Abstract
The ongoing rise of inequality and the outbreak of the economic crisis since 2008 have fueled the debate about the effects of macro-economic processes on democracy in general, and on political participation in particular. Whereas the effect of economic disparity is well documented in the literature, the implications of the economic downturn have not been sufficiently evaluated so far. The article addresses this gap by offering a comprehensive overview of the impact of these macro-economic factors on individual political participation in Europe. Using data from the first six rounds of the European Social Survey, it shows that income inequality reduces participation and enlarges the participatory gap between better- and worse-off. In contrast, economic contraction has no effect on the overall level of participation and makes the poor participate more and the rich less.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Taking into consideration only the GDP per capita annual growth (%) without controlling it for the overall level of wellbeing (e.g., GDP per capita itself) overestimates the economic conditions of some fast developing countries (e.g., Estonia) as compared to rich ones (e.g., Finland).
Differently from Kern et al. (2015), we exclude those countries that are rated either as not free or partly free by Freedom House, i.e., Albania, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Kosovo. The reason for this is that participating to political affairs may acquire a totally different meaning in full democracies and in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, we must exclude from the analysis all those countries where the ESS question on income is not included (Bulgaria 2008, Estonia 2004 and 2006, Cyprus 2006 and 2008, Hungary 2002 and 2006, France 2002, Ireland 2002, Portugal 2010 and Slovakia 2008).
Economic Crisis Index = GDP Growth-Unemployment + Deficit-Surplus. For the sake of clarity, we then reverse the scale, so that higher scores correspond to more severe economic hardship. We created the measure by first standardizing the three variables that it includes and then by subtracting gdp growth from the sum of budget deficit and unemployment rate.
Although we have not found any theoretical leads in the literature to suggest that austerity might influence whether income inequality enhances or mitigates the participation gap between the rich and poor, we nonetheless checked for this possibility by running a model with a three-way interaction between economic crisis, income inequality and individual income and a two-way interaction between economic crisis and income inequality. The effects of these interactions turned out to be insignificant (results can be obtained from the authors upon request). Hence we only report the results of the more parsimonious models (i.e., Models 1 and 2).
We are referring here to the predicted probabilities computed on the basis of the regression coefficients. In Binomial Multilevel Models, the coefficient β associated to each X n is the effect of a unit increment of X on the logit scale (i.e., log-odds, or the natural logarithm of the odds determining the probability of a certain outcome Y associated to X). The probabilities are computed by assigning different scores for the variable under scrutiny, holding all other variables constant at their mean value and dummy variables at 1 (for more on predicted probabilities, please see Afshartous and de Leeuw 2005; Skrondal and Rabe-Hesketh 2009).
Three meaningful categories are built on the basis of the years of full-time education completed in order to include approximately 30% of the respondents in each.
A table showing the variation in the four outcomes across different levels of inequality and economic crisis can be obtained from the authors upon request.
References
Aguinis, H., and S.A. Culpepper. 2015. An expanded decision-making procedure for examining cross-level interaction effects with multilevel modeling. Organizational Research Methods. doi:10.1177/1094428114563618.
Almond, G.A., and S. Verba. 1963. The civic culture: political attitudes and democracy in Five Nations. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
Anderson, C.J. 2007. The interaction of structures and voter behavior. In The oxford handbook of political behavior, ed. R.J. Dalton, and H.-D. Klingemann, 589–609. New York: Oxford University Press.
Anderson, C.J., and P. Beramendi. 2008. Income, inequality, and electoral participation. In Democracy, inequality, and representation in comparative perspective, ed. P. Beramendi, and C.J. Anderson, 258–311. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Ansolabehere, S., J. de Figueiredo, and J.M. Snyder. 2003. Why is there so little money in U.S. politics? Journal of Economic Perspectives 17 (1): 105–130.
APSA Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy. 2004. American democracy in an age of rising inequality. Perspectives on Politics 2 (4): 651–670.
Afshartous, D., and J. de Leeuw. 2005. Prediction in multilevel models. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics 30 (1): 109–139.
Bachrach, P., and M.S. Baratz. 1970. Power and poverty: theory and practice. London: Oxford University Press.
Baldacci, E., L. de Mello, and G. Inchauste. 2002. Financial crises, poverty and income distribution. Finance and Development 39 (2): 24–27.
Bermeo, N. 2012. Does electoral democracy boost economic equality. In Poverty, inequality, and democracy, ed. F. Fukuyama, L. Diamond, and M.F. Plattner, 14–28. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bernhard, M., and E. Karakoç. 2007. Civil society and the legacies of dictatorship. World Politics 59 (4): 539–567.
Blais, A. 2000. To vote or not to vote? The merits and limits of rational choice. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Blais, A. 2007. Turnout in elections. In The oxford handbook of political behavior, ed. R.J. Dalton, and H.-D. Klingemann, 621–635. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blais, A., and A. Dobrzynska. 1998. Turnout in electoral democracies. European Journal of Political Research 33: 239–261.
Brambor, T., W.R. Clar, and M. Golder. 2006. Understanding interaction models: improving empirical analyses. Political Analysis 14 (1): 63–82.
Brandolini, A., and T.M. Smeeding. 2011. Income inequality in Richer and OECD Countries. In The Oxford handbook of economic inequality, ed. B. Nolan, W. Salverda, and T.M. Smeeding, 71–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dalton, R.J. 2008. Citizen politics: public opinion and political parties in advanced industrial democracies, 5th ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.
Diehl, C., and M. Blohm. 2001. Apathy, adaptation or ethnic mobilization: on the political attitudes of an excluded group. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27 (3): 401–420.
Dubrow, J.K. 2014. Political inequality in an age of democracy: cross-national perspectives. London: Routledge.
Duch, R.M., and I. Sagarzazu. 2014. Crisis perceptions and economic voting among the rich and the poor. In Mass politics in tough times, ed. N. Bermeo, and L.M. Bartels, 224–265. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fornos, C.A., T.J. Power, and J.C. Garand. 2004. Explaining voter turnout in latin America: 1980–2000. Comparative Political Studies 37 (8): 909–940.
Foster, M., and K. Matheson. 1995. Double relative deprivation: combining the personal and political. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21: 1167–1177.
Gaventa, J. 1980. Power and powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Goodin, R., and J. Dryzek. 1980. Rational participation: the politics of relative power. British Journal of Political Science 10 (3): 273–292.
Gurr, T.R. 1970. Why men Rebel. Princeton: Princeton Universtiy Press.
Harder, J., and J.A. Krosnick. 2008. Why do people vote? A psychological analysis of the causes of voter turnout. Journal of Social Issues 64 (3): 525–549.
Hooghe, M., and D. Stolle. 2004. Good girls go to the polling booth, bad boys go everywhere. gender differences in anticipated political participation among US 14 year olds. Women and Politics 26 (3–4): 1–23.
Howard, M.M. 2003. The weakness of civil society in post-communist Europe. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hox, J. 2002. Multilevel analysis. techniques and application. Malwah, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Inglehart, R., and C. Welzel. 2005. Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: the human development sequence. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Karakoç, E. 2013. Economic inequality and its asymmetric effect on civic engagement: evidence from post-communist countries. European Political Science Review 5 (2): 197–223.
Kern, A., S. Marien, and M. Hooghe. 2015. Economic crisis and levels of political participation in Europe (2002–2010): the role of resources and grievances. West European Politics 38 (3): 465–490.
Klandermans, B., J. van der Toorn, and J. van Stekelenburg. 2008. Embeddedness and identity: how immigrants turn grievances into action. American Sociological Review 73 (6): 992–1012.
Koster, F., and M.-E. Kaminska. 2012. Welfare state values in the European Union, 2002–2008. A multilevel investigation of formal institutions and individual attitudes. Journal of European Public Policy 19 (6): 900–920.
Kriesi, H. 2014. The political consequences of the economic crisis in europe: electoral punishment and popular protest. In Mass politics in tough times, ed. N. Bermeo, and L.M. Bartels, 297–333. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lancee, B., and H.G. van de Werfhorst. 2012. Income inequality and participation: a comparison of 24 European countries. Social Science Research 41: 1166–1178.
Levinson, M. 2012. No citizen left behind. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
Lijphart, A. 1997. Unequal participation: democracy’s unresolved Dilemma. The American Political Science Review 91 (1): 1–14.
Loose, K. and Jae, D. H. (2011) Explaining unequal participation: the differential effects of winter weather on voter turnout. Working Paper 2011–13, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Marsh, A., and M. Kaase. 1979. Background of political action. In Political action. Mass participation in five western democracies, ed. S.H. Barnes, and M. Kaase, 97–136. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Melo, D.F., and D. Stockemer. 2014. Age and political participation in Germany, France and the UK: a comparative analysis. Comparative European Politics 12 (1): 33–53.
Morlino, L. 2011. Changes for democracy. actors, structures, processes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Norris, P. 2002. Democratic phoenix: reinventing political activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Offe, C. 2013. Participatory inequality in the Austerity State: a supply-side approach. In Politics in the age of austerity, ed. A. Schäfer, and W. Streeck, 196–218. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Pateman, C. 1971. Political culture, political structure and political change. British Journal of Political Science 1 (3): 291–305.
Pacek, A.C., G. Pop-Eleches, and J.A. Tucker. 2009. Disenchanted or discerning: voter turnout in post-communist Countries. The Journal of Politics 71 (2): 473–491.
Przeworski, A. 2008. The poor and the viability of democracy. In Poverty, participation, and democracy: a global perspective, ed. A. Krishna, 125–146. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schattschneider, E.E. 1960. The semisovereign people: a realist’s view of Democracy in America. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston.
Schlozman, K.L., S. Verba, and H.E. Brady. 1999. Civic participation and the equality problem. In Civic engagement in American democracy, ed. T. Skocpol, and M.P. Fiorina, 427–460. Washington: Brookings Institution Press.
Skrondal, A., and S. Rabe-Hesketh. 2009. Prediction in multilevel generalized linear models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 172 (3): 659–687.
Snijders, T.A.B., and R.J. Bosker. 1999. Multilevel analysis: an introduction to basic and advanced multilevel modelling. London: Sage Publisher.
Solt, F. 2008. Economic inequality and democratic political engagement. American Journal of Political Science 52 (1): 48–60.
Solt, F. 2010. Does economic inequality depress electoral participation? Testing the Schattscheider hypothesis. Political Behavior 32: 285–301.
Solt, F. 2015. Economic inequality and nonviolent protest. Social Science Quarterly 96 (5): 1314–1327.
Solt, F. 2016. The standardized world income inequality database. Social Science Quarterly, first published online. doi:10.1111/ssqu.12295.
Thomassen, J.J.A. (1989). Economic crisis, dissatisfaction, and protest. In: M.K. Jennings, J.W. van Deth et al. (eds.) Continuities in political action. A longitudinal study of political orientations in three Western democracies. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.
Tóth, I.G., Horn, D. and Medgyesi, M. (2014) Rising inequalities: will electorates go for higher redistribution? In: B. Nolan, W. Salverda, D. Checchi, I. Marx, A. Mcknight, I.G. Tóth, H.G. van de Werfhorst (eds.) Changing inequalities in rich Countries. analytical and comparative perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 11–47.
Uslaner, E.M., and M. Brown. 2005. Inequality, trust, and civic engagement. American Politics Research 33: 868–894.
Verba, S., N.H. Nie, and J. Kim. 1978. Participation and political equality: a seven-nation comparison. New York and London: Cambridge University Press.
Verba, S., K. Schlozman, and H. Brady. 1995. Voice and equality: civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Verba, S., N. Burns, and K.L. Schlozman. 2003. Unequal at the starting line: creating participatory inequalities across generations and among groups. The American Sociologist 34 (1–2): 45–69.
Wolfinger, R., and S. Rosenstone. 1980. Who votes?. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Zuckin, C., S. Keeter, M. Andlina, K. Jenkins, and M.X. Delli Carpini. 2006. A new engagement? Political participation, civic life, and the changing American citizen. New York: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The original version of this article was revised: June 2017. The original was initially published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 18th April 2017, with the Table 1 and Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 appearing in the incorrect positions. This has since then been amended.
Appendix 1: Descriptive statistics
Appendix 1: Descriptive statistics
Variable | Number of observations | Mean | Standard deviation | Min | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dependent variable | |||||
Voted | 245.479 | .778 | .416 | 0 | 1 |
Worked in organization | 212.011 | .038 | .191 | 0 | 1 |
Boycotted products | 211.534 | .182 | .386 | 0 | 1 |
Signed petitions | 211.563 | .255 | .436 | 0 | 1 |
Individual-level variables | |||||
Education | 212.519 | 2.050 | .808 | 1 | 3 |
Female | 212.355 | .527 | .499 | 0 | 1 |
Age | 211.409 | 47.80 | 18.499 | 14 | 99 |
Born in another country | 212.373 | .079 | .271 | 0 | 1 |
Religiosity | 211114 | 4.61 | 3.036 | 0 | 10 |
Income | 212.519 | .518 | .499 | 0 | 1 |
Country-year variables | |||||
Gini coefficient | 130 | 30.211 | 3.444 | 22.10 | 39.20 |
GDP per capita | 130 | 33497.910 | 14033.673 | 4455.70 | 101563.70 |
Economic crisis index (ECI) | 130 | 10.231 | 7.832 | −17.80 | 63.30 |
Country variable | |||||
Post-communism | 29 | 0.292 | 0.460 | 0 | 1 |
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Filetti, A., Janmaat, J.G. Income inequality and economic downturn in Europe: a multilevel analysis of their consequences for political participation. Acta Polit 53, 327–347 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-017-0053-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-017-0053-1