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

concept, ranging from the least (left) to the most extreme (right) form of activism. The
concept is characterized by four thresholds: the first one marks the transition from
conventional to unconventional participation, the second the transition to direct action,
the third the transition to illegal but nonviolent action, and the fourth the transition to
violent forms of activities (Dalton 2002: 61; Prados and Tejada 2003: 132).
For reasons of comparability, measurements of the dependent variable concentrate on
the items available in the largest comparative survey study, the World Values Surveys.
The WVS/EVS ask the respondents about their participation in five elite-challenging
activities. (1) Signing petitions and (3) attending lawful demonstrations are rather mild
forms of activity. More direct action is exercised through (2) joining in boycotts,
whereas (4) joining unofficial strikes and (5) occupying buildings tend to be illegal,
sometimes even violent forms of activity. Both rounds of the European Social Survey
include the first three activities.
Table 4-2:
Factor Analysis for Elite-Challenging Activities
Political
Action
(1974)
EVS/
WVS
(1981)
EVS/
WVS
(1990)
WVS
(1995)
EVS/
WVS
(1999)
WVS
(2005)
ESS
(2002)
ESS
(2004)
Signing petitions .65 .79 .77 .78 .78 .82 .79 .77
Joining in boycott .74 .77 .77 .76 .78 .84 .69 .74
Attending lawful .78 .75 .75 .75 .75 .83 .66 .79
demonstrations
Joining in unofficial .66 .71 .67 .69 .70 - - -
strikes
Occupying buildings .69 .61 .65 .62 .64 - - -
% of Variance 50% 53% 52% 52% 53% 68% 51% 59%
Pooled samples. The samples of the Political Action Study and WVS/EVS are weighted with equal weight
= 1.000. The ESS data were adjusted according to the population size.
Information about the countries included in the analysis can be obtained from Table 1.
A factor analysis (see Table 4-2) using the five elite-challenging activities supports
Marsh’s one-dimensional conception. In all surveys, the items load on one factor (see
Table 4-2). To test the internal validity, Bartlett’s test of sphericity and the Kaiser-
Mayer-Olkin measure were calculated, showing acceptable values for both tests. 31
31 Bartlett’s test of sphericity gave the following results: Political Action (1974) = 6690.313; EVS/WVS
(1981) = 23961.418; WVS/EVS (1990) = 55188.297; WVS (1995) = 72737.898; WVS/EVS (1999) =
91138.229; WVS (2005) = 35820.762; ESS (2002) = 6949.719; ESS (2004) = 24887.328. All values are
significant, so that a null-hypothesis can be rejected. It should be noted, however, that the sample sizes are
68