Participation and protest in the European Union and the ‘outsider’ states

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Notes

1. For example, J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, Baltimore/London, 1996; H. Eckstein et al., Can Democracy Take Root in Post-Soviet Russia? Explorations in State-Society Relations, Lanham, MD, 1998; W. Miller, S. White and P. Heywood, Values and Political Change in Postcommunist Europe, Basingstoke, 1998; E. Plasser, P. Ulram and H. Waldrauch, Democratic Consolidation in East-Central Europe, Basingstoke, 1998; R. Rose, W. Mishler and C. Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives: Understanding Post-Communist Societies, Cambridge, 1998; L. Diamond, Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation, Baltimore/London, 1999; J. Nagle and A. Mahr, Democracy and Democratization: Post-Communist Europe in Comparative Perspective, London, 1999; S. White, Russia's New Politics: The Management of a Postcommunist Society, Cambridge, 2000; L. Diamond and M. Plattner (eds), Democracy after Communism, Baltimore/London, 2002; R. Bova, ‘Democracy and Russian Political Culture’, in R. Bova (ed.), Russia and Western Civilization: Cultural and Historical Encounters, Armonk NY/London, 2003, pp. 243–76; S. White, Z. Gitelman and R. Sakwa (eds), Developments in Russian Politics 6, Basingstoke, 2005. For detailed quantitative research on European values, see W. Arts, J. Hagenaars and L. Halman (eds), The Cultural Diversity of European Unity: Findings, Explanations and Reflections from the European Values Study, Leiden, 2003; W. Arts and L. Halman (eds), European Values at the Turn of the Millennium, Leiden, 2004. Also in a similar context, see G. Hofstede, Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations across Nations, 2nd edn, Thousand Oaks/London, 2001.

2. R. Dalton, Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 3rd edn, New York/London, 2002, pp. 58–74.

3. R. Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics, Princeton, NJ, 1977; R. Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society, Princeton, NJ, 1990; R. Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Nations, Princeton, NJ, 1997; R. Inglehart and C. Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: the Human Development Sequence, Cambridge/New York, 2005, pp. 115–34.

4. On the other hand, it could be argued that an orientation towards protest in general is part of the western heritage. For example, Dalton notes that protest is ‘not new to Western democracies’. See Dalton, 2002, op.cit., pp. 58–9. Marsh argued that protest activities are associated with British traditions (A. Marsh, Protest and Political Consciousness, Beverly Hills CA/London, 1977).

5. R. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition, New Haven/London, 1971, esp. pp. 1–16.

6. This is, of course, only one dimension of the nature of democracy, which has other facets and interpretations.

7. The diagram was originally developed by Alan Marsh—see Marsh, 1977, op. cit., esp. pp. 39–54. See Also E. Muller, ‘A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential for Political Violence’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 66, No. 3, 1972, pp. 928–59; A. Marsh, ‘Explorations in Unorthodox Political Behavior’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 2, 1974, pp. 107–31.

8. For example, Inglehart and Welzel identify the three types of protest as having rather conducive elements to democracy in the context of values change. See Inglehart and Welzel, 2005, op. cit., pp. 121–6.

9. As Almond and Verba noted, people's excessive political actions towards the centre might function as a source of instability, and thus a certain level of deference would contribute to its smooth operation. See G. Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Princeton, NJ, 1963, pp. 473–505.

10. For example, demonstrations for ‘Make Poverty History’ and anti-war protests in Britain, a country known for its citizens' sense of deference and culture of occasional petitions. See Dalton, 2002, op. cit., pp. 62–3.

11. For more on the system of checks and balances, see M. Maruyama, ‘Patterns of Individuation and the Case of Japan: A Conceptual Scheme’, in M. Jansen (ed.), Changing Japanese Attitudes towards Modernization, Princeton, NJ, 1965, pp. 489–531.

12. However, the civic influence could vary depending on issues and the extent to which the people and political elites are aware of the importance of governmental responsiveness. Without this, it might be difficult to expect effective outcomes.

13. R. Inglehart, ‘How Solid is Mass Support for Democracy—and How Can We Measure It?’, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2003, pp. 51–7 (esp. p. 54); R. Inglehart and C. Welzel, ‘Political Culture and Democracy’, in H. Wiarda (ed.), New Directions in Comparative Politics, 3rd edn, Boulder, 2002, pp. 141–64.

14. For example, although the proportion of Japanese respondents who claim to have signed a petition is quite high, the figures for other forms of protest behaviour are extraordinarily low, suggesting probable weakness in public claims towards the government.

15. For the rationale behind the order of the scale, see Marsh, 1974, op. cit.; Marsh, 1977, op. cit., esp. pp. 13–27, 41; R. Dalton, Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Western Democracies, 2nd edn, Chatham, NJ, 1996, p. 73.

16. See for instance, S. White, R. Rose and I. McAllister, How Russia Votes, Chatham, NJ, 1997, esp. pp. 1–19. White also notes that ‘under the Soviet system there were frequent votes but no opportunity to choose, not just between candidates or parties but (in practice) whether to vote at all’ (White, 2000, op. cit., p. 34).

17. For example, see S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, London, 1996, esp. pp. 71–2; D. Bell and K. Jayasuriya, ‘Understanding Illiberal Democracy: A Framework’, in D. Bell et al. (eds), Towards Illiberal Democracy in Pacific Asia, Basingstoke, 1995, pp. 1–16; B. Parekh, ‘The Cultural Particularity of Liberal Democracy,’ in D. Held (ed.), Prospects for Democracy: North, South, East, West, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 156–75; for discussion on individualism through quantitative comparison, see Hofstede, 2001, op. cit., esp. pp. 209–78. While Lipset argues about the American people's distinctive orientation to individual freedom and autonomy, he still seems to think that those in other western societies display a similar tendency in comparison with some non-western societies. See S. Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, London/New York, 1996; L. Pye with M. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority, Cambridge, MA/London, 1985.

18. ‘European Values Study Group and World Values Survey Association. European and World Values Surveys Integrated Data File, 1999–2002, RELEASE I [Computer file]. 2nd ICPSR version. Cologne, Germany: Zentralarchiv fur Empirische Sozialforschung (ZA)/Tilburg, Netherlands: Tilburg University/Amsterdam, Netherlands: Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services (NIWI)/Madrid, Spain: Analisis Sociologicos Economicos y Politicos (ASEP) and JD Systems (JDS)/Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [produces], 2004. Cologne, Germany: Zentralarchiv fur Empirische Sozialforschung (ZA)/Madrid, Spain: Analisis Sociologicos Economicos y Politicos (ASEP) and JD Systems (JDS)/Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributors], 2004.’

19. Among the West European cohort, only Spain and Greece have comparable levels between the two protest items. However, even in these cases, petition-signers still outnumber demonstrators.

20. The L2 dissimilarity measure in the figure denotes Euclidean distance, requesting the Minkowski distance metric. The dissimilarity measure is utilized to decide on the similarity or dissimilarity between observations.

21. Another intriguing point is that Spain, Portugal and Greece are outside or at a margin of the major western cluster. This coincides with the fact that they were latecomers to democracy among West European societies.

22. Inglehart and Welzel notice differences in ‘petition’ actions between ‘post-industrial democracies’, ‘western ex-communist societies’ and ‘eastern ex-communist societies’, while noting the change in their inclinations over time. See Inglehart and Welzel, 2005, op. cit., pp. 124–6.

23. For the figures in Table 1 the confidence intervals are quite narrow, below 4%. The figures could thus be regarded as well-approximating true proportions in the wider population.

24. See, for instance, T. Friedgut, Political Participation in the USSR, Princeton, NJ, 1979.

25. Although the results for post-communist EU candidates are slightly higher than in the post-communist member states (reversing the usual trend), they are still between the western members and the ‘outsiders’, so a broad gradation from West to East can be observed.

26. Other analysis carried out by the author has suggested that people in post-communist societies (especially in the former USSR) are not necessarily less conscious of freedom than those in western Europe. However, it seems that the emphasis varies depending on what kind of freedom is considered. On the issue of freedom see, for example, J. Gibson, ‘The Struggle Between Order and Liberty in Contemporary Russian Political Culture’, Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1997, pp. 271–90; E. Carnaghan, ‘Have Your Cake and Eat it Too: Tensions between Democracy and Order Among Russian Citizens’, Studies in Public Policy, Vol. 352, Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 2001; G. Nodia, ‘How Different are Postcommunist Transitions?’, in L. Diamond and M. Plattner (eds), 2002, op. cit., pp. 3–17.

27. Proportion estimations are conducted for the post-materialist index and the relative commitments to ‘more say’ and ‘free speech’. For all the figures, the ranges of the confidence intervals are less than 5%. The figures observed may be regarded as well-approximating true proportions in the wider population.

28. The ‘self-expression values’ measurement constructed by Inglehart, and its variants, contain elements of both ‘petition’ and the ‘post-materialist scale’. As they were created on the basis of correlating variables, this indicates the association between ‘petition’ and post-materialist values. See, for instance, R. Inglehart and E. Baker, ‘Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 65, No. 1, 2000, pp. 19–51; C. Welzel, R. Inglehart and H. Klingemann, ‘The Theory of Human Development: A Cross-Cultural Analysis’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 42, No. 3, 2003, pp. 341–79.

29. Responses are ‘good’, ‘do not mind’ or ‘bad’.

30. See D. de Vaus, Surveys in Social Research, 4th edn, London, 1996, p. 294.

31. M. Norušis, SPSS 13.0 Statistical Procedures Companion, Upper Saddle River, 2005, p. 332. See also A. Field, Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, London, 2005, pp. 222–3.

32. F. Pampel, Logistic Regression: A Primer, Thousand Oaks/London, 2000, pp. 48–54.