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Perceptions of politics and their implications: exploring the link between conceptualisations of politics and political participation

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Abstract

Recent studies directing attention to how people perceive and define politics have provided valuable contributions to our knowledge of what people do and do not think of as politics. Taken together, the results suggest that individuals’ conceptualisations of politics tend to vary. Considerably less is known, however, about how conceptualisations are related to behaviour. This study aims to fill that gap, by testing the hypothesis that those with a wider conception of what constitutes politics are also more likely to participate in political activities. Drawing on data from a survey administered to students at a Swedish University, the key result shows a clear and positive correlation between conceptualisations of politics and political participation, suggesting that the more issues that people perceive as politics, the more likely it is that they are involved in varieties of political participation. Furthermore, the relationship was still present during analyses including other well-known predictors of participation. This indicates that conceptualisations of politics seem to capture variation in individual political participation better than traditional predictors such as political interest, internal political efficacy, and political awareness. It further suggests that perceptions of politics constitute a distinct political orientation, above and beyond these well-known important factors for understanding political participation. Overall, these results are a first indication that future studies of political participation should not neglect. We therefore suggest that the field of political participation should incorporate indicators of both conceptualisations of politics and political participation.

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Fig. 1

Source: Evaluation of our survey conducted during fall 2017

Fig. 2

Source: Evaluation of our survey conducted fall 2017

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Notes

  1. The term political is in this study understood as the adjective form of the noun politics. For more detailed discussions about the relation between “politics” and “political”, see, e.g. Szabó (2006) and Palonen (2003, 2006).

  2. How important people perceive a certain aspect may be of importance here. That, however, we currently do not investigate. For future research, it may be fruitful to examine also the extent to which the breadth of conceptualisations is moderated by how important someone perceives a specific issue.

  3. A mean value comparison of the breadth of respondents’ conceptualisations of politics revealed no differences based on educational programme (p > 0.05).

  4. See Appendix for the full list of the 24 issues.

  5. The three conceptions of politics found in Heywood (2004) touch many of the issues presented in the list. In short, according to Heywood, the first conception, “the art of government”, follows a long tradition that associates politics with the government and its central institutions. Here, politics is foremost understood as engagement in “running the country” (or a state). This restricted conception allows only a minor part of society to be about politics, such as legislative chambers, governments departments, and so forth. The second conception, “the public affairs conception”, relates politics to the distinction between “public” versus “private”. Politics, in this “Aristotelian” sense, is what is going on in the public sphere. The crucial question is then; where to draw the line between those spheres? One traditional distinction has been between what concerns the state versus what concerns the civil society. Therefore, the former often captures institutions such as the army, social security systems, and the police since “they are responsible for collective organisation of community life” (Heywood 2002 p. 8). While all other potential institutions, e.g. companies, families, trade unions, and golf clubs, are mostly defined as “non-political”, because they are organised and managed by individuals and for themselves. The third conception, “politics is power”, is by far the broadest compared with the other two. This conception moves beyond the idea that politics is bounded to certain sphere(s). In contrast, politics can be present in any existing social relation regardless of spatial location, for example between parents, in a golf club, in the legislative chamber, between two nation-states on global level, as well as in the mosque. The distinct questions here is whether someone tries to change the state of affairs, if so, then power is present, and the essence of politics is, in this line of thinking, power (Heywood 2002, 2004, see also Leftwich 2008). In sum, these conceptions worked as guidance while creating the list of 24 issues.

  6. Although it was never the ambition of this study to structure people’s conceptualisations into underlying factors, a factor analysis may reveal useful information regarding the dimensionality of the 24 items in the political-issues battery. An explanatory factor analysis using maximum likelihood estimation with oblique rotation suggested that a three-factor solution had a significantly better fit of the data than did a two-factor solution (p < .05). The absolute fit of this EFA model was, however, adequate at best (2 = 1551.71, p < .05; CFI/TLI = .91/.88; RMSEA = .187 (CI: .178–.196); SRMR = .044). No EFA model with more than three factors converged. The problems of convergence and the bad fit of the best converging model suggest that the ratio between analysed items and sample size is too large. The problem of fitting the model indicates a need for additional testing before anything is concluded with regard to dimensionality regarding people’s conceptualisations of politics.

  7. Zaller (1992) compares different measures of political awareness, e.g. media habits and education, and argues that factual knowledge is the best way of measuring political awareness. See, e.g. Gwiasda (2001), Kam (2005), and Dobrzynska & Blais (2008) who advocate the same procedure for measuring political awareness.

  8. While the answers “slightly to the left” were coded as 2, “neither left nor right” as 3, and “slightly to the right” as 4.

  9. Morey and Eveland Jr. showed that conceptualisations of politics were related to frequencies of political discussion while controlling for age, gender, and education. Hence, the way people understand politics is probably not only a result of how they differ with respect to socio-economic factors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities, Education and Social Science, University of Örebro, 701 82, Örebro, Sweden

    Carl Görtz & Viktor Dahl

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  1. Carl Görtz
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  2. Viktor Dahl
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Correspondence to Carl Görtz.

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Appendix: The list of the 24 issues

Appendix: The list of the 24 issues

  • Suffrage

  • Lack of housing

  • Elections to the riksdagen/parliament

  • Debate in the riksdagen/parliament

  • Lower taxes on income

  • Childcare

  • Expanding the use of nuclear power

  • Increasing antagonism between groups in society

  • Payment of taxes

  • Differences in income

  • The first committee’s oversight of government

  • Economic subsidies to political parties

  • Car burnings in low-income housing areas

  • Preventing natural disasters

  • TV debate shows

  • Decisions concerning student loans

  • When media scrutinises politicians

  • Discussions with friends about immigration

  • Decisions from the Swedish Tax Agency

  • Taking part in opinion polls

  • Boycotting goods to exert pressure on businesses

  • Stress in the workplace

  • Unpaid work in the home

  • Joining a Facebook group about climate issues.

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Görtz, C., Dahl, V. Perceptions of politics and their implications: exploring the link between conceptualisations of politics and political participation. Eur Polit Sci 20, 297–317 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-019-00240-2

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