Mario Quaranta

Measuring political protest in Western Europe: assessing cross-national equivalence

This article tests the cross-national equivalence of the political protest scale, as developed by Barnes and Kaase, in 20 Western European countries using a battery of items included in the fourth wave of the European Values Study. The scale measuring the concept of political protest is widely used, but no evidence of cross-country equivalence has yet been provided in the literature. The article illustrates the concept of political protest, the relationship between concept formation, operationalization, and measurement equivalence, and the possible consequences of a lack of equivalence. It is argued that comparative research may be threatened by a lack of measurement equivalence. The spread of international surveys eases comparative designs, but at the same time enlarges the chances that we compare what is not actually comparable. The article then outlines an empirical strategy to assess the political protest scales measurement equivalence. To assess cross-country equivalence, Mokken Scale Analysis, a nonparametric scaling method within the family of Item Response Theory models, is used. This has been shown to work better than Confirmatory Factor Analysis when dealing with dichotomous and polytomous items forming ordinal scales. The results show that the cross-country equivalence of the political protest scale depends on the type of measure the scholar wishes to build and use.

What is the impact of the economic crisis on democracy? Evidence from Europe

There are already a number of good accounts of the impact of the recent 2008–2014 economic crisis on European democracies. However, no systematic assessments of how it has affected specific aspects of democracy have so far been carried out. We explore its impact on European democracies in several areas by adopting the ‘quality of democracy’ framework. Our analysis shows that the measures we employ capture the variation in quality during this ‘troubled’ period. The empirical analysis suggests that a shrinking of private and public resources due to an economic downturn prompts three reactions: (a) a general deterioration of the rule of law; (b) citizens become more sensitive about what governments deliver; and (c) detachment from the institutional channels of representation along with a choice to protest.

News diets, social media use and non-institutional participation in three communication ecologies: comparing Germany, Italy and the UK

ABSTRACT In the course of a three-year research project comparing social media and political participation across the European Union, we collected data on representative samples of internet users from Germany, Italy and the UK. Online users were surveyed just after the May 2014 European elections. The three countries have been selected as they differ not only in terms of institutional features but also in terms of the character of their media systems: ‘liberal’ in the UK, ‘democratic-corporatist’ in Germany and ‘polarized pluralist’ in Italy. Although previous studies have not put into direct relationship media systems with participatory patterns, we hypothesized that different types of media ecologies may generate peculiar incentives for non-institutional participation. Taking such differences into account, our paper sheds light on the linkage between digital media and unconventional participation across the three countries. Our hypothesis is that distinct news diets and different social media platforms may influence non-institutional participation in specific ways that reflect varying contextual characteristics. We assess the role of different news diets on unconventional participation, distinguishing our respondents according to their main sources of information (occasional, traditional univores, digital univores and omnivores). We then consider the association between the use of different social media (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) and non-institutional participation. Finally, we take into account the indirect effect of national contexts by running interaction models. Our findings show that news diets and social media use matter in the three countries, but that substantial differences are hard to find across them.

Finding Out the Hard Way: Uncovering the Structural Foundations of Political Dissatisfaction in Italy, 1973–2013

This article analyses the long-term dissatisfaction of citizens with democracy in Italy in light of the economic and institutional transformations that have occurred over the last four decades. Using multilevel analysis, the results challenge previous research showing how poor economic performance in the form of unemployment and inflation has increased dissatisfaction. Most importantly, the article demonstrates that the widespread political dissatisfaction can be connected to fragmentation of the party system. In this regard, the impact of the electoral reforms that have been introduced are assessed. These favoured a recovery of satisfaction between the ‘First’ and the ‘Second’ Republic due to the emergence of bi-polar political competition. However, the effect has been contained by an inability to substantially reduce the number of parties. By drawing on compelling data, this study provides systematic evidence of the macro-foundations of Italian political discontent.

The Non-Procedural Determinants of Responsiveness

This article starts from the remarks by Peter Mair on the growing gap between responsiveness and responsibility – or middle-run responsiveness – and the declining capacity of parties to bridge that gap. It focuses on the empirical analysis of the association between economic and substantive democratic dimensions and responsiveness, which are highly relevant to the way in which parties compete and govern within contemporary democracies. Following an introduction of the topic, the second section puts forward key concepts and hypotheses; the third presents the operationalisation of the variables and the applied method; the fourth and primary empirical section of the article analyses the non-procedural determinants of political and economic responsiveness, including freedom and equality as well as several key economic structural factors. The concluding remarks recapitulate the main empirical findings and submit a number of aspects that party leaders ought to take into account when addressing the thorny issue of responsiveness.

The impact of institutional decentralization on protest in Western Europe

There are many explanations for variation in political protest. However, they have not focused sufficiently on institutions and the influence the latter exert on protest. This article, by using multilevel analysis and cross-national survey data, suggests that political protest depends on the level of institutional decentralization. In fact, decentralization increases the number of state actors, implies a multiplication of access points to the political system, and provides greater chances of influencing the decision-making process. Furthermore, it is shown that the effect of mobilizing agencies, such as political parties and trade unions, also depends on the level of decentralization.

Collective and Private Resources and the Inequalities of Non-violent Political Protest in European Countries

Abstract Political participation is deemed to be a fundamental component of democratic regimes. The literature on political participation has shown that some social groups of citizens tend to be less involved in politics than other social groups, and the consequence is that the interests of these specific groups of less involved citizens are underrepresented in the political process. Given the increasing popularity of non-violent protest in contemporary democracies, it is important to understand whether political inequalities are present in this form of political engagement. In this article, we argue that non-violent protest may present inequalities, that examining the consequences of public social spending can help in understanding the cross-national differences in the levels of non-violent political protest, and that political inequalities in non-violent protest may vary according to public social spending. We test our argument using sources that include the European Values Study (1980–2009), multilevel models, and contextual data provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Voting for Movement Parties in Southern Europe: The Role of Protest and Digital Information

Abstract In recent years ‘movement parties’ such as Syriza in Greece, the Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, Podemos in Spain and—to a lesser extent—Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal shook national party systems, breaking the consolidated dynamics of political competition. Despite growing interest in movement parties, there has been scant attention to the role of citizens adopting unconventional forms of action and using digital media in accounting for their electoral performance. To fill this gap, four original internet-based post-electoral surveys are employed showing that protesters and digital media users are more likely to vote for these parties, despite important country differences.

The Relationship Between the Civic Engagement of Parents and Children: A Cross-National Analysis of 18 European Countries

Although previous research has suggested the existence of a positive association between the political activities of parents and children, little is known about other forms of civic engagement. In particular, the literature lacks an international comparative study on the intergenerational transmission of civic involvement. Using Bayesian multilevel models on data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2006 special module on social participation, this article tests hypotheses on the patterns of civic engagement of parents and children in 18 European countries with different political legacies. Our results show a positive association between the participation in associational activities of parents and children in all the considered countries, above and beyond individual and contextual characteristics. In particular, we do not find an evident East–West gap in the socialization process, suggesting that the Communist past of Eastern and Central European countries has little influence on what can be considered a basic mechanism of civic learning.

Fuzzy Set Theory and Concepts: A Proposal for Concept Formation and Operationalization

AbstractThe quantity-quality debate in social sciences also concerns concept formation and operationalization. The first approach has strong naturalist assumptions, while the second one focuses on the historical specificity of concepts. The solution to overcome this divide would be finding a path which balances the two perspectives. In this article we argue that fuzzy set theory can be a helpful tool for concept formation and operationalization. The application of fuzzy set theory to concept formation and operationalization provides, first, the opportunity of looking at concepts as complex constructs made up of attributes logically interconnected one with the other and, second, of measuring them accordingly. Thus, after presenting our general argument, we show a theoretical and an empirical application of how to use fuzzy sets in concept formation and operationalization.