Pub Date : 2023-08-03DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1213240
Mervi Luonila, Kaisu Kumpulainen, Aino Leppänen, Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Olli Ruokolainen
This study explores how urban cultural environments, and particularly their cultural provision and forms of participation, can foster cultural sustainability in urban communities, namely neighbourhoods. Conceptually, the article situates cultural sustainability within the concept of community resilience to facilitate an understanding of the everyday lives of residents and concerns residents' expectations of the cultural environment and opportunities for cultural participation in two case neighbourhoods in Jyväskylä Finland. Drawing on the mixed-methods approach of the study our findings show that different cultural activities and communities can be central to promoting sustainable urban development. Community resilience as a sense of belonging like neighbourhood-related identity and also as a sense of ownership of place seems strong in various ways, and relation to the cultural participation can be identified. However, from urban cultural policy perspective, the low-threshold participation and opportunities for grassroots cultural activity seem an underexploited resource in the cities, especially when the concept of sustainability is under consideration. Moreover, the negotiation and communication between community actors and public officials deserves a lot of attention while the implementation of urban cultural policy is on focus. From urban cultural policy perspective, it is important to find new ways to measure the direct and indirect impacts of policies. According to findings of the study holistic analysis of residents, actors and institutions viewpoints helps us to understand the practises and processes related to community resilience. All this deserves multidisciplinary research and joint reflection. This approach assists to make sense of how urban cultural policy and cultural participation can support community resilience at community level.
{"title":"Community resilience and cultural sustainability in two Finnish urban neighbourhoods","authors":"Mervi Luonila, Kaisu Kumpulainen, Aino Leppänen, Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Olli Ruokolainen","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1213240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1213240","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores how urban cultural environments, and particularly their cultural provision and forms of participation, can foster cultural sustainability in urban communities, namely neighbourhoods. Conceptually, the article situates cultural sustainability within the concept of community resilience to facilitate an understanding of the everyday lives of residents and concerns residents' expectations of the cultural environment and opportunities for cultural participation in two case neighbourhoods in Jyväskylä Finland. Drawing on the mixed-methods approach of the study our findings show that different cultural activities and communities can be central to promoting sustainable urban development. Community resilience as a sense of belonging like neighbourhood-related identity and also as a sense of ownership of place seems strong in various ways, and relation to the cultural participation can be identified. However, from urban cultural policy perspective, the low-threshold participation and opportunities for grassroots cultural activity seem an underexploited resource in the cities, especially when the concept of sustainability is under consideration. Moreover, the negotiation and communication between community actors and public officials deserves a lot of attention while the implementation of urban cultural policy is on focus. From urban cultural policy perspective, it is important to find new ways to measure the direct and indirect impacts of policies. According to findings of the study holistic analysis of residents, actors and institutions viewpoints helps us to understand the practises and processes related to community resilience. All this deserves multidisciplinary research and joint reflection. This approach assists to make sense of how urban cultural policy and cultural participation can support community resilience at community level.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44830424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-01DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1024729
Conal Monaghan, Boris Bizumic
Although ethnocentrism is one of the fundamental concepts in the social sciences, its study has been impeded by a diversity of conceptualizations and measures. In recent years, a growing number of political scientists and psychologists have undertaken in-depth research into ethnocentrism. In addition, researchers have recently proposed a comprehensive reconceptualization of ethnocentrism and developed a new Ethnocentrism scale. There is strong evidence for this scale's reliability and validity in indexing ethnocentrism, but like most measures in psychology and political science, this scale is based on classical test theory. Item response theory (IRT) is a powerful psychometric technique that can provide a much more sophisticated test of test performance and is currently under-utilized in research.We performed IRT to assess the psychometric properties of the Ethnocentrism scale on a sample of 4,187 participants.The scale's items had strong psychometric properties to capture the ethnocentrism latent construct, particularly in the below average to above average range. Men required marginally lower levels of ethnocentrism to endorse less socially acceptable items than women (items relating to superiority, purity, or exploitativeness). When compared to liberals, conservatives responded more readily to nearly all ethnocentrism items. Given this variation, the IRT approach highlighted that future measurements must adjust for differential item functioning, albeit more for political orientation than gender identity.The findings detail how IRT can enhance measurement in political science and demonstrate the implications for how gender and political ideology may affect the differential performance of items.
{"title":"Item response theory approach to ethnocentrism","authors":"Conal Monaghan, Boris Bizumic","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1024729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1024729","url":null,"abstract":"Although ethnocentrism is one of the fundamental concepts in the social sciences, its study has been impeded by a diversity of conceptualizations and measures. In recent years, a growing number of political scientists and psychologists have undertaken in-depth research into ethnocentrism. In addition, researchers have recently proposed a comprehensive reconceptualization of ethnocentrism and developed a new Ethnocentrism scale. There is strong evidence for this scale's reliability and validity in indexing ethnocentrism, but like most measures in psychology and political science, this scale is based on classical test theory. Item response theory (IRT) is a powerful psychometric technique that can provide a much more sophisticated test of test performance and is currently under-utilized in research.We performed IRT to assess the psychometric properties of the Ethnocentrism scale on a sample of 4,187 participants.The scale's items had strong psychometric properties to capture the ethnocentrism latent construct, particularly in the below average to above average range. Men required marginally lower levels of ethnocentrism to endorse less socially acceptable items than women (items relating to superiority, purity, or exploitativeness). When compared to liberals, conservatives responded more readily to nearly all ethnocentrism items. Given this variation, the IRT approach highlighted that future measurements must adjust for differential item functioning, albeit more for political orientation than gender identity.The findings detail how IRT can enhance measurement in political science and demonstrate the implications for how gender and political ideology may affect the differential performance of items.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46684399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1151288
Andrea Capati, Marco Improta, Tal Lento
COVID-19 constitutes an unprecedented exogenous shock for democratic political systems across the globe. During this turbulent period, Italy and Israel have also experienced a government crisis. Building upon the “coalition life cycle” and the “critical events” approaches to government stability, this article explores the trajectories of the government crises in Italy and Israel in times of COVID-19. The article examines the impact of the cabinets' structural attributes and the pandemic in relation to the governments' early termination. In both countries, the oversized coalition configuration of the cabinets led to conflicts between the governing parties, which became untenable during the pandemic crisis, thus precipitating the governments' collapse.
{"title":"Ruling in turbulent times: government crises in Italy and Israel during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Andrea Capati, Marco Improta, Tal Lento","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1151288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1151288","url":null,"abstract":"COVID-19 constitutes an unprecedented exogenous shock for democratic political systems across the globe. During this turbulent period, Italy and Israel have also experienced a government crisis. Building upon the “coalition life cycle” and the “critical events” approaches to government stability, this article explores the trajectories of the government crises in Italy and Israel in times of COVID-19. The article examines the impact of the cabinets' structural attributes and the pandemic in relation to the governments' early termination. In both countries, the oversized coalition configuration of the cabinets led to conflicts between the governing parties, which became untenable during the pandemic crisis, thus precipitating the governments' collapse.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":"414 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41291288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-27DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1059151
Júlia Alhinho
In this paper, I try to show that the recent surge of coups in Africa, like past surges, rather than resulting from cultural factors, is closely linked with the cyclic crisis of capitalism to which Africa is especially vulnerable, compounded by inadequate decolonization and by structural adjustment programs imposed by the leaders of economic globalization. Looking into the instances of coups in the African continent over the past 50 years and the history of global capitalism, I try to show that there is a pattern of coups matching capitalism crisis. I will look into the example of Guinea-Bissau to show this linkage between crisis and coups and the incidental and adaptive role of the military and political elites in the context of economic globalization. Political instability and violent takeover of political authority in Africa and beyond- are, therefore, a symptom of what has gone wrong with neoliberal globalization. Like Rodrik, I conclude that this has placed humanity before the trilemma: economic globalization, democracy and national sovereignty cannot be achieved simultaneously. To overcome it, there is a need for unfettered public debate on what form of global governance we want.
{"title":"Global capitalism crisis fueling coups and instability in Africa","authors":"Júlia Alhinho","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1059151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1059151","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I try to show that the recent surge of coups in Africa, like past surges, rather than resulting from cultural factors, is closely linked with the cyclic crisis of capitalism to which Africa is especially vulnerable, compounded by inadequate decolonization and by structural adjustment programs imposed by the leaders of economic globalization. Looking into the instances of coups in the African continent over the past 50 years and the history of global capitalism, I try to show that there is a pattern of coups matching capitalism crisis. I will look into the example of Guinea-Bissau to show this linkage between crisis and coups and the incidental and adaptive role of the military and political elites in the context of economic globalization. Political instability and violent takeover of political authority in Africa and beyond- are, therefore, a symptom of what has gone wrong with neoliberal globalization. Like Rodrik, I conclude that this has placed humanity before the trilemma: economic globalization, democracy and national sovereignty cannot be achieved simultaneously. To overcome it, there is a need for unfettered public debate on what form of global governance we want.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44512582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-25DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1247990
Ian S. Lustick, Amal Jamal
{"title":"Editorial: Israel/Palestine: the one-state reality implications and dynamics","authors":"Ian S. Lustick, Amal Jamal","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1247990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1247990","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42759925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-20DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1199449
J. Fitzpatrick, Gefion Thuermer
As external forces seek to gain influence over ICTs of political parties, their security becomes an additional relevant factor in parties' finances. While many studies focus on parties' online fundraising, their spending for web-based technologies remains terra incognita. Our perspective follows the idea that a party's spending is an indicator for relevance. What aspects are on the table when new ICTs are purchased by parties? What significance do security concerns have? We analyzed the Green Parties in Germany and Austria. Both are forerunners in their use of online participation platforms with decades of experience in engaging members offline. We conducted interviews with stakeholders from both parties and an external IT-specialist. Our findings indicate differences in the approach of securing ICTs even among these most similar cases: some see security as a long-term issue and invest in in-house solutions, others see security as a necessary expense and opt for external service providers.
{"title":"Political parties and their online platforms–Differences in philosophies","authors":"J. Fitzpatrick, Gefion Thuermer","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1199449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1199449","url":null,"abstract":"As external forces seek to gain influence over ICTs of political parties, their security becomes an additional relevant factor in parties' finances. While many studies focus on parties' online fundraising, their spending for web-based technologies remains terra incognita. Our perspective follows the idea that a party's spending is an indicator for relevance. What aspects are on the table when new ICTs are purchased by parties? What significance do security concerns have? We analyzed the Green Parties in Germany and Austria. Both are forerunners in their use of online participation platforms with decades of experience in engaging members offline. We conducted interviews with stakeholders from both parties and an external IT-specialist. Our findings indicate differences in the approach of securing ICTs even among these most similar cases: some see security as a long-term issue and invest in in-house solutions, others see security as a necessary expense and opt for external service providers.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44923908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-19DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1040644
H. Bäck, Royce Carroll, Holly Knapton, Emma A. Renström
How does threat motivate political choices? An extensive literature has noted the importance of threat in influencing political behavior. A growing literature in political psychology has used the concept of “mortality salience” to examine the role of existential threat in political decisions. Scholars have argued that inducing mortality salience by asking individuals to think about their own death should result in either reinforcement of their existing political worldview, a shift to a more politically conservative view, or support for a “status quo” option more generally.We performed two survey experiments (N = 484 and 1514) manipulating mortality salience and candidate features (Exp. 2). Experiment 1 was performed one week before the 2016 US presidential election and utilized the varying features of the candidates. Experiment 2 manipulated features such as experience level (representing the status quo or change) and partisanship.We find that mortality salience led to an increased likelihood of voting for Hillary Clinton, particularly for moderate and independent respondents. We also find that independent participants preferred the status quo candidate under mortality salience.We interpret the findings in both studies as supporting a connection between existential threat and preference for the status quo in psychological terms, at least for less partisan voters, rather than a conservative shift in ideological terms or a tendency to reinforce existing views.
{"title":"Threat, voting and candidate support. The impact of mortality salience","authors":"H. Bäck, Royce Carroll, Holly Knapton, Emma A. Renström","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1040644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1040644","url":null,"abstract":"How does threat motivate political choices? An extensive literature has noted the importance of threat in influencing political behavior. A growing literature in political psychology has used the concept of “mortality salience” to examine the role of existential threat in political decisions. Scholars have argued that inducing mortality salience by asking individuals to think about their own death should result in either reinforcement of their existing political worldview, a shift to a more politically conservative view, or support for a “status quo” option more generally.We performed two survey experiments (N = 484 and 1514) manipulating mortality salience and candidate features (Exp. 2). Experiment 1 was performed one week before the 2016 US presidential election and utilized the varying features of the candidates. Experiment 2 manipulated features such as experience level (representing the status quo or change) and partisanship.We find that mortality salience led to an increased likelihood of voting for Hillary Clinton, particularly for moderate and independent respondents. We also find that independent participants preferred the status quo candidate under mortality salience.We interpret the findings in both studies as supporting a connection between existential threat and preference for the status quo in psychological terms, at least for less partisan voters, rather than a conservative shift in ideological terms or a tendency to reinforce existing views.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48135044","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-18DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1185633
Claudia Kann, Sarah Hashash, Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld, R. Alvarez
Does collective identity drive protest participation? A long line of research argues that collective identity can explain why protesters do not free ride and how specific movement strategies are chosen. Quantitative studies, however, are inconsistent in defining and operationalizing collective identity, making it difficult to understand under what conditions and to what extent collective identity explains participation. In this paper, we clearly differentiate between interest and collective identity to isolate the individual level signals of collective action. We argue that these quantities have been conflated in previous research, causing over estimation of the role of collective identity in protest behavior. Using a novel dataset of Twitter users who participated in Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, we find that contingent on participating in a protest, individuals have higher levels of interest in BLM on the day of and the days following the protest. This effect diminishes over time. There is little observed effect of participation on subsequent collective identity. In addition, higher levels of interest in the protest increases an individuals chance of participating in a protest, while levels of collective identity do not have a significant effect. These findings suggest that collective identity plays a weaker role in driving collective action than previously suggested. We claim that this overestimation is a byproduct of the misidentification of interest as identity.
{"title":"Collective identity in collective action: evidence from the 2020 summer BLM protests","authors":"Claudia Kann, Sarah Hashash, Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld, R. Alvarez","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1185633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1185633","url":null,"abstract":"Does collective identity drive protest participation? A long line of research argues that collective identity can explain why protesters do not free ride and how specific movement strategies are chosen. Quantitative studies, however, are inconsistent in defining and operationalizing collective identity, making it difficult to understand under what conditions and to what extent collective identity explains participation. In this paper, we clearly differentiate between interest and collective identity to isolate the individual level signals of collective action. We argue that these quantities have been conflated in previous research, causing over estimation of the role of collective identity in protest behavior. Using a novel dataset of Twitter users who participated in Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020, we find that contingent on participating in a protest, individuals have higher levels of interest in BLM on the day of and the days following the protest. This effect diminishes over time. There is little observed effect of participation on subsequent collective identity. In addition, higher levels of interest in the protest increases an individuals chance of participating in a protest, while levels of collective identity do not have a significant effect. These findings suggest that collective identity plays a weaker role in driving collective action than previously suggested. We claim that this overestimation is a byproduct of the misidentification of interest as identity.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44269074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-13DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1123172
A. Sparks, Sara Arora, Nicole Cason
Show and tell advocacy is the lobbying tactic that many advocates use to promote their interests and build relationships with policymakers. This tactic has a long history, for example John Muir took President Roosevelt on a camping trip to lobby for the president's support in improving management of Yosemite. Many organizations engage in similar practices today. However, it has not been well-described in the literature. In this paper, we highlight a few cases to draw attention to this activity and offer several theoretical explanations for why it may be successful. We offer this paper as a call to practitioners and academics to do more collaborative research that unpacks different lobbying strategies so that we can study their effectiveness which is important for grassroots organizations operating on tight budgets and for academic research to better understand influence and political power.
{"title":"Show and tell advocacy: how advocates convince policymakers by showing them the work they do","authors":"A. Sparks, Sara Arora, Nicole Cason","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1123172","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1123172","url":null,"abstract":"Show and tell advocacy is the lobbying tactic that many advocates use to promote their interests and build relationships with policymakers. This tactic has a long history, for example John Muir took President Roosevelt on a camping trip to lobby for the president's support in improving management of Yosemite. Many organizations engage in similar practices today. However, it has not been well-described in the literature. In this paper, we highlight a few cases to draw attention to this activity and offer several theoretical explanations for why it may be successful. We offer this paper as a call to practitioners and academics to do more collaborative research that unpacks different lobbying strategies so that we can study their effectiveness which is important for grassroots organizations operating on tight budgets and for academic research to better understand influence and political power.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41887895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-05DOI: 10.3389/fpos.2023.1197317
Simon Bienstman
A long-standing argument in the political sciences holds that high levels of inequality are incompatible with democracy. Although a number of studies have by now investigated whether income inequality endangers democratic consolidation and stability through corroding popular support, the findings remain inconclusive. This study provides new evidence for a sociotropic effect of macroeconomic income inequality on trust in the institutions of representative democracy by making use of the random effects within between specification in multilevel models for data from 28 European democracies over a period of 16 years. The findings show that both long-standing differences in income inequality between countries and changes in inequality within countries over time are negatively related to trust in institutions. While the spirit-level thesis states that this effect should be more pronounced among rich democracies, the findings show that the effect of inequality is stronger in countries that are less affluent. Further analyses on whether the social-psychological mechanism proposed by the spirit-level thesis mediates the effect of inequality on trust document a partial transmission via status concerns and social trust. However, the study suggests that income inequality primarily influences trust in institutions through evaluation-based processes as captured by economic evaluations.
{"title":"Does inequality erode political trust?","authors":"Simon Bienstman","doi":"10.3389/fpos.2023.1197317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1197317","url":null,"abstract":"A long-standing argument in the political sciences holds that high levels of inequality are incompatible with democracy. Although a number of studies have by now investigated whether income inequality endangers democratic consolidation and stability through corroding popular support, the findings remain inconclusive. This study provides new evidence for a sociotropic effect of macroeconomic income inequality on trust in the institutions of representative democracy by making use of the random effects within between specification in multilevel models for data from 28 European democracies over a period of 16 years. The findings show that both long-standing differences in income inequality between countries and changes in inequality within countries over time are negatively related to trust in institutions. While the spirit-level thesis states that this effect should be more pronounced among rich democracies, the findings show that the effect of inequality is stronger in countries that are less affluent. Further analyses on whether the social-psychological mechanism proposed by the spirit-level thesis mediates the effect of inequality on trust document a partial transmission via status concerns and social trust. However, the study suggests that income inequality primarily influences trust in institutions through evaluation-based processes as captured by economic evaluations.","PeriodicalId":34431,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Political Science","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42892568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：