The 23rd ICR seminar will be held at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan on February 18. Assistant Professor Willy Jou will be giving a lecture on “The Citizen-government Connection and Political Participation: A Cross-national Study “.
The Citizen-government Connection and Political Participation: A Cross-national Study
■Date：Thursday, February 18, 2016
■Place：Nazarbayev University
■Lecturer：Willy Jou（Assistant Professor at University of Tsukuba）
Abstract：Building on the extensive literature on the determinants of political participation, this study highlights two aspects of an electoral connection between citizens and their government as independent variables. Specifically, we emphasize the theoretical distinction between electoral winner/loser status and the ideological distance separating citizens from the incumbent cabinet, and empirically investigate the impact of these two factors, as well as their interactive effect, on levels of participation in voting and other types of activities (contacting, campaigning, persuading, cooperating, protesting). Analyzing data from 34 countries, we show that greater citizen-government distance encourages participation, and that electoral losers become more engaged only when their policy preferences diverge widely from those of their government. These effects are less marked for turnout than other modes of participation. Given the distribution of ideological orientations in most countries, our findings imply that the presence of radical governments incite higher levels of participation.
Lecturer：Willy Jou received a PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine. His research topics include public opinion, electoral systems, and ideology. He articles have appeared in /Asian Survey/, /British Journal of Political Science/, /Communist and Post-communist Studies/, /International Political Science Revie/w, /Party Politics/ and several other journals. His (co-authored) book, titled /Why Policy Representation Matters/, was published by Routledge in 2015.