Participation and Democracy: Dynamics, Causes ... - Jacobs University

2004. A comparison with regression models run without status inconsistency as an
independent variable suggests slightly stronger effects for income, whereas the effects for
education remain largely unaffected or even underestimated. 60
The most important change affects the relationship between gender and participation in
elite-challenging activities. Within a 30-years time, the gender gap that used to
characterize political participation has reversed: Today women rather than men
participate in elite-challenging activities. It should be noted that the dependent variable in
Model 1 contains only one item for political consumerism – boycotting certain products.
A closer inspection of a combined measure for political consumerism (buy-cotting and
boycotting) in the 2004 ESS data reveals that the changing gender relations are even
more pronounced: political consumerism is female (see also Stolle and Hooghe 2005).
But also the gender gap in conventional participation has become smaller, although this
mode of participation is still a domain of men (see Model 2), whereas the results of
Model 3 confirm findings of the participation literature: there is no more a gender gap in
voting.
To summarize the analysis, gender, education and age are the main resources that affect
participation in elite-challenging action. Do the results change when motivation
components are added to the analysis?
Table 8-2 presents the results of a second logistic regression that uses in addition to
socio-economic resources also motivational components to predict participation. From
the broad range of variables presented in the participation literature, the following factors
are included: political interest, political efficacy, life satisfaction, and the respondent’s
position on the left-right scale. Postmaterialism is also known as a main motivation factor
for elite-challenging activities, but the ESS 2004 does unfortunately not include any item
from Inglehart’s postmaterialism scale. An inspection of a Political Action Study model
(1974) that includes postmaterialism as a predictor confirms a positive and significant
relationship (table not shown). The multi-level model based on data from the World
Values Survey data will take this into account and include it as a predictor.
60 The results are robust: Alternative ways of operationalizing status inconsistency yielded similar results:
(a) 5 types of status inconsistency (instead of 3); (b) a dichotomy with 1= positive status inconsistency; (c)
standardized residuals from a regression of education on income, and (d) status inconsistency squared
(based on (c)).
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