Suchergebnisse

The transmission-reproduction perspective emphasizes the learning of political orientation through hierarchical (usually institutional and conventional) processes. A voluntaristic perspective calls attention to the individual's ability to choose reference groups and modes of participation (often unconventional and noninstitutional) and has the empirical advantage in focusing on pluralistic influences in politicization. This analysis employs a large combined data base on West German youth ( n = 2,500-3,000) that allows logit analysis of the internal differentiation by age, sex, and education in their orientations toward such pluralistic reference groups and political tactics. There are differences among young males and females that appear to be both developmental (related to age and sex) and situational (related to education). Younger, less educated males (15-17 years of age) are the most conservative of all age or sex groups. Older male youth show a stronger orientation toward conventional electoral participation than do females (who remain more unconventional), though by their 20s the males lag behind the females, whose progressive (left-liberal) advantage is less than for their younger counterparts. Overall young males show signs of a trend from conservatism to actionism to conventionalism, while females show a consistent progressive and unconventional advantage in all age groups. A concluding section reflects on the possible meaning of these findings for contemporary political styles among German youth.

Emphasises the learning of political orientation through hierarchical (usually institutional and conventional) processes. Overall, young males show signs of a trend from conservatism to actionism to conventionalism, while females show a consistent progressive and unconventional advantage in all age groups. (Abstract amended)

Argues that despite the ideological appeal of grass-roots democracy to Green sympathizers, the party has failed to attract sufficient active party members. The Greens are caught in a dilemma, because they appeal to those segments of West German society where 'non-partisans' are most numerous. This undermines the functioning and credibility of Green grassroots democracy. (Abstract amended)

THE GERMAN GREEN PARTY, WHICH IS ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL GREEN PARTIES IN WESTERN EUROPE, HAS NOT ONLY BEEN EFFICIENT IN CHANGING THE POLITICAL AGENDA OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC. IT HAS ALSO CHALLENGED THE CONVENTIONAL WAY OF ORGANIZING PARTY POLITICS BY INTITUTIONALIZING A SERIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES THAT ARE INSPIRED BY THE IDEALS OF GRASS-ROOTS DEMOCRACY. HOWEVER, DESPITE THE IDEOLOGICAL APPEAL OF GRASS-ROOTS DEMOCRACY TO GERMAN SYPATHIZERS, THE PARTY HAS FAILED TO ATTRACT SUFFICIENTLY LARGE NUMBERS OF ACTIVE PARTY MEMBERS. THE GREENS ARE CAUGHT IN A DILEMMA, BECAUSE THEY APPEAL TO THOSE SEGMENTS OF WEST GERMAN SOCIETY WHERE "NON-PARTISANS" ARE MOST NUMEROUS. THIS UNDERMINES THE FUNCTIONING, AND HENCE THE CREDIBILITY, OF GREEN GRASS-ROOTS DEMOCRACY.

Focuses on organizational dilemmas of a party dedicated to specific policy changes and failing to attract large numbers of members.

Since democracy requires the involvement of citizens, the topic of political participation has attracted great attention from both practitioners and scholars. During the current financial and economic crisis, there have been various protest movements in many European countries. In this paper, which employs data from the European Social Survey and analyzes some European countries using a longitudinal study (2002-2012), I measure unconventional political participation considering three types of action - signed a petition, participated in a lawful demonstration and joined a boycott. By linking citizens to government ideology and vote for party government to political action through a multilevel model, this paper argues that both ideology and citizens' electoral choices have a bearing on unconventional political participation. In times of crisis, government choices do not feed the level of unconventional political participation. However, differences emerge in terms of political behavior when I consider citizens' ideology, loser status and government ideology.

The German Green Party, which is one of the most successful Green parties in Western Europe, has not only been efficient in changing the political agenda of the Federal Republic. It has also challenged the conventional way of organizing party politics by institutionalizing a series of organizational principles that are inspired by the ideals of grass-roots democracy. However, despite the ideological appeal of grass-roots democracy to Green sympathizers, the party has failed to attract sufficiently large numbers of active party members. The Greens are caught in a dilemma, because they appeal to those segments of West German society where 'non-partisans' are most numerous. This undermines the functioning, and hence the credibility, of Green grass-roots democracy.

AbstractBuilding on past research, we implement a hierarchical latent class model to analyze political participation from a comparative perspective. Our methodology allows simultaneously: (i) estimating citizens' propensity to engage in conventional and unconventional modes of participation; (ii) classifying individuals into underlying "types" capturing within- and cross-country variations in participation; and (iii) assessing how this classification varies with micro- and macro-level factors. We apply our model to Latin American survey data. We show that our method outperforms alternative approaches used to study participation and derive typologies of political engagement. Substantively, we find that the distribution of participatory types is similar throughout the continent, and that it correlates strongly with respondents' socio-demographic characteristics and crime victimization.

The article provides comparative overview of features of conventional and unconventional political participation in 7 world regions basing on the findings from the 6th wave of the World Values Survey, the world's largest academic program in social and political sciences. Indices of conventional and unconventional political participation are used to describe the patterms of political participation inherent to different world regions.

Unkonventionelle Partizipation in autoritären Regimen wird in der Regel als Bedrohung für das politische System und als Beitrag zu seiner Demokratisierung gesehen. Diese Sichtweise vernachlässigt allerdings, dass Proteste nicht unbedingt gegen das System gerichtet sind und dass die politische Führung nicht nur reagiert, sondern auch selbst Möglichkeiten hat, Legitimität zu generieren. Sie kann z. B. die Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten erweitern, ohne Entscheidungsmacht abzugeben, oder auch die Verantwortung für die Lösung von Konflikten auf die lokale Ebene verschieben, um so Schuldzuweisungen für negative Folgen ihrer Politik zu vermeiden. Eine Auswertung von Protestereignissen in China zeigt, dass es der chinesischen Führung mit diesen Strategien bisher gelungen ist, ihre Position zu stabilisieren. ; Unconventional participation is by no means regime-threatening per se, not even in an au-thoritarian regime like China. On the contrary, the Chinese government has been able to generate legitimacy by tolerating certain forms of unconventional participation and by lo-calizing the responsibility for solving conflicts. The current leadership in Beijing has chosen these strategies to channel protests, co-opt civic society, and avoid blame-complementary to rather repressive forms of governance. An evaluation of protest events shows that the government has succeeded in containing protests quantitatively as well as qualitatively (that is, in terms of scope and the potential threat to the political system) through the extension of opportunities to air grievances.

What is the trend of unconventional participation in Italy and how do we measure it? This article analyzes the rise of unconventional participation in Italy from 1976 to 2009, focusing on measurement equivalence over time to produce unbiased estimates and to meaningfully compare means. The results show that the concept and the measure of unconventional participation are unidimensional and equivalent across time. Further, there has been a significative increase in the levels of unconventional participation and a differentiation in its distribution.