Using an adoption design and data from a U.S. sample of adoptive and biological siblings and their parents, we examine the role of pre-birth (e.g., genetics) and post-birth factors (e.g., family socialization) in shaping numerous measures of political engagement, several of which have not been studied before in the context of an adoption design. Our results provide suggestive evidence that pre-birth factors play a larger role in shaping children’s political engagement than post-birth factors. More specifically, we find that the sense of responsibility to stay politically informed and vote and contacting a politician seem to be more heavily influenced by pre-birth factors than post-birth factors. Future studies should replicate these findings using larger samples and also build on our results by examining a wider array of acts of political engagement.

It is argued in this article that threatening stimuli affect political participation levels among non‐authoritarians more than among authoritarians. Focusing on socioethnic diversity, which is known to be particularly threatening to authoritarians and to relate negatively to political participation in the general public, analyses of individual‐ and macro‐level data from 53 countries is presented which supports this thesis. Participation levels among authoritarians are largely static, regardless of a country's level of socioethnic heterogeneity, while non‐authoritarians participate considerably less in countries with relatively high levels of socioethnic heterogeneity. This suggests that authoritarians participate to a proportionately greater degree in the most diverse countries.

Deliberative forums, such as citizens’ assemblies or reference panels, are one institutionalization of deliberative democracy that has become increasingly commonplace in recent years. MASS LBP is a pioneer in designing and facilitating such long-form deliberative processes in Canada. This article provides an overview of the company’s civic lottery and reference panel process, notes several distinctive features of MASS LBP that are relevant to addressing challenges to democratic deliberation, and outlines possible areas for future research in deliberative democracy applied in both private and public settings.

A cornerstone of democracy is the capacity of citizens to influence political decisions either through elections or by making their will known in the periods between elections. The aim of the present study is twofold: (1) to explore what factors inherent of the voluntary associations that determine the perceived success in their attempts to influence policy and (2) to investigate what role the composition of the local government have on the perceived success. This study is based on a survey conducted among 404 local voluntary associations in four different municipalities in Sweden. The results show that the frequency contacts influence perceived success positively, while the level of civic engagement of the voluntary associations affected the perceived success negatively. Having a heterogeneous local government also contributed positively to the perceived success to influence policy.

Political participation can take shape in many types of participation, between which the overlap is low. However, the similarities and differences between various types of participants are surprisingly understudied. In this article, I propose to differentiate between four types of participants: institutional political participants, non-institutional political participants, civic participants, and political consumers. These types differ from each other on two dimensions: whether they are political or publicly oriented and whether they are formally or informally organized. Building on the matching hypothesis, I argue that we should differentiate those four types of participants by their outlook on society (societal pessimism, political trust, and social trust). Using data from the European Social Survey 2006, including participants from 19 countries, logistic regressions show that institutional political participants trust politics rather than people, non-institutional political participants are societal pessimists who trust other people, civic participants are societal optimists who trust other people, and political consumers are pessimists who do not trust politics.

This lecture addresses the political impact of the Great Recession in a context of rising inequalities and retrenching welfare states. Do hard times fuel apathy or revolt, abstention or support for the extremes, and more particularly, in the European context, for thriving radical rights? To answer these questions, I shall take the case of France, in the 2012 presidential election, the first post-crisis one. I shall focus on the poor, the disadvantaged: those hardest hit by the recession.

Wood and Flinders re-center political participation on the idea of “nexus politics.” The effort is laudable because it contributes to other ongoing efforts at broadening our understanding of the nature of ‘political’ participation. Unfortunately, in our view, the authors misspecify new forms of political participation that have emerged by: (1) failing to take Henrik Bang’s work seriously; (2) focusing exclusively on motivation/intention, so that an action is “political,” only if the person acting sees it as “political”; (3) seeing all political participation as necessarily oppositional.

While Wood and Flinders’ work to broaden the scope of what counts as “politics” in political science is a needed adjustment to conventional theory, it skirts an important relationship between society, the protopolitical sphere, and arena politics. We contend, in particular, that the language of everyday people articulates tensions in society, that such tensions are particularly observable online, and that this language can constitute the beginning of political action. Language can be protopolitical and should, therefore, be included in the authors’ revised theory of what counts as political participation.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the potential link between religious participation and civic engagement in Sweden. Religious participation probably plays a different role in a secular context compared to a context where religion and politics are more intertwined. First, do those who regularly attend religious services in Sweden volunteer and participate in charitable giving more often compared with those who do not? Second, are those who regularly attend religious services more, or less, politically active between elections compared with those who do not in Sweden? Third, do those who regularly attend religious services in Sweden receive more requests to volunteer than those who do not? The study uses survey data on volunteering from random samples of individuals in Sweden. Results showed that volunteering was limited to a restricted group of organizations. There is a higher propensity among those who regularly attend religious services to volunteer within political parties. Those who frequently attend church were significantly more often requested to volunteer by someone else.

This study examines the association between self-reported health and the propensity for supporting citizens’ initiatives in Finland. Democratic innovations such as the citizens’ initiative provide novel ways for citizens to express their preferences, but whether people in poor health make use of such possibilities remains unclear. The data come from the Finnish National Election Study (FNES2015), a cross-sectional representative sample of the Finnish population. The results suggest that self-reported health affects the propensity to sign citizens’ initiatives, but the effect depends on age since it mobilizes young citizens in poor health, whereas the impact on older generations is negligible.

This paper examines the role of development NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) in furthering the political participation of the poor, with data from Bangladesh and Nepal. The topic is discussed from three aspects: the role of NGOs in prodemocracy movements, the issues raised by antiglobalization movements, and the extent of NGO involvement in local government elections. The paper draws on fieldwork conducted in two villages—one in Bangladesh and the other in Nepal. It is concluded that development NGOs tend to contribute more to elite interests than to the democratic political participation of the poor.

According to the mainstream literature on political participation, declining rates of voting and party and interest group membership reflect a crisis of democracy in Western democracies. In this article, we challenge this view by highlighting the rise of alternative forms of political participation that operate outside formal arenas. We suggest that the mainstream approach ignores such forms of political participation for two reasons: First, it operates with a narrow arena definition of politics; second, it is based on the assumption that non-participation in arena politics results from political apathy. We suggest that there is not a crisis of political participation, but there is a growing crisis in engagement resulting from an uncoupling between citizens and the state. Halting this form of democratic decline through a recoupling process will require changes on the part of governments and citizens.

Voluntary organizations have been praised as “schools of democracy” that promote citizens’ political participation. The neo-Tocquevillian approach argues that civic engagement in voluntary organizations facilitates higher levels of political participation. However, empirical studies on the theory have been inconclusive. One possible reason for this is the heterogeneity of voluntary organizations and of political participation. This paper explores the relationship between the civic engagement and political participation of U.S. respondents to the World Values Survey. The results show that only certain types of voluntary organizations facilitate certain types of political participation. Voluntary organizations that pursue social missions are more likely to facilitate political participation. Active civic engagement is more strongly associated with political participation, but passive civic engagement can also promote political participation in some organizations.

Understanding what older people learn from their civic participation is of critical importance both for individuals and organisations. This link has been neglected in prior research, and the evidence across diverse cultural contexts is particularly limited. However, the political context of older people’s life experiences and participation is important in their participation. The intent of the present study is to explore the learnings experienced by older people through participation in seniors’ interest organisations, across Australia and Spain. Participants included 52 active members of political organisations focused on issues for older people. A questionnaire was used for data collection; participants’ responses to an open-ended question regarding what they have learnt from their participation in seniors’ interest organisations are analysed here. Participants’ answers were subjected to a multi-stage thematic analysis. Findings show three key themes relating to learnings about themselves, such as self-improvement or skills or knowledge; learnings about others, such as cooperation with others and understand that people have different views; and learning about society, such as inequality and the need to fight for injustice. The findings suggest some interesting similarities and differences across contexts, which appears to reflect the different political contexts of the two countries.

In the United States, active church membership among ethnic and racial minorities has been linked to higher political participation. In Europe, the influence of religious attendance on political mobilisation of ethnic minorities has so far been little explored, despite the heated public debate about the public role of religion and particularly Islam. This study uses the 2010 Ethnic Minority British Election Study to theorise the relationship between religious attendance and political participation of ethnic minorities in a European context and extend existing theories to non‐Christian minority religions. The article shows that despite a significantly different context in which religion's place in political life is more contentious, regular religious attendance increases political participation rates of ethnic minorities. Some possible explanatory mechanisms are tested and an important distinction is introduced between those mechanisms that mediate, and those that moderate the impact of religion. The study finds that British minority churches and places of worships vary in how willing and effective they are in politically motivating their worshippers, and concludes that this relates to the political salience of certain religions within the United Kingdom context.

There is broad agreement that citizen participation is critical for successful democracy. Recently, scholars have linked such political participation with the notion of social capital—community-level resources, such as trust, norms, and networks, that foster collective action. Much uncertainty remains regarding the sources of social capital, however. Here we examine two different features of community life that are believed to nurture social capital, and political participation in turn: public venues where relative strangers can meet anonymously, socialize, and share information and opinions (i.e., venues for informal interaction); and venues for organized exchange between familiars, such as voluntary organizations and social clubs. Using quantitative data from America’s largest cities at the end of the 19th century, we examine the relationship between both supposed sources of social capital and respective rates of voter participation. We find little support for the role of informal interaction in fostering an active and engaged citizenry. We do, however, find evidence that citizen participation was related to some types of associationalism (or organized exchange). In particular, associations that fostered high levels of mutual interdependence among members seemed the most strongly linked to higher levels of political participation.

This article focuses on four areas in which there have been putative changes in democratic practices and processes over the last two decades: decline in, or changing forms of, political participation; the growing power of the corporate sector; the decline in state capacity and, relatedly, the problems of producing what is considered by some to be successful policy; and the growth of depoliticization and anti-politics. The article argues that while not all has changed, these are important, and worrying, developments. Subsequently, the article briefly examines possible ways in which we might re-engage citizens and recouple the government and citizens. Given space-limitations, this piece is best viewed as an informed argument.