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Initial fears of a standstill in political participation during the COVID-19 pandemic have not come true. Nevertheless, the voices heard in politics may have changed in such a radically altered social and political context. Specifically, the current article examines whether the gender gap in political participation has widened during the pandemic, reinforcing the gendered impact of the pandemic and state measures to cope with it. To empirically assess the development and drivers of the gender gap in political participation, we rely on original survey data for Germany collected in autumn 2020 and spring 2021. Based on retrospective questions about pre-pandemic behaviour and a within-pandemic panel, our results indicate three points: (1) the COVID-19 crisis has slightly increased the gender gap in participation; (2) COVID-19-related burdens (such as increasing care obligations) have not restrained, but fostered, participation; and (3) this mobilising effect is, however, stronger among men than women.

Polarisation over cultural issues and the emergence of radical, often populist, challenger parties indicate a fundamental restructuring of political conflict in Western Europe. The emerging divide crosscuts and, in part, reshapes older cleavages. This special issue introduction highlights how the transformation of cleavage structures relates to the dynamics of polarisation and political participation. The contributions to the special issue innovate in two ways. First, they adapt concepts and measures of ideological and affective polarisation to the context of Europe’s multi-party and multi-dimensional party competition. Second, they emphasise electoral and protest politics, examining how ideological and affective polarisation shape electoral and non-electoral participation. Apart from introducing the contributions, the introduction combines different datasets – the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the European Social Survey – to sketch an empirical picture of differentiated polarisation with types of polarisation only weakly associated cross-arena, cross-nationally and over time.

The chapter examines political participation by citizens who bridge electoral and nonelectoral action forms. While often studied separately, we argue for integrating our understanding of political participation across the two main arenas of mass politics: the electoral and protest arena. We review the scholarly literature, focusing on individual-level drivers and the mobilization context of political participation. We argue that individual-level characteristics do not sufficiently explain variation in the extent of arena bridging. Analyzing voting and attending demonstrations on the individual level in Europe shows that nonelectoral, protest participation complements electoral participation. However, on the macro level, their co-evolution depends on political context conditions and strategies of political parties and social movements. Importantly, the link tends to be closer in moments of crisis and profound cleavage transformation. We back up the literature review with illustrative empirical results about the interplay between electoral and nonelectoral participation based on mass surveys and protest-event analysis.

Prior research has suggested three explanations why levels of voluntary engagement rise and fall over time within societies. A social structural explanation considers individual resources crucial for engagement and argues that a redistribution of those resources may bring about changes in engagement. A cohort-based explanation considers socialisation and experiences in formative years as crucial for the uptake of engagement. Finally, a period-based explanation considers extraordinary events, external shocks, and crises to be crucial for engagement. So far, these explanations have mainly been tested separately and little is known about the relative strength of each of the proposed factors. Using data from a large German household panel survey that assessed engagement almost annually across four decades, we found that most social structural factors (e.g., education, employment, income) maintained their predictive effects for engagement, irrespective of cohort or period. The only notable exception was that the gender gap observed has narrowed substantially across periods and cohorts. Moreover, cohort effects were rendered almost negligible once we factored in periods. Taken together, our results suggest that individual characteristics and extraordinary events are the main factors influencing voluntary engagement rather than shared societal experiences of cohorts.