In the study of deliberation, a largely under‐explored area is why some participants polarise their opinion after deliberation and why others moderate them. Opinion polarisation is usually considered a suspicious outcome of deliberation, while moderation is seen as a desirable one. This article takes issue with this view. Results from a Finnish deliberative experiment on immigration show that polarisers and moderators were not different in socioeconomic, cognitive or affective profiles. Moreover, both polarisation and moderation can entail deliberatively desired pathways: in the experiment, both polarisers and moderators learned during deliberation, levels of empathy were fairly high on both sides, and group pressures barely mattered. Finally, the low physical presence of immigrants in some discussion groups was associated with polarisation in the anti‐immigrant direction, bolstering longstanding claims regarding the importance of presence for democratic politics.
The aim of this article is to examine whether core personality traits are associated with opinions on and engagement in political participation of either participatory or deliberative nature. The Finish National Election Survey 2015 is used to explore the link between the Big Five personality dimensions and a wide array of political opinions and behaviour. The results suggest that variations in personality to some extent affect what kind of activities one prefers and engages in. Personality traits seem to better predict actual engagement in participatory and deliberative activities rather than having favorable opinions about them. This suggests that there is a difference between being positive about an activity in principle and actually engaging in it. Extraversion and Openness are positively linked to engagement in both participatory and deliberative activities, while Agreeableness and Emotional stability are negatively related. There are stronger effects of personality traits in predicting opinions on and engagement in deliberative activities than for participatory activities. The traits associated with deliberation differ from traits associated with preferring more traditional forms of politics. Thus, the results clearly suggest that the impact of personality on participation should not be neglected.
Municipal mergers are one of the most common reforms of jurisdiction size. While there are many studies of municipal mergers at the contextual level and some about how mergers affect opinions, studies of how individual citizens regard prospective mergers are still scarce. Thus, we study why citizens have different opinions on prospective mergers that are yet to be decided on. Specifically, the factors of main interest in this study are political efficacy and political trust since these relate to how citizens make sense of the complex and uncertain reforms that municipal mergers are. To study this, we disseminated a population survey (N = 6,686) in the Finnish municipality of Korsholm in 2018. At that time, a merger was planned with the neighboring city of Vaasa. This merger was surrounded by a very heated debate, mainly due to the fact that the merger would have affected the position of language minorities (a very salient issue in bilingual Finland) whereby the Swedish-speaking majority in Korsholm would become a minority in a merged new municipality. Using regression analyses where internal-and external political efficacy and political trust are tested as predictors of opinions on this proposed merger, with control for demographic, socioeconomic and social factors, the study demonstrates that external efficacy and political trust have independent significant impact on citizens' opinions on mergers. The findings also show that salient issues connected to mergers are important factors as are social factors.
General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
The extent of political efficacy within a community reflects the general state of affairs within that community, with higher levels of political efficacy presumably related to other kinds of socially preferable attitudes. High levels of political efficacy could further be regarded as a glue that keeps a political community together and should be even more important within minority communities. As political efficacy differs across minority communities, it indicates that individual levels of political efficacy is not only an individual trait but something also affected by the local contextual features. To explore the relationship between varying local contexts and political efficacy within a minority population, we use data from Barometern 2019 (N = 3,913), which is a survey measuring the opinions and attitudes of the Swedish‐speaking population in Finland, i.e., the Swedish‐speaking Finns. This study, thus, analyses the role of contextual‐ and individual‐level determinants (e.g., age, education and gender) as well as linguistic identity (Swedish and bilingual) and political interest on both internal (subjective sense of political understanding) and external (political responsiveness) political efficacy. We find that context matters for political efficacy within a minority context but that the effects differ between the internal and external types of political efficacy. The findings presented will contribute to increasing our knowledge about political efficacy within a minority context.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.