Civic Engagement in Europe: A Multilevel Study of the Effect of Individual and National Determinants on Political Participation, Political Consumerism and Associational Involvement.

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Civic Engagement in Europe: A Multilevel Study of the Effect of Individual and National Determinants on Political Participation, Political Consumerism and Associational Involvement.

Necla Acik-Toprak

PhD in Social Statistics

2009

Cathy Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research, University of Manchester

257

List of contentsList of contents.............................................................................................. 2List of tables.................................................................................................. 8List of figures ................................................................................................ 9List of abbreviations................................................................................... 10List of country abbreviations..................................................................... 11Abstract....................................................................................................... 12Declaration.................................................................................................. 13Copyright statement................................................................................... 13Acknowledgement ...................................................................................... 14Dedication ................................................................................................... 15Origin of the data ....................................................................................... 16The Author.................................................................................................. 16Chapter I..................................................................................................... 171. Introduction ............................................................................................ 171.1 Background............................................................................................................171.2 Definition of civic engagement...............................................................................181.3 Why measure civic engagement?............................................................................211.4 Why cross-country analysis? ..................................................................................221.5 The role of government ..........................................................................................251.6 Methodology..........................................................................................................271.7 Research questions and hypotheses ........................................................................281.8 Making the difference ............................................................................................30Chapter II ................................................................................................... 322. Setting the theoretical framework for active citizenship...................... 322.1 Main approaches to citizenship...............................................................................322.1.1 Liberal citizenship ...........................................................................................332.1.2 Republican citizenship.....................................................................................342.1.3 Communitarian citizenship ..............................................................................352.1.4 Radical democracy citizenship.........................................................................362.2 Defining civic engagement .....................................................................................372.2.1 Politics and the public sphere...........................................................................372.2.2 Expanding the definitions of politics and the repertoire of activities.................392.2.3 Voluntary organisations and passive involvement............................................412.2.4 Shifts in the repertoire of actions .....................................................................43Chapter III.................................................................................................. 463. Explaining civic engagement: a review of the main debates on civicengagement at the micro and macro level................................................. 463.1 Resources of participation: socio-economic status, civic voluntarism and cognitivemobilisation models .....................................................................................................463.2 Motivations for participation: a general incentive model.........................................493.3 The social capital model.........................................................................................523.4 What affects democracy and participation: culture, structure or both?.....................553.5 Bringing the state back in: the role of institutions and policies................................583.6 Government and the voluntary sector .....................................................................603.7 Civic education ......................................................................................................61Chapter IV.................................................................................................. 654. Methodology ........................................................................................... 654.1 European comparative study...................................................................................654.2 European social survey...........................................................................................674.3 Quantitative data analysis.......................................................................................684.3.1 Multiple correspondence analysis ....................................................................684.3.2 Aggregate level analysis ..................................................................................704.3.3 Multilevel modelling .......................................................................................724.4 Country level predictors .........................................................................................734.4.1 National economic development......................................................................744.4.2 Levels of democracy........................................................................................744.4.3 Social exclusion and poverty ...........................................................................774.4.3.1 Long-term unemployment.........................................................................784.4.3.2 Income inequality .....................................................................................794.4.3.3 At-risk-of poverty after social transfer ......................................................814.4.4 Typologies of welfare regimes.........................................................................824.4.5 Government expenditure..................................................................................884.4.6 Civic education................................................................................................904.5 Individual level predictors......................................................................................964.5.1 Age in three age groups ...................................................................................964.5.2 Gender.............................................................................................................974.5.3 Marital status...................................................................................................974.5.4 Socio-economic status: education, social class and economic activity..............984.5.4.1 Education..................................................................................................984.5.4.2 EGP class scheme .....................................................................................994.5.4.3 Main economic activity in the last 7 days..................................................994.5.5 Domicile........................................................................................................1004.5.6 Habits of watching TV...................................................................................1014.5.7 Ethnicity........................................................................................................101Chapter V ................................................................................................. 1035. Three dimensions of civic engagement in Europe: political activism,political consumerism and associational involvement ............................ 1035.1 Patterns of political activities................................................................................1055.2 Patterns of associational involvement ...................................................................1085.3 Typologies of voluntary organisations ..................................................................1135.4 Exploring the multidimensionality of civic engagement through MCA.................1155.5 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................124Chapter VI ................................................................................................ 1296. Civic engagement across countries: exploring contextual factorsthrough aggregate level analysis.............................................................. 1296.1 Aggregate level scores of civic engagement .........................................................1296.2 Comparing levels of civic engagement across countries........................................1316.3 Examining the relationship between the contextual variables and civic engagementthrough bivariate regression analysis..........................................................................1346.3.1 Economic prosperity......................................................................................1366.3.2 Democracy ....................................................................................................1376.3.3 Welfare regimes ............................................................................................1406.3.4 Long term-unemployment rates .....................................................................1416.3.5 Income inequality and at risk of poverty ........................................................1436.3.6 Government expenditure................................................................................1466.3.7 Civic education..............................................................................................1476.4 Multivariate analysis ............................................................................................1506.5 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................154Chapter VII .............................................................................................. 1607. Individuals and the country context: a multilevel analysis of civicengagement ............................................................................................... 1607.1 Preparing the dependent variables and introducing the models .............................1617.2 The variance component model............................................................................1647.3 The socio-demographic models: individual level predictors of civic engagement.1677.4 Variations of individual behaviour by welfare regime...........................................1777.5 Comparing the reduction in variance between countries .......................................1797.6 Discussing alternative contextual models..............................................................1817.6.1Civic education...............................................................................................1827.6.2 Democracy and equality models ....................................................................1837.7 Comparing the propensity of activism between a disadvantaged and a privilegedindividual...................................................................................................................1847.8 Discussing the country residuals...........................................................................1897.1.1 Political activism...........................................................................................1907.8.2 Political consumerism....................................................................................1917.8.3 Associational involvement.............................................................................1937.9 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................195Chapter VIII............................................................................................. 1998. Conclusions ........................................................................................... 1998.1 What’s new about civic engagement: understanding political consumerism..........1998.2 Back to the hypotheses .........................................................................................2018.3 Equality and civic engagement .............................................................................2048.4 Welfare regime and civic engagement ..................................................................2058.5 Democracy and civic engagement ........................................................................2088.6 What matters more individual characteristics or country context?.........................209Appendix................................................................................................... 211Appendix 1: Classifying citizenship education policies across Europe.. 211Norway......................................................................................................................211Sweden ......................................................................................................................212Finland.......................................................................................................................212Denmark ....................................................................................................................213Austria .......................................................................................................................213Germany ....................................................................................................................214The Netherlands.........................................................................................................215Ireland .......................................................................................................................216France .......................................................................................................................216Italy ...........................................................................................................................217Portugal .....................................................................................................................218Spain..........................................................................................................................218Greece .......................................................................................................................219England......................................................................................................................220Postcommunist countries............................................................................................221Poland....................................................................................................................222Hungary .................................................................................................................223Slovenia .................................................................................................................224Appendix 2: ESS civic engagement indicators....................................... 2252.1 Political activities.................................................................................................2252.2 Involvement in voluntary organisations ................................................................226Appendix 3: Frequency of associational involvement by country ......... 227Appendix 4: Comparing MCA, CATPCA and PCA.............................. 228Appendix 5: Civic engagement scores from MCA.................................. 229Appendix 6: Correlation matrix .............................................................. 230Appendix 7: Histograms .......................................................................... 231Appendix 8: Alternative multilevel models............................................. 233References ................................................................................................. 234

Abstract Necla Acik-Toprak, University of Manchester, Doctor of Philosophy, 21 September 2009Title: Civic Engagement in Europe: A Multilevel Study of the Effect of Individual and National Determinants on Political Participation, Political Consumerism and Associational Involvement. Active and engaged citizens are the backbone of a strong democracy and a vibrant civil society. Yet recent trends of low electoral turnout in Europe and decreasing levels of civic engagement have called into question the legitimacy of governments and the stability of democracy in the long term, particularly in Europe. Against the background of such developments this research sets out to provide a comparative study of civic engagement and analyse the variations in civic engagement between countries. The study is mainly based on the analysis of the European Social Survey 2002, covering 35,000 individuals from 19 European countries and applies advanced statistical modelling techniques including Multiple Correspondence Analysis MCA) and Multi-level modelling.Although there is a good deal of research examining civic engagement using individual level data or aggregate level data, very few studies have combined both approaches. This study addresses this gap and applies multi-level modelling to examine the relative importance of an individual’s socio-demographic characteristics and his/her country in determining levels and types of civic engagement. Thus, it has the advantage of identifying whether civic engagement is significantly affected by country characteristics or the converse, whether a person’s characteristics (age, education, social class etc.) are all that is needed in order to account for the variations in civic engagement. The innovative application of MCA to explore indicators of civic engagement has led to the identification of three dimensions of civic engagement; political activities, political consumerism and associational involvement. Moreover, by projecting all activities on a two-dimensional map it become evident that citizens who tend to carry out ‘individual’ types of political consumerism such as ‘buycotting’, boycotting and signing petitions are also more likely to be involved in New Social Movement organisations. These significant results shed new light on activities usually regarded as ‘individualistic’ type of activities and suggest viewing them in the context of a wider array of collective actions. Furthermore, in addition to the standard contextual measures such as economic development, welfare regime, income inequality, and levels of democracy, this study introduced two innovative policy measures. To consider the impact of government policies on levels of civic engagement measures of governments’ support of the voluntary sector and civic education at school (comparing the education policies of 19 European countries from 1945-2002) were developed. The results confirmed the importance of both individual level characteristics as well as country level characteristics in explaining civic engagement in Europe. However, differences between countries were reduced to a greater degree when contextual factors were introduced. Particularly the welfare state, showed the greatest effect. This implies that socio-economic conditions and in particular social policy and the degree to which it reproduces egalitarian structures determine to a great extent citizen involvement. In other words the results of this study suggest that the national context matters and that governments can and do shape the nature and levels of civic engagement.

• Comparative European Studies, civic engagement, political participation, civil society, multilevel modelling, multiple correspondence analysis, social capital

• Fieldhouse, Ed
• Purdham, Kingsley

eng

• www.ccsr.ac.uk

• ESRC Case Studentship with Unlock Democracy (www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk)

• Acik-Toprak, Necla

• Faculty of Humanities
• School of Law
• School of Social Sciences

uk-ac-man-scw:94093

Acik-Toprak, Necla

11th November, 2010, 10:06:28

7th November, 2014, 20:51:59