This study presents evidence for the mediation effect of political knowledge through political self-efficacy (i.e. internal political efficacy) in the prediction of political participation. It employs an action theoretic approach-by and large grounded on the Theory of Planned Behaviour-and uses data from the German Longitudinal Election Study to examine whether political knowledge has distinct ...

Research into political engagement is currently divided into two literatures: research on “conventional” and “unconventional” participation (Milbrath, 1965; McFarland and Thomas, 1996; Goldstone, 2003; Heaney and Rohas, 2006). Downward trends in “conventional” political engagement have been attributed to staff-run advocacy organizations that encourage members to contribute money but not engage ...

Many studies have revealed that conventional forms of political participation, especially among young people, women, minorities and migrants, are currently in decline (e.g., Blais & Dobrzynska, 1998; Franklin, 2002; International IDEA, 2004; Putnam, 2000). However, two different explanations have been put forward to explain this phenomenon: some authors argue that political apathy and alienatio...

Undoubtedly, the expansion of participation and competition among social groups in political lifeis one of the major goals of political development. Meanwhile, given the significant changes taken place in the socio-political life of societies, the traditional tools affecting political participation have somewhat weakened. Today, social networking sites are consideredas one of the most important...

Much research on political legitimacy has reported a widespread decline in support for institutions in industrial democracies. Despite falling legitimacy there have been no failures of such regimes, contrary to the expectation that participation by disgruntled citizens might destabilize regimes with low popular support. The literature’s conventional hypotheses are linear: declining legitimacy s...

Transnational governance is increasingly important to many areas of global politics, including global climate change, where multilateral negotiations have fallen into gridlock. However, we have yet to fully understand how domestic political conditions affect suband non-state actors’ ability to engage in governance beyond the state. Existing approaches to transnational governance emphasize, ofte...

Research on political participation has suggested that young people in western countries have become gradually disengaged from conventional politics. While traditional repertoires of participation have been declining, recent research also found that young people are relatively active in civic arenas and have become more prone to engage in extra-institutional forms of political participation. On...

Political participation is one of the important issues drawn to the special attention of various fields of social sciences and politics. Today, women as an effective group in participation and political participation especially have an important role in political decision-making. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to examine social factors affecting women's political participation i...