Conventional and unconventional political participation in
times of economic crisis in the Netherlands
Rik Linssen, Peer Scheepers, Manfred te Grotenhuis, and Hans Schmeets
Aim
• During current financial and economic crisis uprising of various
protest movements around the globe
• What about the Netherlands? Did the economic crisis induce political
participation or do citizens refrain from participating in politics in
times of the economic crisis ?
• Explore the link between macro-economic conditions in recent years
in the Netherlands and levels of political participation (other modes than
voting)
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Economic crisis: competing
perspectives
• economic adversity
– People are less able to connect to remote
concerns of politics
– induces apathy
– decreases political action
• economic adversity
– forces retrenchments
– induces blame & dissatisfaction
– spurs political action.
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Individual-level: competing
perspectives
• Grievances
– Deprivation causes dissatisfaction which
might be redressed in the political arena
which spurs political action.
• Resources
– The resource rich possess more skills,
have higher levels of political efficacy
which increases the likelihood of
participating in politics
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Economic crisis, resources &
grievances
• Given grievance proposition, during economic
downturn stronger negative relationship between
resources and political participation (blame &
grievance)
• Given resource proposition, during economic
downturn stronger positive relationship between
resources and political participation, since apathy
strongly affects those who do not have resources to
begin with (apathy & resources)
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The Netherlands
• Country with traditionally high levels of ‘ social capital’ and political
participation (Gesthuizen, Scheepers, van der Veld, & Völker, 2013; Linssen
& Schmeets, 2010)
• Most persistent economic crisis since World War II
• No less than 5 parliamentary elections between 2002 and 2012
• 3 most recent elections:
– 2006: Before the global financial and economic crisis.
– 2010: Onset of global financial and economic crisis, Eurocrisis
– 2012: During economic crisis in the Netherlands.
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Data
• Dutch Parliamentary Election Surveys
Post-Election wave
– collected 6 weeks after election
– CAPI
– 2006, 2010, 2012.
– n= 4608
Response rate: 64.3 %
57.0 %
61.9%. (compared to initital sample)
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Conventional & unconventional
political participation
• Conventional political
participation
– Activities embedded in legal
institutional framework or directly
related to electoral process (e.g.
contacting politicians, involve political party)
• Unconventional political
participation
– Activities not embedded in legal
institutional framework (e.g. protesting)
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Dependent variables political
participation: Cumulative pattern?
Unconventional
Discussion
Internet
Conventional
0.21
action group
0.07
demonstration
or protest
meeting
0.04
0
0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
Proportion (pooled
sample, 2006-2010)
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Contacted
politician /
governmen…
0.12
hearing/
consultation
meeting…
0.11
involve
political
party or…
0
0.05
0.05
0.1
0.15
Proportion (pooled
sample, 2006-2010)
9
Mokken scale analysis
1,0
Probabilit
y
,8
,6
,4
,2
0,0
Latent continuum
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Mokken scale analysis
1,0
Probabilit
y
,8
,6
,4
,2
0,0
Latent continuum
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Mokken scale analysis
• Do those who engage in ‘hard’ political
actions also engage in easier modes?
• By year, education and class.
– Scale values o.k. (except upper class, low
education)
– Item ordering pattern is equivalent, across
education, class, and time.
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Measurements
– Time
Proxies for grievances vs resources
– Level of education (completed)
• Low
(≤ higher level secondary (high school)
, high
secondary)
– Social class
, middle
(middle level vocational,higher level
(higher vocational & university)
indicated by respondent
(upper class, upper middle class, middle class, upper
working class, and working class)
– Income
– Controls
(Registries, Dutch tax office, in vigintiles according to Dutch population)
(age, age2, gender, origin (dutch, non-dutch)
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Analyses:
• Ordered logit (heavily skewed scales).
• Conventional and unconventional
political participation separately.
• Model 1, main effects
• Model 2-4, interaction with time
dummies
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Results:
• Declining conventional political participation
• (slightly) increased unconventional political
participation
• Resource rich, ( higher educated, higher class) more
likely to participate in both conventional and
unconventional modes
• However gap between resource rich and resource
poor declines (in 2012) due to increased
participation of resource poor
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Conclusions
• Most people do not participate (at least for the
items studied here)
• Cumulative nature of political participation (similar
for resource rich and resource poor).
• Resource-model corroborated.
• Decreased conventional political participation
• Increased unconventional political participation
(especially for the resource poor)
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