Forms and Trends of Political Participation in Global Perspective: Examining the New Evidence from the World Values Survey Round 7

The paper provides comparative cross-regional analysis of patterns and factors of conventional and unconventional political participation in Europe, Eurasia, Asia, Arab World and the Americas in over-time comparison in 1981-2018. It is analysing the longitudinal direction of conventional political participation like voting or signing a petition on the one hand and of unconventional political participation like joining a boycott, participating in demonstrations or join strike on the other. The main survey data base of this paper is the World Value Survey in its 7 waves conducted between 1981 and 2018. The paper is looking at the increasing or decreasing trend of specific forms of political participation in different world regions. The paper proposes a multivariate model of conventional and unconventional political participation, which is considering the influence and impact of social structure, social capital, political interest, political involvement and support for democracy on conventional political participation on the one hand and on unconventional political participation on the other. The main research question is if we can speak of one specific trend of political participation which is the same in all world regions or if we have to speak of regional patterns of political participation, which are specific for certain world regions, as well as if these global or region-specific patterns are relatively stable or changing over time.