Political Inequality in an Age of Democracy by Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow

Author:Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow [Dubrow, Joshua Kjerulf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367868383
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

Measuring participation in political and non-political associations

For the design and pretesting of the BHAS we employed and sought to contribute to the state of the art in survey methodology, particularly in a global south context. The BHAS was a collective institution building endeavor, which brought together the majority of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)’s faculty and graduate students in the departments of sociology and anthropology and the political science department, collaborating with specific modules for that omnibus survey. The pretest allowed the faculty and students to collaborate exhaustively in the operationalization of concepts. In my role as one of the PIs and the survey methodology coordinator, I had the privilege to sit down with them and thoroughly evaluate the research questions, concepts, empirical indicators and survey questions. The two political scientists PIs6 for the module on civic and political participation questioned the validity of widely replicated international measures of participation in political and non-political associations. In their view, those questions failed to take into account the distinction between formal and informal participation. The issue was that by replicating those questions we could be under-measuring participation in Brazil, given that much of the participation in associations in Brazil did not require and was not limited to formal membership. Civic and political activism in Brazil in the last decades, in the contestation of the military dictatorship and later in the transition to democracy, had been composed of classic organizations such as trade unions and political parties, as well as by new social movements demanding better living conditions (housing, sanitation, urban services and structure) for the working classes, and organized around human rights and issues related to access to the environment, culture, health, and education.

I was concerned that the wording of the World Values Survey questions, for instance, when using terms such as “belong to” or a “member of,” might actually under-measure voluntarism and participation. The A098 – A0106 Active/Inactive membership WVS item for nine different voluntary organizations reads, “Now I am going to read out a list of voluntary organizations; for each one, could you tell me whether you are a member, an active member, an inactive member or not a member of that type of organization.” The choices are: active member, inactive member and not a member. The E025-E029 Political action item for five different forms of political participation reads, “Now I’d like you to look at this card. I’m going to read out some different forms of political action that people can take, and I’d like you to tell me, for each one, whether you have actually done any of these things, whether you might do it or would never, under any circumstances, do it.” The choices are: have done, might do and would never do.

Our challenge was to design a question that:

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Would account for both informal and formal participation that allows respondents to consider non-formal types of participation – not being a card-carrying member – as legitimate answers. In our conceptual definition of participation we included both

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