the May 2019 federal, regional, and European elections in Belgium. It provides unique data on about 250 variables for a quota sample of the same respondents, pre-2019 elections (N = 7351), post-2019 elections (N = 3909), one year after the elections (N = 1996), and 2 years after the elections (N = 1119). The RBP panel dataset was designed to analyse voters' political attitudes and behaviours, notably on different dimensions of democratic representation, and with a specific focus on democratic resentment (e.g. citizens' attitudes towards democracy such as distrust and alienation, but also behaviours such as abstention, protest, or voting for anti-establishment parties). Its longitudinal structure allows to explore the political dynamics at play in Belgium throughout the lengthy government formation process. Finally, the last two waves of the RBP were fielded during the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing to explore public opinion before and during this global crisis. The RBP should be of interest to scholars of public opinion and electoral studies.