sou · GNB3151 · 2000-01-01 00:00:00 — As noted earlier, the level of voting participation fell from almost two-thirds of the electorate in the first direct elections in 1979 to just under half of European citizens in 1999. Can the news media or party campaigns be blamed for the downward trend in European participation? Theories of videomalaise suggest that those who were most exposed to the news media and/or party messages should prove the most cynical and disenchanted with Europe. Yet if we compare the sources of campaign information for those who reported voting in the 1994 European elections, contrary to the videomalaise thesis, a positive relationship is evi- dent: those who saw something about the campaign in newspapers and television, or who received an election leaflet or saw party advertising, were more likely to cast a ballot (see Table 2). All the zero-order correlations (with the exception of being contacted by a party worker) proved significant. In many cases the gap between voters and non-voters proved modest but in the case of newspaper readers the gap reached 10 percentage points. To see whether this relationship held up to multivariate analysis, regression models was run in 1989, 1994 and 1999 predicting vo- ting turnout using the standard structural, attitudinal and national- level controls. This includes education, age and income (the latter as a proxy for SES), which have most commonly been found to be associated with turnout, along with political interest measured by propensity to discuss politics. The results in Table 3 confirm that, as many previous studies have found, age and income proved strong predictors of turnout, along with political interest. The younger generation is particularly prone to stay home. In contrast the gender gap in turnout has shrunk over the years to become insignificant while education (measured on a restricted scale) pro- ved inconsistent. National factors also proved important, with below-average reported turnout in , the , Por- tugal and , a pattern already shown in official aggregate figures in Table 1. As noted earlier, the legal and institutional context, such as the use of compulsory voting, provides by far the most convincing explanation for these national contrasts. After social controls were included, all the forms of political communi- cation proved significant and positive, including use of newspapers, television/radio and party campaign activity. The strength of these factors did vary across these models, in part because of func- tionally equivalent but different measures of media attention, but all pointed in the same direction. The replication of these models in successive elections increases our confidence in the reliability of the results. BLAMING THE MESSENGER? Predictors of Voting Participation, 1989–99 We find no evidence for the claim that those most exposed to news coverage during the campaign were demobilized by the experience. Yet interpretations of these findings remain open to interpretation. Does media attention to the campaign (which is sequentially prior) lead to turnout? Or does a general propensity to turnout lead to media attention (because I want to cast my vote, I seek out information about the parties and candidates)? Elsewhere, in a more extended treatment, I argue that the most plausible interpretation of this evidence is that there is a virtuous circle where watching the news activates existing predispositions and prior tendencies lead people to turn on the news26. Evaluations of by Turnout, 1989 These issues cannot be resolved here with cross-sectional data but to explore some of the reasons behind this pattern we can look at how people evaluated a series of statements concerning television coverage of the 1989 campaign. Table 4 shows that compared with those who did not turnout, voters were significantly more likely to report that TV coverage showed them where their party stood on Europe, helped make up their mind how to vote, and highlighted party differences. This supports the idea, which argued fifty years ago, that the attentive use the information on the news to help crystallize their voting choices. In contrast, non- voters were more prone to feel that coverage left them feeling confused or bored. 26 See Pippa . A Virtuous Circle: in . BLAMING THE MESSENGER? Why should we consistently find a positive link between electoral turnout and attention to the news media? There are three possible answers. One interpretation is that those who are most predisposed to participate (for whatever reason) could well be more interested in up with current affairs in the news, so the direction of causation could be one-way, from attitudes to use of the news media. This view is consistent with the uses and gratification literature, which suggests that uses of the mass media reflect prior predispositions in the audience: people who love football turn to the sports results, people who invest check the business pages, and people interested in politics read op eds about government and public policy27. Another answer could be that the process of watching or rea- ding about public affairs (for whatever reason) increases our inte- rest in, and knowledge about, government and politics, thereby facilitating political participation. The more we watch or read, in this interpretation, the more we learn. News habits can be caused by many factors such as leisure patterns and broadcasting schedu- les: people may catch the news because it comes on after a popular sit-com, or because radio stations air headline news between music clips, or because the household subscribes to home delivery of a newspaper. In this view, the direction of causality would again be one-way, but in this case running from prior news habits to our subsequent political attitudes and knowledge. Both these views could logically make sense of the associations we establish. One or the other could be true. It is not possible to resolve the direction of causality from cross-sectional surveys ta- ken at one point in time. But it seems more plausible and convin- cing to assume a two way-interactive process. This conclusion ar- gues that in the long-term, like the socialization process in the family or workplace, there may well be a virtuous circle where 27 . Blumler and . The Uses of : Current Perspectives on . , CA: . the news media and party campaigns serve to activate the . Those most interested and knowledgeable pay most attention to political news. Learning more about public affairs reduces the bar- riers to further civic engagement. In this interpretation, the ratchet of reinforcement thereby moves in a direction that is healthy for democratic participation. In contrast, the news media has far less power to reinforce the disengagement of the disengaged, because, given the easy availabi- lity of the multiple alternatives now available, and minimal political interest, when presented with news about politics and current affairs this group is habitually more likely to turn over, turn off, or surf to another web page. If the disengaged do catch the news, they are likely to pay attention. And if they do pay attention, they are more likely to mistrust media sources of information. Repeatedly tuning out political messages inoculates against their potential impact. This theory provides a plausible and coherent interpretation of why the press and broadcasters may have a nega- tive bias in coverage of the EU and yet those who pay attention to the news media remain more engaged than those who do not watch or read. What matters here are the characteristics of how people sift, sort and use messages in the news media, rather than simply passively and uncritically absorbing the messages in an over-simple stimulus-response model. Claims of videomalaise are methodologically flawed so that they are at best unproven, to use the Scottish verdict, or at worse false. As a result too often we are blaming the messenger for more deep-rooted ills of the body politic. This matters, not just because we need to understand the real causes of civic disengage- ment to advance our knowledge, but also because the correct dia- gnosis has serious implications for public policy choices. Blaming the messenger can prove a deeply conservative strategy, blocking effective institutional reforms. If we can generalize more broadly from these results, they sug- gest that campaign communications may thereby reinforce the division between those who tune in and tune out from public affairs. Some people will have more civic skills, social networks, and interest to find out about events in or , BLAMING THE MESSENGER? and to cast their vote accordingly. The institutional context also does seem important for electoral turnout, and devices like com- pulsory voting and Sunday polling days can raise levels of partici- pation. But the evidence here suggests that coverage of public affairs in the traditional news media should not be blamed for broader inequalities in educational skills or socio-economic re- sources common throughout post-industrial societies. The erosion of turnout in EU elections can therefore best be explained by changes in a range of other factors, such as the institutional con- text for voting, the role of mobilizing agencies such as political parties in activating support, the performance of the EU on major issues like unemployment and economic growth, and the rational incentives to cast a ballot if voters cannot perceive major differen- ces between political parties on many of the core issues facing Europe. There are problems in how the news media covers Europe, in particular a lack of stories about most routine policy matters like regional aid or jobs programmes, combined with a systematic negative bias in the newspaper and television coverage that is pro- vided on issues such as the euro28. Nevertheless often the news media is blamed as the messenger, rather than confronting more deep-rooted problems in how citizens connect with Union. 28 See Pippa . A Virtuous Circle: in . Even though democracy is about power, equally shared between citizens, democratic procedures have never controlled more than parts of the power exercised in any society. To understand demo- cracy we thus study the relation between the unit in which demo- cracy is thought to take place and other units where power is exer- cised, democratically or not. The question I would like to pose concerns the division of power between union and its member-states. Given a preference for high turnout in general elections and its possible effect in democratic legitimacy: Which power-division is preferable? I start by making two assumptions: the first answers the question why there is a general interest in the level of turnout; the second answers the question why citizens vote. I then proceed by discussing how turnout and democratic legitimacy are affected by power-division between more or less democratic organisations, focusing on union and its member-states. 1 The author is doctor student at science at university. TO SHARE DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY BETWEEN DIFFERENT POLITICAL LEVELS Why are we interested in citizens participation in general elec- tions? A social scientist answer could be that turnout in general elections is a good indicator of the popular support for the politi- cal system (or some other politically relevant quality). That answer is fair enough for explaining the interest of a social scientist. How- ever, if the turnout in general elections is interesting only as an indicator of the popular support for the political system, and not in itself important for the popular support, than no one outside social science need to bother about it; the political debate would focus on the real problem, that is a supposed lack of popular support for the political system, and not waste any time on the mere instrument for studying the problem, which is the turnout. Thus, our first answer can not explain the concern for turnout in general elections found in the political sphere, and so we have to put the question again. Why are we interested in citizens partici- pation in general elections? A second answer would be that democracy is impossible if citi- zens dont vote. Even though this answer probably could explain some of the common interest in citizens participation in general elections, its not sufficient. If you adopt a representative or elitist of democracy – which I believe most people do – vo- ting citizens is not a necessary condition for democracy. What is a necessary condition for representative democracy is the possibility for all citizens to vote in free and fair elections. Of course one could suspect the voting-possibility to be only formal, and not real, if there is an extremely low turnout, as in elec- tions, that is to say: citizens are prevented from voting by some invisible structure of power determining society. But such a marxist interpretation would require extra judgement, it cant be accepted a priori, a judgement which hasnt been made in the Swe- dish debate. So the idea that democracy is impossible if citizens dont vote, cant fully answer our question why there is a general interest in turnout in general elections, as long as some of us are neither marxists nor participatory democrats. To understand the common interest in turnout in general elec- tions I would propose a third answer, complementing the former ones, saying that participation in general elections has a common interest because its assumed to improve or underpin the legiti- macy of the political system. In a weberian understanding of legi- timacy (Beetham 1991:6) that would mean: a citizen participating in a general election will to a greater extent than if not participa- ting believe in the justifiability of the political authority. If the citizens justification of the authority stems from democratic prin- ciples and a belief that actual conditions sufficiently conforms to these principles, then we can in addition qualify the legitimacy as democratic legitimacy. The higher the turnout, the deeper and more widespread becomes the conviction of the citizens that poli- tical decision-making are justified and democratically justified. The higher the turnout, the higher is the expected level of democratic legitimacy. Thats my first assumption. There is a least two reasons for the view that participation in general elections improves democratic legitimacy. First, participa- tion in general elections can have an informative and educational effect. The procedure of choosing a political party and confirming the choice with the ballot, while following the political debate, can work as a fast course in political science and democratic theory, learning what democracy is about, the obligations and rights of democracy, its strengths and weaknesses. Given that the citizen are situated in a democratic culture and political order such informa- tion and deliberation are expected to increase the democratic legi- timacy of the system, its democratic justifiability according to the citizens. Second, and to my view more important, participation in general elections improves democratic legitimacy because one can reasonably assume a spill-over between democratic praxis and con- viction. If an individual behaves like a subject of the democratic decision-making procedure, that is he or she makes a political choice and walks to the ballot box, the democratic principles are expected to become more deeply embedded in that person. This would in turn create a deeper understanding for the majority prin- ciple, and accordingly that a minority has to accept also the deci- sion it has voted against. Thus, participating in general elections are expected to yield democratic legitimacy to the political order. To explore the relation between turnout in union and its member-states – and its supposed consequences in demo- TO SHARE DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY BETWEEN DIFFERENT POLITICAL LEVELS cratic legitimacy – we need to know what determines the voting behaviour. Why do people vote? Of course I cant answer this question fully and seriously. During the last two days we have discussed different explanations, but taken together as one single model these explanations are fare too complex to use for a theore- tical analysis about the relation between democratic legitimacy on the national and level. What to do then? My solution is a well-known in political science: when reality is too complex and you dont know how to handle it, you turn to a ideal-type ra- tional choice-model. Of course the model should be understood as an elaborated hypothesis and not a justified explanation. However, the interest of a rational-choice analysis is not only theoretical, as the idea of a citizen rationally calculating the political importance of voting or non-voting is an underlying assumption of a large number of arguments in public debate.2 My intention is to take these existing and influential arguments a step further. A rationalistic answer to the question – why do people vote – would be that people vote because they want political influence, because they want to influence political decision-making or the scope of political decision-making. According to the same rationa- listic hypothesis people dont vote when they believe that voting makes too political difference, that is: when the cost of voting is higher than its benefits, when for example voting takes too much time and energy compared to the gains of voting in terms of influence. Before I go on to explain the relation between different demo- cratic organisations sharing the same citizens I want to sum up the explanative assumptions made so far. 2In this group we find among many others an argument pursued by chairman , saying that a low turnout in elections is expected as one of the most important questions of any political election, whether or not the government will stay, is never posed in the campaigns of elections (which is due to the constitutional limitations of parliament). If the elections were about something more important the argument implies that turnout would increase. What the diagram says is first: that the citizens decision to vote or not to vote depends on the citizens for political influence at a minimal individual effort, and second: that the voting-act results in political legitimacy, which can be specified as democratic legiti- macy because of its source in democratic principles and procedu- res. If citizens vote because they want political influence the turnout in general elections is supposed to increase when adding more com- petencies and power to the organisation (given that its the elected body which controls the new powers, or rather: that citizens be- lieve so). As there is a limited number of citizens and votes, each vote becomes more important when the organisation , and the motivation for voting is thereby strengthened. This idea can be illustrated in a diagram. TO SHARE DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY BETWEEN DIFFERENT POLITICAL LEVELS One democratic organisation, A Note that we have not yet begun to compare different organisa- tions. Both axis describe the same unit, organisation A. We try to capture only what is expected to happen in one single democratic organisation when the powers and competencies of the organisa- tion are expanded. And what happens is that turnout is expected to increase. If we stopped the analysis by here we would certainly conclude, that the solution to the problem of low turnout in the elections of parliament is to transfer more power to the Parlia- ment, either from the member-states or from other political insti- tutions at the international level, including the institutions of union. That is also a common recommendation for re- ducing the democratic problems of the union. For example one of the celebrities in this field, , professor of European law, has suggested that parliament should have power to take financial decisions – a power which is today exerci- sed in the member-states – in order to make the citizens more in- terested in what the Parliament is doing (1999:355). If parliament could decide about the money of the citizens then the citizens would be more interested to vote, according argument. We will however take the analysis a bit further and check if the conclusion is stable. In what way could some other organisation, call it organisation B, differ from the first organisation A? In this ideal-type diagram the only thing that can vary is the inclination of the graph. So what could happen is that an organisation B has the following relation between turnout and the power of the organisation. One democratic organisation, B, which has more citizens OR more veto points than organisation A Or we could think of an organisation where the variation in turn- out is even smaller, as in this organisation C. TO SHARE DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY BETWEEN DIFFERENT POLITICAL LEVELS One democratic organisation, C, which has more citizens AND more veto points than organisation A How could we explain the differences between organisation A, B and C? If we want to stay in the rational-choice perspective there are at least two explanations for such differences. The first expla- nation is the size of the system, in terms of citizens. The second is the number of veto points in the decision-making procedure of the organisation. I comment shortly on each of them. According to our rational-choice assumption the size of the system are expected to have a negative impact on turnout, all other things equal. The negative impact on turnout is expected because increasing the number of citizens implies a decreasing amount of political influence for each of them, and the incentive for voting is thereby weakened. Note the all other things equal assumption. The system size is often thought to have a positive impact on sys- tem capacity, which could neutralise the negative impact of increa- sing the number of citizens. All such very realistic consequences are excluded from this ideal-type diagram. The second explanation to the differences in turnout between organisation A, B and C is the difference in the number of veto points in each organisation. The veto point is a stage in a decision- making procedure where the decision can be blocked. The number of veto points can vary between different organisations. For example, in a monist democracy – where antique is pro- bably the most extreme example as the political forum could not only legislate but also judge and directly execute their decisions – there is only one veto point. All that is needed for a social act to become a decision is the collective say at one moment and one place. This example could be contrasted with experiences from international negotiations where the final outcome has to be rati- fied in national parliaments before the proposal becomes a deci- sion, that is: before the decision comes into power; in this example there are as many veto point as there are national parliaments, or even more, as there might be also constitutional and international courts. Now, if there are many veto points in an organisation rather than few, there will be less decisions taken, all other things equal, or at least: the decision-making will take more time and re- sources and thus be less efficient. The probability that a certain decision will be taken at a given time decreases, when the oppor- tunities to block the decision increases. As the number of veto points decreases decision-efficiency, the number of veto points also are expected to decrease turnout in general elections; as parti- cipating in the elections of an efficient organisation is more inte- resting to citizen who seeks to maximise his or her political influ- ence, than participation in the elections of an inefficient organisa- tion.