The PIDOP Project Martyn Barrett

University of Surrey, UK

Posters presented at the Surrey PIDOP Conference on “Political and Civic Participation”, April 16

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, 2012, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

What is the PIDOP project?

PIDOP is a multinational research project funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. The project examined the factors and processes influencing civic and political participation in eight European states – Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey and the UK. The project drew on the disciplines of Psychology, Politics, Sociology, Anthropology, Social Policy and Education to examine macro-level contextual factors (including historical, political, electoral and policy factors), proximal social factors (including familial, educational and media factors) and psychological factors (including motivational, cognitive, attitudinal and identity factors) which facilitate and/or inhibit citizens’ civic and political participation. A distinctive focus of the project was the psychology of the individual citizen and the psychological processes through which macro-level contextual factors and proximal social factors exert their effects on citizens’ civic and political engagement and participation. Young people, women, minorities and migrants were examined as four specific groups at risk of political disengagement. The research explored the differences as well as the overlap between civic and political engagement. As part of the project, multi-level theoretical models of civic and political participation were constructed to explain how and why different forms and interpretations of democratic participation develop or are hampered among citizens living in different European countries and contexts. The theoretical and empirical work conducted in the project fell under six different work packages (work packages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7), with work packages 1 and 8 being concerned with the management of the project and the dissemination of the findings. Details of these six main work packages are provided on the following posters.

Project title:

Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP)

Project website:

http://www.fahs.surrey.ac.uk/pidop/

Project duration:

36 months, start date May 2009, end date April 2012

Project budget:

€1,499,839

Project coordinator:

Professor Martyn Barrett, University of Surrey, UK

Participating teams and team members:

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University of Surrey:

Martyn Barrett, Nick Emler, David Garbin, Dimitra Pachi, Ian Brunton-Smith, Roberta Guerrina, Tereza Capelos, Cristiano Bee

University of Liège, Belgium:

Michel Born, Claire Gavray, Bernard Fournier, Charline Waxweiler, Laureen Poncelet and Line Witvrouw

Masaryk University, Czech Republic:

Petr Macek, Ondřej Císař, Mojmír Tyrlík, Zuzana Petrovičová, Kateřina Vráblíková, Jan Serek

University of Jena, Germany:

Peter Noack, Burkhard Gniewosz, Monika Buhl, Philipp Jugert, Katharina Eckstein, Alexandra Kuhn

University of Bologna, Italy: University of Porto, Portugal:

Bruna Zani, Elvira Cicognani, Paola Villano, Cinzia Albanesi, Graziella Giovannini, Alberto Bertocchi, Davide Mazzoni Isabel Menezes, Helena Araújo, Joaquim Coimbra, Norberto Ribeiro, Maria Fernandes de Jesus, Carla Malafaia

Örebro University, Sweden: Ankara University, Turkey:

Erik Amnå, Håkan Stattin, Margaret Kerr, Joakim Ekman, Bonnie Sjöblom Tulin Sener, Figen Çok, Mustafa Sen, Sümercan Bozkurt, Ayşenur Ataman, Naciye Gizem Danışan

Queen’s University Belfast, UK:

Evanthia Lyons, Yvonne Galligan, John Garry, Cillian McBride, Karen Trew, Victoria Montgomery, Patrick Martens

Work Package 2

WP2 collated and analysed existing policies on participation. It examined key policy discourses on citizenship and democratic participation at EU, national and regional level, with a particular focus on women, young people, migrants and minorities. The time frame chosen for the selection of policy documents for analysis was 2004 2009, which allowed the project to explore issues relating to active citizenship, civic engagement and Europeanisation, and the level of engagement of civil society organisations with policy priorities of the EU. Some of the principal findings from WP2 were as follows:  Three policy discourses were found to be present in official policy texts, relating respectively to social exclusion, equal opportunities and civic engagement  There was little evidence in the texts produced by civil society organisations of any coherent or consistent counter-narrative to current European policy discourses  There was little evidence of meaningful engagement with the challenges of intersectionality in most of the policy documents, apart from the intersection between gender and religion  Although official documents produced by national governments and civil society organisations were, on the whole, aligned with EU political priorities, there was little evidence of any open engagement with European meta-narratives

Work Package 3

WP3 developed political theories of participation. A new typology of different forms of participation was produced by WP3, with the aim of capturing all forms of political behaviour relevant to the study of civic and political participation, including collective and individual forms, and manifest and latent forms. In addition, WP3 drew up a specification of the factors which facilitate participation and those which hinder it. The determinants of participation function at three levels, the individual, the institutional and the country:  The individual level includes factors such as political interest, efficacy and identity  The institutional level includes factors such as the rules and design of the electoral system, points of access to the political system, the presence of mobilising channels, prevailing political strategies, the availability of associations, and, in relation to minorities and migrants, the legal right to participate  The country level includes factors such as recent political history, economic development and religion Finally, WP3 also developed models of how these different factors might inter-relate in driving participation. One of these models is shown below.

Work Package 4

WP4 drew up a specification of the social factors (including the family, the school, the peer group and the mass media) and the psychological factors (including political interest, internal efficacy, beliefs about good citizenship, sense of community, perceived injustice and group-based anger) which influence civic and political participation. WP4 also developed a range of theoretical models of how these variables are related to each other.

 One model postulates that there is a causal chain which starts from political interest and/or having a sense of civic duty, which impacts on attentiveness to political knowledge, which in turn impacts on the formation of political opinions and the construction of an ideological or political identity, which in turn results in civic and/or political participation  A second model describes the various psychosocial dimensions which impact on participation, including motivations and goals, emotions, social identities, sense of belonging, and perceived opportunities and barriers  A third model provides a detailed specification of the causal relationships which exist between all of the psychological factors which operate in this domain, including: perceived social opinion support; perceived social action support; identification with a group or community; identity threat; internalisation of group norms and values; perceived injustice; group-based anger; motivational need fulfilment; cost-benefit calculations; collective efficacy, internal efficacy and external efficacy; institutional trust; and beliefs about good citizenship The first two models are shown below.

Work Package 5

WP5 tested the theoretical models developed by WP3 and WP4 using existing survey data. WP5 constructed a detailed description of patterns of citizenship across countries and across key demographic groupings. It also applied predictive and multilevel statistical modelling to examine factors linked to variations in civic and political participation. It considered individual, social, demographic, institutional and country level drivers.

The analyses revealed:  Which predictive paths are significant varies depending on the specific form of participation which is being predicted (voting vs. conventional political vs. non-conventional political vs. civic participation)  Which predictive paths are significant varies depending on demographics (age, gender, majority vs. minority status) but in different ways for different forms of participation  Which predictive paths are significant varies across countries, but different institutional and country level factors are influential for different psychological factors in different demographic groups for different forms of participation The existence of these complex patterns of influence demonstrates the need for theoretical explanations to encompass not only the individual and social level drivers of political and civic participation described by WP4 but also the institutional and country level drivers described by WP3.

Work Package 6

WP6 collected new data to test the theoretical models developed by WP3 and WP4, focusing particularly on the social and psychological factors which influence levels of civic and political participation. Data were collected from the following national majority groups and ethnic minority groups in each country: 

England:

English, Congolese, Bangladeshis  

Belgium:

Belgians, Turks, Moroccans

Czech Republic:

Czechs, Roma, Ukrainians 

Germany:

Germans, German resettlers from Russia, Turks 

Italy:

Italians, Albanians, Moroccans  

Portugal: Sweden:

Portuguese, Brazilians, Angolans Swedes, Kurds of Turkish background, Iraqis 

Turkey:

Turks, Roma, Turkish resettlers from Bulgaria 

Northern Ireland:

Northern Irish Catholics, Northern Irish Protestants, Chinese, Polish Focus groups, individual interviews and a large-scale quantitative survey were conducted with women and men aged 16-17 (pre-voting age) and 18-26 years old (post-voting age) drawn from all of these national and ethnic groups. The aim was to explore their understandings of citizenship and participation and the factors which predict their levels of participation.

It was found that there was substantial variability between different national contexts and between the different national and ethnic groups in each national context. For example, forms and levels of participation, and predictors of participation, varied considerably, with different patterns being displayed by different sub-groups defined in terms of the intersection between age, gender and ethnicity. The complexity of these findings are consistent with the findings of WP5.

Work Package 7

WP7 developed an integrated multi-level theory of how and why different forms and interpretations of participation develop or are hampered in different national contexts, incorporating reference to institutional macro factors, social factors and psychological factors, drawing on the theoretical work conducted by both WP3 and WP4. An outline of the integrated model is shown below.

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Policy recommendations

WP7 also formulated new evidence-based policy and practice recommendations for enhancing democratic participation among citizens. These recommendations were based directly on the findings of WP5 and WP6. The recommendations were aimed at: (1) politicians and political institutions; (2) media producers and media organizations; (3) ministries of education, educational professionals and schools; and (4) a range of civil society actors, including youth workers, youth and leisure centres, youth and education NGOs, and leaders of ethnic minority communities. For full details, please visit the PIDOP project website at http://www.fahs.surrey.ac.uk/pidop/

Institutional macro factors Social factors Perceptions of the social environment Political and civic participation behaviours Other discourse and social behaviour Psychological factors