Are politically engaged citizens more democratic? A glimpse from Brazil

A significant part of the Western literature on democracy assumes that political participation leads to citizens being more committed to democratic values. However, we do not know to what extent this is true in young democracies with an authoritarian tradition. Hence, this article aims to examine whether politically engaged Brazilians are more democratic. To do so, we analyzed whether there is any association between political participation, support for democracy, and democracy relativization through multivariate regression models. Our database comprises a representative sample of 2417 interviews with the electorate of São Paulo in 2019. The results show a statistically significant association between unconventional political participation and support for democracy. General political participation is associated with non-relativization of democracy only, showing a limited relationship between support for democracy and participation. Other variables, such as political interest, political knowledge, and interpersonal trust, are also associated with higher support for democracy.

The role of researchers after the COVID-19 pandemic

In late 2019, the first cases of a disease, which would come to be known as COVID-19, emerged in a Chinese city, known for being the home to a market where wild animals were relatively common and to a virology laboratory of the highest security level. Coincidence or not, the debate about the origin of the disease involves these two places, and a lot of political interest. On the other hand, the tragedy that became one of the deadliest pandemics ever recorded has several other elements that are more or less important, depending on the moment and context.

AUKUS Pact in the Perspective of Security Dilemma

Indo-Pacific is one of strategic region with complex political interest because of huge area and many involved country including major countries such as China and United States. The increase of China’s power in the region caused security dilemma for other countries. United States is one of major power that feels threatened with the rise of China. United States have a lot of cooperation with other major countries and the newest one is trilateral cooperation with Australia and United Kingdom in AUKUS Pact. AUKUS Pact caused a different reaction from countries in Indo-Pacific region. In the perspective of security dilemma, AUKUS Pact is one of United States’s security dilemma because of the rise of China. The AUKUS Pact point is help Australia to have a nuclear submarines. AUKUS Pact is not an arms race but at some point AUKUS Pact can escalated arms race in Indo-Pacific region.

Predicting online participation through Bayesian network analysis

Despite the fact that preconditions of political participation were thoroughly examined before, there is still not enough understanding of which factors directly affect political participation and which factors correlate with participation due to common background variables. This article scrutinises the causal relations between the variables associated with participation in online activism and introduces a three-step approach in learning a reliable structure of the participation preconditions’ network to predict political participation. Using Bayesian network analysis and structural equation modeling to stabilise the structure of the causal relations, the analysis showed that only age, political interest, internal political efficacy and no other factors, highlighted by the previous political participation research, have direct effects on participation in online activism. Moreover, the direct effect of political interest is mediated by the indirect effects of internal political efficacy and age via political interest. After fitting the parameters of the Bayesian network dependent on the received structure, it became evident that given prior knowledge of the explanatory factors that proved to be most important in terms of direct effects, the predictive performance of the model increases significantly. Despite this fact, there is still uncertainty when it comes to predicting online participation. This result suggests that there remains a lot to be done in participation research when it comes to identifying and distinguishing factors that stimulate new types of political activities.

Age Differences in Online News Consumption and Online Political Expression in the United States, United Kingdom, and France

Younger and older generations are differently motivated in relation to news consumption and online political expression. In this paper, we suggest that different modes of citizenship characterize younger and older generations. To test the differential role of political interest in news consumption and online political expression, we use a survey of 3,210 people from the United States, 3,043 from the United Kingdom, and 3,031 from France. Our findings suggest that young citizens are more frequent users of online news overall and that the rank order of different news activities replicates cross-nationally. The frequency of online political expression is negatively related to age, with older people less likely to post online. Age moderates the relationship between political interest and news consumption as well as news consumption and online political expression. The correlations of these sets of variables are stronger for younger respondents compared to older respondents. These findings hold across the three countries under study. We explain these patterns in terms of changing citizenship norms and discuss the implications for democracy.

Integrity triad as doubled edged sword for head-teachers’ integrity: a case from Nepal

Headteachers in the community schools are responsible for academic and administrative activities. They are considered role models for integrity practices. However, the situation is different on some occasions. For instance, political interest plays more important roles than qualifications, training, work experience, etc., in school affairs. In this context, a qualitative study was carried out in the purposefully selected two schools – an urban and a rural – to explore the elements that influence school integrity practices. Data collected from the schools were analyzed and interpreted. The findings show that nepotism, unhealthy party politics, and impunity (integrity triad) influence the school integrity practices in Nepal.

Not All Black Lives Matter: Officer-Involved Deaths and the Role of Victim Characteristics in Shaping Political Interest and Voter Turnout

This article presents evidence that exposure to officer-involved deaths of low-threat Black victims increases political interest and voter turnout among Black respondents under age 40 to the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. Victim race, threat level, and visibility affect the likelihood that an officer-involved death will mobilize political interest. Political interest and voter turnout are higher among the treatment group, which was exposed to high-visibility/low-threat Black victims only before participating in the CMPS, than in the control group, which was exposed to such victims only after taking the survey. Exposing young Black respondents to all victims without accounting for threat, visibility, or race does not affect political interest or voter turnout, suggesting the importance of these factors for mobilization. The findings clarify the role that Black Lives Matter activists, journalists, and watchdog groups can play in countering the police actions that shape the visibility and framing of Black victims of police violence.