Tag Archives for predictors of participation

DemocracySpot’s Most Read Posts in 2014

Glasses for reading (1936) – Nationaal Archief

(I should have posted this on the 31st, but better late than never)

Below are some of the most read posts in 2014. While I’m at it, I’ll take the opportunity to explain the reduced number of posts in the last few months. Since mid-2014 I have been working with a small team of political and data scientists on a number of research questions at the intersection of technology and citizen engagement (I presented a few preliminary findings here). Following the period of field work, data collection and experiments, we have now started the drafting and peer-review stage of our research. This has been an extremely time-consuming process, which has taken up most of my weekends, when I generally write for this blog.

Still, one of my new year’s resolutions is precisely to better discipline myself to post more regularly. And I am hopeful that the publication of our upcoming research will make up for the recent reduction in posts. We will start to disseminate our results soon, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here’s a selection of the five most read posts in 2014.

The Problem with Theory of Change

Technology and Citizen Engagement: Friend or Foe? 

A Brilliant Story of Participation, Technology and Development Outcomes

When Citizen Engagement Saves Lives (and what we can learn from it) 

Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?

What Can Genetics Tell Us About Participation?

For a while now there’s been some literature looking at the extent to which genetic traits might be linked to patterns of political participation, with some studies suggesting that genes might even play a role in which party one votes for. Here’s a great contribution to this literature, looking at the extent to which psychological traits – cognitive ability, personal control, and extraversion – mediate the relationship between genes and participatory behavior. As well as the findings, the paper also presents an excellent overview of the literature at the intersection of genetics and political participation. Below are a few excerpts from the paper (forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science).

Motivated by earlier research showing a genetic basis for political attitudes (Martin et al. 1986, Alford, Funk & Hibbing 2005), researchers recently discovered that political behaviors like voter turnout and other acts of political participation are also influenced by genetic variation (Fowler,Baker & Dawes 2008). These findings raise the question of how genes and political participation are linked. Mondak (2010) suggested that personality traits may intermediate the relationship between genes and political participation, a conjecture that is potentially supported by recent scholarship demonstrating a relationship between personality traits and political participation (Gerber et al. 2011, Mondak et al. 2010, Mondak 2010, Blais & St-Vincent 2011, Vecchione & Caprara 2009, Mondak & Halperin 2008, Denny & Doyle 2008, Gallego & Oberski 2012). However, an empirical link between genes, personality traits, and political participation has yet to be established. This article seeks to explore the relationship between all three using a uniquely assembled and comprehensive genetically informative dataset with information on personality, cognitive ability and a wide range of political attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. We focus on three potential intermediate psychological traits identified by the literature: cognitive ability, personal control, and extraversion.

(…)

To preview our results, we demonstrate that both acts of participation and related political predispositions share a common source of genetic variation with psychological traits. However, the three psychological traits we study account for only a modest amount of the heritable variation in political participation and predispositions. If psychological traits are in fact mediators, as has been hypothesized by other scholars (Mondak et al. 2010, Mondak 2010), a majority of the heritable variation in political participation and predispositions is likely mediated by traits other than cognitive ability, personal control, and extraversion. Finally, we attempt to test the nature of the relationship between genes, psychological traits, and political participation using a Direction of Causation model (Heath et al. 1993, Duy & Martin 1994).

You can read the full paper “Genes, Psychological Traits, and Participation” here [PDF].

The Arab Spring and Egyptian Revolution Makers: Predictors of Participation

By Mansoor Moaddel

This paper juxtaposes two clusters of theories; political conflict, resource mobilization, organizational, and political opportunity theories, on the one hand, and mass society, structural-functional, and relative deprivation theories, on the other. It assesses their explanatory power in predicting participation in revolutionary movements. It uses survey data from a nationally representative sample of 3,143 Egyptian adults who rated their participation in the revolutionary movement against President Mubarak from 1, no participation, to 10, utmost participation. The analysis of the data identified three sets of variables that are linked to participation: attitudes against the government and attitudes in favor of alternative sociopolitical orders, individual efficacy, dysphoric emotions, and immorality; such mediums of communicative power as the Internet, mobiles, and opposition newspapers; and demographics, including being male, residing in the urban area, and living impressionable years under President Mubarak. The socioeconomic status having an inverted-U relationship with participation suggests that the revolution was led by members of the middle class. The data, however, provides support for contradictory hypotheses drawn from both clusters of theories. The analysis thus suggests rethinking about predictors of participation. This entails departing from the conception that presumes the participants as monolithic individuals rather than manifold and heterogeneous, a new look at the relationship between immorality and participation, and a refocus on the monolithic state as  the unifying element in the revolutionary process.

Download the paper here [PDF]