Abstract
The problem of low turnout at elections has become common in almost all post-communist countries. Given this weak participation in elections, some political scientists tend to see a crisis of emerging post-authoritarian political systems. Nevertheless, political participation, frequently considered to be the heart of democracy, should not be reduced to casting a ballot alone. This article makes an effort to discuss turnout more comprehensively. It aims at the association of this basic mode of civic engagement with less conventional political activities. Analysing European Social Survey data gathered in the Visegrad Four, the most advanced region in the former Eastern Bloc, it tries to address the issue of whether people who are active at a polling station simultaneously perform other activities in the broad repertoire of political participation. In other words, do active voters in the specific context of Central Europe also take part in different political actions, so that the relationship between participatory modes can be seen as tending to be complementary, or do voting and other forms of political action show little correlation?
Introduction
As many studies have demonstrated, citizens in the post-communist countries participate less in politics than their Western neighbours. Furthermore, participation rates in the former Eastern Bloc have decreased significantly since the early 1990s. 1 After the fall of the authoritarian regime and the subsequent democratic transition, for instance, the rate of electoral participation in Czech national lower house elections dropped from 96 percent in 1990 to less than 63 percent in 2010. In Poland, even the first completely free elections in 1991 did not attract full participation, since only approximately 43 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot. From this point of view, “Where have all the voters gone?”—the crucial question put by Wattenberg 2 —is relevant not merely for the United States, where the constant decline in turnout since the 1960s has drawn vigorous scholarly attention to the causes as well as the effects of poor electoral participation rates, but also for the “new” democracies of Central Europe.
This article analyses the nature of political participation in the most advanced part of post-communist Europe, the Visegrad Four (V4). This region, composed of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary, is a territory with many common characteristics. Although socio-economic and political conditions are not completely identical, there are many parallels in the development of the Visegrad countries. As a result, patterns related to political behaviour should also be largely similar.
As many earlier studies have shown, the magnitude and nature of political participation is positively associated with the level of socio-economic development. 3 However, since World War II, voter turnout has systematically fallen or stagnated in many developed societies. 4 Some scholars have interpreted this phenomenon as a crisis of democracy. 5 Speculation about the poor health of advanced democratic regimes was quickly rejected given the rapid spill-over of engagement into political activities not directly related to an electoral process. Hence, the problem of low turnout does not indicate a crisis of democracy, but only a crisis of elite-directed political action in post-industrial societies. From this perspective, the fundamental question is whether people have replaced voting with more self-expressive forms of political engagement, or whether less conventional political participation has become a supplement to casting a ballot. It is surprising that the relationship between electoral and non-electoral participation has not thus far been satisfactorily delineated. 6 Because of the lack of convincing empirical evidence, we are unable to discern whether or not people have abandoned the ballot box for the street.
This paper seeks such an answer for the V4 countries. Research in this field seems to be more demanding than in Western democracies because it is not absolutely obvious whether the Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Polish cases can plausibly be placed in the group of postmodern societies. For instance, more than ten years ago Rabušic concluded that in Czech society the post-materialist trend was growing and its promoters were, as in the West, the youngest people. 7 Nevertheless, without more extensive comparison it is still daring to state that Czech as well as Slovak, Hungarian, or Polish societies have achieved the same level of post-materialism as their Western counterparts. Thus this article represents one of the first steps in this field of research. Rather than sketching an unambiguous theoretical framework (and empirical outcomes), it aims to encourage discussion about the relations between modes of political participation in the former Eastern Bloc.
The Modernization of the Participatory Repertoire
In the past few decades, the concept of political participation has undergone several substantial changes. For a long time, voting was perceived as the fundamental instrument for making one’s voice heard in political matters and the most common measure of political participation was electoral turnout. Today, almost all scholars consider political participation as an umbrella concept that accommodates very different forms of political action. 8 Such a conceptual expansion is permitted by the fairly vague definition of the term. For instance, Brady defines political participation as an action carried out by ordinary citizens, which is directed toward influencing political outcomes. 9 Thus, the content of participation includes both direct and indirect modes of political action, conventional and less conventional modes, as well as legal and illegal activities. In addition to voting, new measures of political participation have been identified: party membership, contacting a politician, signing a petition, taking part in a public demonstration, boycotting certain products, attending a political meeting, and many others. If, in a certain country, voter turnout systematically falls over a long period of time, it may not automatically signify a threat to democracy. Naturally, democracy is unthinkable without the activity of citizens. However, long-term turnout stagnation or decline simply refers to the conventional repertoire of political engagement. Some literature even acknowledges that, despite a disturbing tendency in voter turnout rates, political participation has grown over-all, because non-electoral modes of action are more popular than they were, for example, fifty years ago. 10
As Fuchs and Klingemann emphasize, the process that has changed individual behaviour can be described as “individual modernization.” 11 It can be seen as a consequence of societal modernization which foreshadows an increase in personal skills and a change in value orientations. Through a substantial modification of values, human development has provoked a shift in the magnitude and nature of political action. This assumption was broadened after Inglehart’s ground-breaking work discussing intergenerational value changes in the most advanced industrial societies. 12 The replacement of modern with postmodern civic values, which has taken place in established democracies since World War II, has eroded many of the key institutions of society. In politics, as well as in other arenas, the rise of postmodern values has brought a decline in respect for authority, and a growing focus on self-expressive participation. Mass participation has taken on a new character. As Ronald Inglehart later noted, in postmodern societies that guarantee existential security, the emphasis is shifting from elite-directed forms of participation like voting to elite-challenging mass activity that is characterized by more direct and issue-specific forms of political involvement. 13
In other words, it is assumed that people affected by postmodern culture are less likely to visit the polling station, but remain politically active through more direct channels oriented toward influencing government decision making. As a result of post-war value changes instigated by the acquisition of existential security, the act of voting was partially substituted by a plurality of non-electoral modes of political participation. Individual modernization has led to extra demands on the democratic process, including especially the solution of new issues (environmental matters, disarmament, etc.) in the political sphere. The fundamental problem of representative democracy was that a lot of these citizens’ demands met a low degree of responsiveness from traditional structures like political parties and interest groups. This has provoked instability in the relationship between citizens and the state, and prompted new modes of political action that seem more likely to realize these new demands.
Fuchs and Klingemann have offered two possible consequences of the claim for more participation:
14
First, the significance of voting as the most important institutionalized form of participation would have to diminish. Voting is a highly routine political act, which takes place relatively seldom, and relates only indirectly to envisaged goals. The feeling that political decisions are not much influenced by their votes is reinforced if citizens, in addition, believe that the contending parties do not take into account the new issue demands. The second consequence of demands for more participation can be seen in the emergence of non-institutionalized forms of political action.
From this citation, one may gain the impression that conventional activities like voting have been displaced by emerging modes of political action, and thus there has been a substitution effect. Purely and simply, irritated by their inability to satisfy their demands, people were no longer motivated to go to a polling station.
On the other hand, many scholars have argued that voter turnout in the advanced democracies is not declining universally, but is rather trendless. 15 Pippa Norris points out that the changes in turnout rates over time can be expressed by a so-called ceiling effect. 16 During the long-term process of societal modernization, the education and wealth of people on an aggregate level has grown. However, the relationship between socio-economic development and participation in elections is not linear. Norris hypothesizes that turnout increases only during the first stage of modernization as agricultural societies move toward becoming industrialized states. As industrialized societies become post-industrial, at a certain level voter turnout can be expected to stabilize. Even though more and more people have the resources to take part in politics, turnout does not increase. The genesis of postmodern political culture has weakened relations to traditional institutions and turned citizens towards other less-institutionalized channels to influence government policy. Rather than disengagement from politics, the repertoire of participation has broadened. 17 The shift from voting to more active and direct forms of mass participation was ascribed primarily to the generational effect of age. The replacement of old cohorts embedded in traditional class-based politics by young citizens who reached adulthood in social, cultural, economic, and political circumstances significantly different from their predecessors’ has modified the content of politics as well as political behaviour. 18
The story of post-war citizens’ change from being passive consumers of politics to active and tireless critics and everyday policy makers sounds persuasive. Newly enfranchised cohorts have decided to be active through less conventional forms of political participation that allow expression not only once or twice during the voting cycle but continually. In spite of turnout stagnation in advanced societies, political engagement on the whole has grown. And this fact gives democracy a new source of legitimacy.
However, these propositions should not be adopted uncritically. To a certain extent, the mechanism of substitution can be challenged by an argument springing from the explanation of political activism. The literature assumes that particular modes of political action do not widely differ in their causes. For instance, the parsimonious Civic Voluntarism Model promoted by Sidney Verba and his colleagues responds to the crucial question “Why don’t people take part in politics?” with three connected answers: because they cannot, because they do not want to, and/or because nobody asked them to. 19 These universal explanations suggest that the degree of individual participation in politics depends on the amount of personal resources, psychological motivation, and mobilization through a variety of agents. It is worth noting that the model does not unambiguously distinguish between the causes of electoral and non-electoral, elite-directed and elite-challenging, or legal and illegal forms of citizen involvement. 20 Based on these foundations, Rosenstone and Hansen have pursued the relationship between voting and less conventional forms of the participatory repertoire. 21 These researchers have found that a sizeable number of voters perform some additional political activities simultaneously. Furthermore, Bromley and her colleagues have underlined the fact that there is no empirical evidence to support the earlier conclusion that people have abandoned the ballot box for the street. 22 By contrast, their analysis of British survey data has shown that those who take part in non-electoral participation are more likely to vote than those who do not participate in less conventional actions. As they demonstrated, in a 2002 British social attitudes survey, 80 percent of those who had undertaken three or more protest actions said they had voted in the previous year’s general election, compared with just 65 percent of those who had not engaged in any actions. Hence, non-electoral participation was introduced as an addition to, rather than a substitute for, taking part in the electoral process. 23
Summing up, the idea expressed in the forceful collocation “from the ballot boxes to the street” has recently been transformed into “first to the ballot box, and then to the street, but also to the supermarket and the internet.” In simple terms, citizens in every society can be divided into two major groups: those who are active, and the others. Politically inactive people are considered to be those who lack resources, motivation, and/or mobilization to participate. Simultaneously, affluent, motivated and socially networked individuals should be active in at least one form of political participation. Any kind of individual political involvement should signify that a person is predisposed to take part in politics by meeting the condition(s) of the Civic Voluntarism Model. So why should taking part in one political activity exclude any other?
What to Assume in the Visegrad Four Countries?
Current political institutions and the overall state of society are not fully the result of present political matters. They are burdened by the inevitable legacy of the past. In post-communist countries, living under authoritarian rule has created a particular kind of cultural heritage that must be kept in mind when studying political participation in this area. From the late 1940s, the communist party monopolized power not only through candidates delegated to parliament but also through schools, the media, and places of employment. Democratic elections were not held and other participatory modes were markedly reduced. The regime strengthened its legitimacy by means of ceremonial activities like mass processions, membership in the communist party or in various satellite organizations associated with the party. However, such “participation” was completely controlled by the centre of power.
Likewise, the communist style of modernization was dissimilar to the process that took place in Western societies. Even though the non-democratic regimes ensured mass expansion of education, made enormous technological progress, and guaranteed the existential security of virtually all the people, the application of Marxist-Leninist principles in connection with a fundamental democratic deficit did not contribute to the formation of a typical modern society. The ideology elevating collectivist ideas was used as a framework for interpreting how the economy and polity should be conducted. The communist regime turned the social hierarchy upside down and basic civic freedoms were restricted to a large extent. On this basis, some of the literature argues that people in the Eastern Bloc lived not in a modern, but rather in an anti-modern society. 24 As Inglehart and Welzel have suggested, socio-economic development is the necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the spread of self-expressive values and individual autonomy. 25 Because of the democratic deficit, positive socio-economic change in the Eastern Bloc was not accompanied by a change in civic culture which would support the spread of the participatory repertoire. 26
Despite this fact, at the end of the authoritarian regime and during the transitional stage towards democracy, high levels of mass civic participation took place. Then the post-communist countries witnessed a deep economic recession and many scandals. Suddenly, the belief that democracy not only provides liberty but also improves the living standards of people was substantially depreciated. Disillusionment with democratic performance has uncovered the underdevelopment of self-expressive values, and political engagement has rapidly declined. A large body of literature on political socialization has emphasized that basic values tend to be established during pre-adult formative years and later change only little. 27 Thus, it cannot be assumed that people who were politically socialized in an autocratic era will demonstrate “post-industrial” political behaviour over the long term, and not only occasionally (e.g., with regard to important events like the fall of an old regime). 28 In general, the nature of political participation in post-communist countries may be described as the result of a post-transition decline in electoral as well as non-electoral activities and the absence of strong self-expressive values. 29 The conventional wisdom is that post-communist societies are situated far from the Western zone and, therefore, the relationship between modes of political action seems to be challengingly predictable.
Nevertheless, I restrict the empirical analysis to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland. The remaining post-communist states will be omitted. Why were the Visegrad Four chosen? Although the countries in this region are not perfectly identical, they share many common features relevant for political behaviour (and alternatively, for predicting the relationship between modes of political participation). Most important are the following: 30
Geographical proximity. All the countries are situated in Central Europe. When spatial boundaries are considered, the V4 countries form quite a consistent region. Their people as well as governments frequently interact. The V4 states are also very close to Western democracies; they constitute a border zone between East and West. In spite of communist rule, the people were in almost everyday contact with those having a Western lifestyle. This might have influenced the relatively smooth transition to democracy. In simple terms, models of how to build a democratic system existed nearby.
Collective history. Since the Middle Ages, various elements from the West have penetrated the V4 countries, starting with Western Christianity, and continuing with market elements and democratic ideas. Since the sixteenth century, Central Europe has had a semi-peripheral status in the West European world system. The V4 countries, at least partially, were also included in the Habsburg Empire. The long-standing interconnection with the West was significant during the communist era where people witnessed specific paths to communism. During the process of destalinization, the Soviet model of building socialism was radically different to those in Central Europe. In 1956, the Hungarian government was confronted with a spontaneous revolt against Soviet-imposed policies, and from the 1960s so-called goulash socialism was implemented. In Czechoslovakia, the late 1960s brought reform efforts, symbolized by the slogan “socialism with a human face.” The Polish road to socialism also diverged, particularly in attempts to trade with the West and a certain tolerance for private agriculture. The divergence from the Soviet Union was also obvious at the beginning of the 1980s when Solidarity emerged.
Recent political and economic development. Since 1989, the V4 countries have gone through fundamental political and economic changes. The transformation of the political system was predominantly based on negotiations between communist leaders and opposition leaders, not on violent confrontation (“velvet revolutions”). After the first free elections, the strategy known as “the return to Europe” was strongly promoted by newly elected politicians. In fact, this target foreshadowed the effort to integrate into Western structures, not to compete with them. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland also promptly acquired the status of free and democratic countries. Likewise, their market economies developed very quickly. In 1991, a platform for mutual dialogue on political as well as economic issues, the Visegrad Group, was established. Subsequently, a regional free trade agreement (CEFTA) was signed and relations among the nations were further strengthened. Today, all the Visegrad countries are standard parliamentary regimes, integrated into the EU and NATO. They can be regarded as the most advanced economies in the former Eastern Bloc, well incorporated into the world economy, albeit again in a subordinate position, at the semi-periphery. Using the Human Development Index (HDI), which represents a standard measure of societal modernization, 31 it is possible to claim that the Czech Republic (HDI 0.871 in 2010), Slovakia (0.836), Hungary (0.829), and Poland (0.817) now fall into the category of countries with very high development, alongside the most advanced societies worldwide.
Expectations of individualization. After 1989, people in post-communist countries experienced a considerable economic decline. Because of difficulties in the economic and social systems, levels of existential insecurity increased, and thus there was an unsuitable atmosphere for self-expressive values and post-materialist orientation. However, at the end of the 1990s the V4 countries returned to the levels of economic production that they had enjoyed in 1989, and economic growth was intensified around the accession to the EU. Hence, the Visegrad Four is perceived as a post-communist region where post-materialist values have had the highest chance to expand. In this article, I assume that societies in the V4 region are “sufficiently” post-materialistic for the controversy over substitution in the participatory repertoire to be relevant. 32
Considering some of these dimensions, by the late 1990s Attila Agh was already emphasizing that the division between West and East was slightly outmoded. 33 Because of the strong heterogeneity of the former Eastern Bloc, it is more justifiable to define regions within Europe on the grounds not only of communist legacy but also far-reaching history, cultural traditions, political connections, and/or socio-economic development. With regard to the many common features presented above, the Visegrad Four can be treated as a distinctive region where shared patterns of political behaviour may be discovered. That is the main reason why the whole of post-communist Europe is not taken into consideration in the following paragraphs.
Data and Research Design
The research uses survey data from the first six modules of the European Social Survey, gathered during 2002 and 2012. The ESS questionnaire contains several important variables related to participatory modes. Eight variables are at the centre of interest: participation in the last election, contacting a politician, work in a political party or action group, work in another organization or association, 34 wearing or displaying a campaign badge/sticker, signing a petition, taking part in a lawful public demonstration, and boycotting certain products. Naturally, this list of the participatory repertoire can present only a partial picture of citizen involvement in politics. Many important activities such as membership in a political party, donating money, or taking part in an illegal protest 35 are not included in the data matrix analysed here. There are also other problems with the survey data utilized in the subsequent paragraphs, highlighting the fact that there is no feasible way to prevent measurement error. 36 The first is that participation in an election is measured by a simple question in the questionnaire, even though in each of the regimes, turnout is under scrutiny. When comparing the magnitude of declared electoral participation in a survey with actual level of turnout, a sizable gap can be usually observed. A related topic is the poor memory of the vast majority of respondents. There is no reason why ordinary people should remember the participatory activities they performed during the last 12 months. Likewise, ESS was not designed as a post-election survey, and therefore, some respondents are not able to recall if they voted, for example, three years after the last national elections were held. In light of these circumstances, the results of empirical analysis portray a rather crude picture of political behaviour in the V4 countries that should not be overestimated.
As stressed above, political participation is a multidimensional concept measureable by various indicators. The article is aimed not at particular actions separately but broader groups of political activities that were described as “elite-directed” and “elite-challenging.” To confirm these theoretical dimensions in the participatory repertoire, factor analysis was carried out. The results, depicted in Table 1, show that ESS data reflect dualism in the participatory repertoire fairly well. The analysis has generated three dimensions: the first dimension comprises contacting a politician, working in a political party, working in another organisation, and wearing a campaign badge. The common feature of these activities is the existence of an element mediating people’s voices, and thus they can be regarded as elite-directed forms. The second dimension is composed of signing a petition, taking part in a lawful demonstration and boycotting certain products. By these activities, people’s preferences are expressed directly to policy makers; they challenge them. Not surprisingly, participation in elections constitutes a separate third dimension. Although voting could be perceived as an elite-directed type of activity (preferences are expressed through politicians or political parties), it seems to be an absolutely unique activity.
Dimensions of Political Participation
Data source: ESS Rounds 1-6.
Note: Extraction method: principal components analysis; rotation: oblimin.
With regard to the outcome of factor analysis, two new variables, designated as “elite-directed forms” and “elite-challenging forms,” were constructed. Both are binary and equal 1 when the respondent carried out any activity (one or more) from the repertoire delineated by factor analysis. For the variable labelled elite-directed forms, a respondent will gain 1 by contacting a politician, working in a party, working in an organisation, or wearing a campaign badge. For elite-challenging forms, a value of 1 will be assigned when a respondent signed a petition, took part in a lawful demonstration, or boycotted certain products. However, more than these two variables are utilized in the empirical analysis presented below. Besides them and the self-contained variable measuring participation in the last election, seven control variables (gender, age, education, party identification, political interest, political trust, and social contact) were utilized. These controls mirror the classical explanation of political participation based on personal resources, motivations, and mobilization, which was discussed above. A time variable is also included. More detailed information about all variables is given in Appendix A.
How to reach a conclusion on either the mutual exclusiveness or complementarity of participatory modes? In fact, two strategies are employed. Initially, an analysis of aggregate data is presented. This approach allows the depiction of overall trends in declared turnout and other forms of political participation at the national level between 2002 and 2012. It can capture possible changes in political behaviour over a longer period. To support the hypothesis that substitution of electoral/elite-directed participation by elite-challenging action has occurred, declared turnout as well as elite-directed forms of participation should decline, whereas elite-challenging forms should expand. On the other hand, when turnout and elite-directed forms stagnate (or grow), and simultaneously, elite-challenging forms increase, complementarity in the participation repertoire could be anticipated. Furthermore, the hypothetical shift towards elite-challenging action could also be demonstrated, albeit rather intuitively again, through differences in participatory patterns between young and old people. These uncomplicated analyses are presented at the beginning of the next section.
In this paper, I put more effort into the study of the individual level. At the micro-level, the relationship between variables of interest can be more plausibly manifested. To fulfil the goal of this article, a series of regression models with binary response was employed. Elite-challenging forms were chosen as the dependent variable. Besides the controls, the independent variables are participation in the last election, elite-directed forms, the time variable, and two interaction effects computed as (1) participation in the last election multiplied by the time variable and (2) elite-directed forms multiplied by the time variable. This technique, developed for analyses of repeated surveys (i.e., surveys with the same questions but different samples), is familiar as the convergence models. 37 These models allow the capture of the dynamics in the impact of electoral and elite-directed forms on elite-challenging participation over time. On the basis of the results of regression analysis, it is possible to assess two crucial issues: first, what is the overall impact of electoral/elite-directed forms of participation on elite-challenging political behaviour in the V4 countries? And second, has the magnitude of the effect changed over time? If the effect of declared turnout and elite-directed participation on elite-challenging participation is negative, the substitution hypothesis can be supported. If the effect is positive, electoral/elite-directed, and elite-challenging forms of political participation are complementary. In contrast, the interaction terms tell us how the effect of independent variables changes.
There are five possible options to assess the change in the magnitude of impact of variables of interest: over time, the effect becomes (A) more positive or (B) more negative, or (C) it changes from positive to negative, (D) from negative to positive, or (E) remains constant. When some of first four alternatives are detected, the interaction effects should also contribute to answering the main question posed in this paper. To support the substitution hypothesis, the impact of the electoral and elite-directed mode on elite-challenging participation either should be more negative or the positive effect should decrease. On the other hand, if the positive effect increases, or the negative effect tends to change to a positive effect, there is certain empirical evidence for complementarity in the participatory repertoire. 38
Empirical Analysis
The basic information about the extent of political participation in the V4 countries is summarized in Table 2. As can be seen, attendance at a polling station unambiguously remains the most important way that citizens express their political preferences. The other forms of political participation are less widespread, regardless of whether elite-directed or elite-challenging modes are taken into account. The first important finding is that not many linear changes at the aggregate level during the past decade were ascertained. When only initial and terminal values are compared, the substitution hypothesis could be supported in the case of the Czech Republic. Here, ESS data show that the incidence of elite-directed participation decreased from 32 to 21 percent, that is, by 11 percentage points (p.p.), whereas more people became active through elite-challenging forms. The declared turnout of Czech respondents remained almost at the same level. In Slovakia, elite-challenging activities as well as elite-directed forms decreased; only electoral participation increased moderately. The Hungarian case where all modes of political participation were in retreat is highly specific. During 2002 and 2012, Polish people became more active in elite-challenging forms, but more respondents also declared participation in the last election.
Political Participation over Time (percent)
Source: ESS Rounds 1-6.
Note: In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, one out of six rounds was not administered. 39
The analysis of aggregate changes in political participation did not give unambiguous results. When it persists at the macro-level, there is at least one more possible way to move closer to a response to whether electoral/elite-directed and elite-challenging modes of political action are substitutes or complements. It is a simple comparison of participatory patterns between young and old people. 40 As Figure 1 shows, there is certain evidence in favour of the substitution hypothesis. Old people are much more active in electoral participation than adolescents. In the Czech Republic, 45 percent of people aged 18–29 attended the polling station during last election, compared to a 66.2 percent turnout of people over the retirement age. A gap between young and old people of around 20 p.p. is also symptomatic for Slovakia and Poland; in Hungary, the difference is only 8 p.p. With the exception of Poland, old people are also a bit more engaged in elite-directed participation. Particularly in Slovakia, 16.5 percent of people aged 65+ carried out any activity from the elite-directed mode, compared to 11.2 percent of active people between the ages of 18-29. On the other hand, young people are more prone to elite-challenging actions. The gap in elite-challenging participation is 6.6 p.p. in the Czech Republic, 8.1 p.p. in Slovakia, 2.2 p.p. in Hungary and 10.1 p.p. in Poland in favour of young people.
Participation gap between young and old citizens (percent)
At first sight, these results can be regarded as a pillar supporting the substitution hypothesis because it looks as if young cohorts have truly abandoned the polling station and aimed their attention at the less conventional repertoire of political participation. Nevertheless, the relationship between modes of political action is hardly demonstrable by an analysis of summary statistics. By such an approach, one cannot reliably exclude the variant that (young) people who are politically active through elite-challenging forms are simultaneously casting a ballot or performing elite-directed participation. Therefore, individual data analysis is necessary to capture associations among the three participatory modes (electoral, elite-directed, and elite-challenging) plausibly. In the following paragraphs, the results of binary logistic regression considering elite-challenging forms as a dependent variable are discussed. Regression models where the dependent variables are the remaining two modes measuring participation (electoral participation and elite-directed participation) are added in Appendix B and C. The countries were studied separately, and for each national context, three models were estimated. The first is the so-called convergence model (a model with interactions of variables of interest and the time variable) without any control variables. The second is a model without interaction terms, enriched by seven control variables that reflect the well-established explanation of political participation based on resources, motivation, and mobilization. Finally, in the third model, interaction terms as well as control variables are included.
Most important for the interpretation are the B coefficients for electoral and elite-directed participation (see Table 3). These coefficients indicate that participation in the last election as well as elite-directed political action have a mainly positive impact on elite-challenging participation. In other words, those who perform more conventional forms of political participation are more prone to less conventional activities, regardless of the national context. The influence of carrying out elite-directed forms on elite-challenging participation is more conclusive. In all twelve regression models, the effect of elite-directed action is highly significant and B-coefficients extensively exceed a value of 0. Expressed in terms of odds ratios, which are more appropriate for interpretation, one can for example say that in the Czech Republic, the odds of performing elite-challenging political activity are more than three times higher 42 for those who carried out elite-directed participation, compared to those who did not participate in elite-directed action.
Binary Logistic Regression
Source: Data from ESS Rounds 1–6.
Note: Values are B coefficients. Dependent variable: elite-challenging forms (yes/no).
p ≤ .01, **p ≤ .05, *p ≤ .10.
The impact of casting a ballot on elite-challenging participation seems also to be positive, albeit the outcomes of regression models are less convincing. In Poland, in only one out of the three models presented (PL2) was there a positive association. Likewise in the Czech Republic, only the model without interaction terms (CZ2) showed really substantial evidence that those who voted are more predisposed to elite-challenging participation (in the CZ1 model, the effect is also significant, but at a 0.10 level). Compared to the influence of elite-directed forms of political engagement, B coefficients of voting are closer to null, so its effect appears to be weaker. Despite this fact, there is empirical evidence that the individual-level relationship between participatory modes is complementary, not mutually exclusive. This crucial conclusion can be confirmed when focusing on a series of regression models where, instead of the elite-challenging mode, electoral and elite-directed participation were considered as dependent variables (see Appendices B and C).
As mentioned above, individual-level analysis could also be a basis for deciding whether the associations among participatory modes have changed over the last decade, when a new generation lacking communist experience began to enter politics. This issue can be clarified using interaction terms. Generally, these additional effects are convenient if the effect of some independent variable is assumed to vary with levels of other independent variables. For this case, the effect of electoral and elite-directed participation should vary as time passes. Table 3 demonstrates that there are certain dynamics in the impact of the variables of interest. The same pattern has been recognized in Slovakia and Hungary, where the influence of the elite-directed mode on elite-challenging participation strengthens significantly over time, whereas the effect of voting does not change markedly. In the Czech Republic, there is evidence of a gradual increase in the effect of electoral as well as elite-directed participation. Extraordinary results were ascertained when Polish respondents were taken into consideration. In the first (PL1) and third (PL3) models, where the dynamics can be observed, the direct effect of voting on elite-challenging activities was not statistically significant. However, the interaction between participation in the last election and the time variable is positive and significant. It might imply that participation in an election is starting to influence elite-challenging forms positively.
In general, individual-level analysis of direct and contingent effects did not provide any empirical evidence for the substitution hypothesis. On the other hand, there are convincing reasons for saying that the modes of political action are complementary.
For the sake of completeness, a few words should be devoted to the interpretation of control variables. The second and third models presented in the columns in Table 3 indicate that elite-challenging participation in all Visegrad countries is conspicuously affected by age, years of education, party identification, and political interest. In three out of four countries, political trust is an important predictor of nonconventional participation. The frequency of social contact plays a considerable role among Czech and Polish people; gender has a significant impact solely in the Czech Republic. The effect of gender, age, and political trust is negative.
There is one more thing that is worth mentioning. In the previous paragraphs, the differences in participation between old and young people were repeatedly emphasized. From this perspective, the effect of electoral and elite-directed forms on elite-challenging participation could vary according to different levels of age. Therefore, the interaction effects between these independent variables were put into regression models. The models including interactions with age are presented just in an appendix, because very few significant contingent effects were discovered. The only exception was the Czech Republic, where the impact of voting on elite-challenging action was truly conditioned by age (see Appendix D).
Concluding Remarks
The response to Wattenberg’s crucial question “Where have all the voters gone?” is very complicated. A variety of interpretations can be propounded. One of them tells us that as a consequence of the low responsiveness of electoral democracy, people in the most advanced societies worldwide have replaced turnout in elections by more direct and more frequent activities including signing petitions, taking part in demonstrations or boycotting certain products. On the other hand, the theory focused on the explanation of political engagement asserts that electoral participation should have more or less identical causes to other modes of political action. Essentially, it argues that those who are endowed with personal resources, have a felicitous mix of psychological motivations, and/or are adequately motivated by social networks have a predisposition to take part in elections and also to perform less-institutionalized activities.
This controversy stimulates a look at whether the relationship among diverse forms of political participation can be delineated as complementary or exclusive. On the basis of survey-data analysis related to the particular region known as the Visegrad Four, one can conclude that there is more empirical evidence for complementary relations between voting and other modes of political action than for exclusiveness. Support for the idea that people in the most developed post-communist countries have left the polling stations because of forms of political participation realized in the street or supermarket is weak. Even though at the aggregate level a lower proportion of young people in comparison with the old cast a ballot, and simultaneously, a higher proportion of youngsters compared to the oldest people were involved in less conventional participatory activities, the individual-level analysis works in favour of a complementary relationship between electoral and non-electoral participation.
To sum up, the outcomes obtained at the aggregate and individual levels are fairly inconsistent and should be adopted very carefully. However, the individual-level evidence rejecting the substitution hypothesis appears to be more convincing. Complementarity indeed makes sense when the common roots of political action are taken into account. Broadly speaking, those who can, want to, or have been mobilized to be active have the capacity not only for one definite activity like voting, but for the participatory repertoire as a whole. So why should such capacity not be capitalized on to its maximum extent?
Footnotes
Appendix
Binary Logistic Regression
| Czech Republic |
Slovakia |
Hungary |
Poland |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | CZ1 | CZ2 | SK1 | SK2 | HU1 | HU2 | PL1 | PL2 |
| Participation in election | 0.91*** | 0.50** | 0.70*** | 0.64** | 0.90*** | 0.59 | 0.66*** | –0.11 |
| Elite-directed forms | 1.50*** | 1.38*** | 1.70*** | 0.81*** | 1.97*** | 1.23*** | 1.95*** | 1.74*** |
| Time variable | 0.02 | –0.03 | –0.14* | –0.02 | ||||
| Participation in election × Time variable | 0.07* | –0.06 | 0.02 | 0.09* | ||||
| Elite-directed forms × Time variable | 0.06* | 0.18*** | 0.16*** | 0.04 | ||||
| Participation in election × Age | –0.01** | –0.01*** | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Elite-directed forms × Age | 0.00 | –0.01 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | –0.01 | 0.00 | –0.01 |
| Gender | –0.13** | –0.01 | –0.10 | –0.01 | ||||
| Age | –0.01*** | –0.01*** | –0.02*** | –0.02*** | –0.01* | –0.01 | –0.02*** | –0.02*** |
| Education | 0.11*** | 0.07*** | 0.11*** | 0.13*** | ||||
| Party identification | 0.27*** | 0.44*** | 0.55*** | 0.53*** | ||||
| Political interest | 0.57*** | 0.42*** | 0.73*** | 0.58*** | ||||
| Political trust | –0.02 | –0.06*** | –0.14*** | –0.10*** | ||||
| Social contact | 0.15*** | 0.05 | –0.01 | 0.14** | ||||
| (Constant) | –1.56*** | –3.20*** | –1.11*** | –1.84*** | –3.15*** | –3.90*** | –2.00*** | –3.73*** |
| Nagelkerke R2 | .144 | .191 | .154 | .188 | .156 | .222 | .192 | .249 |
| n | 10,799 | 8,791 | 9,820 | 10,815 | ||||
Source: Data from ESS Rounds 1–6.
Note: Values are B coefficients. Dependent variable: elite-challenging forms (yes/no).
p ≤ .01, **p ≤ .05, *p ≤ .10.