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Deliberative democracy’s core practice of political discussion is often claimed to entail beneficial ‘self-transformative’ effects on those partaking in it. We examine the assumption that political talk makes for ‘better citizens’ with a special focus on individuals’ orientations toward democracy and their own roles within it. We conceptualize these orientations as a triad of democratic citizenship that encompasses three pillars: (1) the attitudinal dimension of citizens’ support for the democratic political system whose members they are, (2) the normative dimension of views about ‘good’ citizenship, and (3) the behavioral dimension of active participation in this system’s political process. Our analysis offers a comprehensive perspective at how these orientations are affected by engagement and disagreement in political talk across four discursive spheres: (i) informal conversations of a private nature within strong network ties (family and friends), (ii) of a semi-public nature within weak network ties (acquaintances), and (iii) of a public nature outside social networks (strangers), as well as (iv) formalized public discussions at organized events. Drawing on two high-quality surveys from Germany, we find overall positive effects of engagement in informal-private conversations and formalized public discussions on citizenship orientations. The role of semi-public political talk within weak ties appears ambivalent, but its impact is overall rather weak. Strikingly, we observe strong indications that casual conversations with strangers weaken people’s support for the democratic system, participatory norms, and likelihood of active political engagement. Disagreement during political conversations also matters for democratic orientations, and its effects are always positive.

According to normative theorists, informal conversations between strangers are the most basic manifestation of the political public sphere and truest to the deliberative democratic ideal. Yet systematic empirical evidence on citizens’ everyday political talk outside their social networks is largely missing. Using a unique survey, we examine citizens’ access to the public discursive sphere of political talk with strangers, as well as the frequency and disagreeableness of the conversations held in this arena of the deliberative system. Although widespread and frequent engagement is desirable from a normative point of view, we find this discursive sphere to be considerably smaller in scope and less vibrant than the private and semi-public discursive spheres of political talk within strong and weak network ties. Contrary to theorists’ equation of strangeness with difference, political conversations between strangers also appear rather harmonious. Furthermore, our findings show that psychological dispositions, most notably social trust and conflict orientations, are important drivers of individuals’ involvement in political conversations with strangers. Their impact exceeds the influence of political dispositions, opportunities, and skills. Some aspects of our results raise doubts about the deliberative quality of these conversations.

The GLES Open Science Challenge 2021 was a pilot project aimed at demonstrating that registered reports are an appropriate and beneficial publication format in quantitative political science that helps to increase transparency and replicability in the research process and thus yields substantial and relevant contributions to our discipline. The project resulted in the publication of this special issue, which includes seven registered reports based on data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) collected in the context of the 2021 German federal election. This concluding article of the special issue brings together the perspectives of the participating authors, reviewers, organizers, and editors in order to take stock of the different experiences gained and lessons learned in the course of the project. We are confident that future projects of a similar nature in political science, as well as authors, reviewers, and editors of registered reports, will benefit from these reflections., Die GLES Open Science Challenge 2021 ist ein Pilotprojekt, das zeigt, dass Registered Reports ein geeignetes und gewinnbringendes Publikationsformat in der quantitativen Politikwissenschaft sind, die dazu beitragen können, die Transparenz und Replizierbarkeit im Forschungsprozess zu erhöhen und somit substanzielle und relevante Beiträge für unsere Disziplin zu liefern. Das Ergebnis ist die Veröffentlichung dieses Sonderheftes mit sieben Registered Reports, die auf Daten der German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) basieren, die im Rahmen der Bundestagswahl 2021 erhoben wurden. Dieser abschließende Artikel des Sonderheftes bringt die Perspektiven von Autor*innen, Gutachter*innen, Organisator*innen und Herausgeber*innen zusammen, um eine Bilanz der verschiedenen Erfahrungen und Lehren zu ziehen, die im Laufe dieses Projektes gewonnen wurden.

Attitudes toward immigrants and immigration are a central explanation for the electoral support of far-right parties. However, while these parties gained strength over the last two decades, European citizens’ views about immigration have not changed much. In this study, we contribute to solving this puzzle by uncovering the flash potential of immigration. With its salience as a politically contested issue increasing, negative yet previously less relevant immigration preferences and evaluations transform more often into politically tangible attitudes and behaviors, such as support for far-right parties. We uncover this flash potential with individual-level ESS data and aggregated measures of issue salience among the public, allowing us to model the conditioning effects of contextual-level immigration salience on the individual-level relationship between immigration attitudes and far-right support. The results from random-effects within-between models analyzing 208,794 individual respondents from 141 country-rounds and 24 countries over the period of 2002–2018 show that the effects of citizens’ attitudes on support for far-right parties are stronger in contexts and periods in which the salience of immigration is higher. Accordingly, while immigration attitudes among European public have not turned more negative over time, they have become more influential for citizens’ party attachments and vote choices.

This article discusses the current challenges of conducting a General Social Survey (GSS) in face-to-face mode and evaluates the alternative of fielding these surveys in self-administered mixed-mode (web, mail) instead. Based on data from Germany, it first illustrates the stark decline of participation in face-to-face surveys since 2002 and reports a strong increase in the cost of conducting these surveys over the same period. It then discusses the possibility of implementing GSS-type surveys in a self-administered design and reports results from a mode experiment implemented in the German part of the European Values Study (EVS) 2017/18. The results of the experiment indicate that self-administered mixed-mode surveys are a viable alternative for cross-sectional general population surveys in Germany; they shorten the fieldwork period and lead to higher response rates, while being more cost-efficient than face-to-face surveys. Despite the finding that the sample composition deviates from the general population in both modes, the face-to-face mode represents the population slightly better.

Freie und faire Wahlen bilden das Herzstück der repräsentativen Demokratie. In den letzten Jahren geraten Wahlen jedoch in vielen entwickelten Demokratien zunehmend unter Beschuss von populistischen Akteur:innen, welche mittels ihrer Rhetorik die Qualität und Integrität des elektoralen Prozesses in Frage stellen. Während sich die wissenschaftliche Debatte bisher weitgehend auf Expert:innenbefragungen zur Messung und Dokumentation der objektiven Integrität verschiedener Wahlen konzentriert hat, so ist über die individuellen Wahrnehmungen elektoraler Integrität seitens der Bevölkerung und insbesondere deren Implikationen für das politische Verhalten der Bürger:innen nur vergleichsweise wenig bekannt. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht die vorliegende Studie, welchen Einfluss Wahrnehmungen elektoraler Integrität auf das politische Verhalten der Bürger:innen in Deutschland ausüben. Hierbei fokussiert die Studie auf insgesamt drei verschiedene Formen politischen Verhaltens: die Wahlbeteiligung, die Wahlentscheidung sowie die nichtelektorale (institutionalisierte und nichtinstitutionalisierte) politische Partizipation im Offline- und Online-Bereich. Die präregistrierte empirische Analyse basierend auf der Vorwahlbefragung der German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) 2021 zeigt, dass elektorale Integritätswahrnehmungen bedeutende Effekte auf die Wahlbeteiligung sowie die Wahlentscheidung haben, während ihr Einfluss auf die nichtelektorale politische Partizipation von der spezifischen Art und dem Bereich der politischen Beteiligung abhängt. Diese Ergebnisse liefern innovative Einsichten bezüglich der verhaltensrelevanten Implikationen elektoraler Integritätswahrnehmungen und erweitern die Befunde bisheriger Forschung um (1) ein breiteres politisches Partizipationsrepertoire sowie (2) den deutschen Kontext. Hinsichtlich der generellen Funktionsfähigkeit moderner Demokratien deutet die in dieser Studie präsentierte empirische Evidenz darauf hin, dass der Zusammenhang zwischen elektoralen Integritätswahrnehmungen und politischem Verhalten als "dreifaches Handicap" oder "doppeltes Korrektiv" für die repräsentative Demokratie angesehen werden kann. Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of representative democracy. In recent years, however, elections in many advanced democracies have increasingly come under attack by populist actors and rhetoric questioning the integrity of the electoral process. While scholarly attention has so far largely focused on expert surveys measuring and documenting the objective integrity of different elections, a thorough understanding of citizens' electoral-integrity beliefs and their implications for political behavior is still lacking. Against this background, the present study investigates the impact of electoral-integrity beliefs on citizens' political behavior in Germany. Specifically, the study aims to assess the influence of electoral-integrity perceptions on turnout, vote choice, and nonelectoral (institutionalized and noninstitutionalized) political participation in the offline and online spheres. The study's preregistered empirical analysis based on the preelection survey of the 2021 German Longitudinal Election Study shows that electoral-integrity beliefs entail clear implications for citizens' turnout and vote choice, while their influence on nonelectoral behavior is contingent upon the specific type and sphere of political participation. These findings provide novel insights on the behavioral implications of electoral-integrity beliefs and extend the (scarce) findings of previous research to (1) a broader political action repertoire as well as (2) the German context. The empirical evidence generated comes with far-reaching implications for the general viability of modern democracies, suggesting that the nexus between electoral-integrity beliefs and political behavior can be a "triple penalty" or a "double corrective" for representative democracy.

Fur die langfristige Funktions- und Uberlebensfahigkeit moderner Demokratien sind politisches Wissen und politisches Vertrauen essenziell. Angesichts der demokratietheoretischen Relevanz, die beiden Konzepten als elementaren Bestandteilen einer funktionierenden Demokratie beigemessen wird, ist es uberraschend, dass uber das theoretische und empirische Verhaltnis von politischem Wissen und politischem Vertrauen nur vergleichsweise wenig bekannt ist. Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags ist es, den Zusammenhang zwischen politischem Wissen und Vertrauen in politische Institutionen genauer zu untersuchen. Hierbei werden mit strukturierenden, direkten und moderierenden Effekten insgesamt drei Einflusskanale identifiziert und empirisch untersucht, uber welche politisches Wissen das politische Vertrauen der Burgerinnen und Burger beeinflussen kann. Die empirischen Analysen auf Grundlage der Daten des ALLBUS 2018 zeigen, dass (1) politisches Wissen keinen nennenswerten Einfluss auf die dimensionale Struktur politischen Vertrauens ausubt, (2) sich direkte Effekte politischen Wissens insbesondere fur das Vertrauen in reprasentative Institutionen nachweisen lassen und (3) politisches Wissen den Einfluss performanzbasierter Bewertungen auf politisches Vertrauen moderiert. Der Beitrag liefert somit wertvolle Erkenntnisse zum konkreten Zusammenspiel politischen Wissens und politischen Vertrauens als zentralen Eckpfeilern moderner Demokratien.

Der Beitrag behandelt die Messung politischen Wissens. Zunachst werden die im ALLBUS 2018 verwendeten Wissensfragen vorgestellt und deskriptive Informationen zu den Antworten prasentiert. Dabei werden auch die Bearbeitungszeiten, Schwierigkeitsgrade und die Qualitat der Distraktoren diskutiert. Anschliesend werden auf Grundlage einer Mokken-Analyse eine Skalenanalyse und eine Skalenkonstruktion der verwendeten Items durchgefuhrt. Zwar erfassen die im ALLBUS 2018 verwendeten Wissensitems unterschiedliche Wissensbereiche, aber die empirischen Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass es sich bei dem erfassten politischen Wissen um ein eindimensionales, latentes Konstrukt handelt. Die entwickelten Skalen bilden die Grundlage fur die empirischen Analysen in den folgenden Kapiteln, in denen das politische Wissen als abhangige oder als unabhangige Variable betrachtet wird.

In der Praxis sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung und insbesondere bei der Analyse sozialwissenschaftlicher Umfragedaten sehen sich Wissenschaftler und Wissenschaftlerinnen oftmals mit der Situation konfrontiert, dass fur die empirische Erfassung eines theoretischen Konstrukts mehrere verschiedene Frageitems zur Verfugung stehen. Zur Beantwortung der Frage, ob verschiedene Items zur Messung ein und desselben theoretischen Konstrukts geeignet sind und zu einer gemeinsamen Skala zusammengefasst werden konnen, wird haufig auf das Verfahren der (explorativen) Faktorenanalyse zuruckgegriffen. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt eine allgemeine Einfuhrung in die Grundlogik der Faktorenanalyse sowie deren wesentlicher Aspekte und Verfahrensschritte. Das Hauptaugenmerk des Beitrags liegt hierbei auf der Darstellung und Diskussion samtlicher relevanter Uberlegungen und Erwagungen, die bei der Frage nach einer moglichen Zusammenfassung mehrerer Frageitems zu einer gemeinsamen Skala zu beachten sind. Veranschaulicht werden die Faktorenanalyse und die Skalenkonstruktion hierbei am Beispiel sozialen und politischen Vertrauens auf Grundlage der Daten des European Social Surveys.

Over the last two decades, scholars have investigated norms of citizenship by focussing primarily on ‘dutiful’ and ‘engaged’ norms. In the meantime, contemporary democracies have witnessed growing demands for more sustainable styles of living and increasing public support for authoritarian and populist ideas. These developments point to both a change and an expansion of conventional understandings and conceptions of what a ‘good citizen’ in a democratic polity ought to do. Specifically, they raise questions about whether demands for more sustainability and increasing support for populist ideas establish new facets of democratic citizenship, and if so, how they can be meaningfully incorporated into existing images of citizenship. This study provides a re-conceptualization of citizenship norms and empirically tests a new measurement instrument using original data collected in Germany in 2019. The empirical application of an expanded set of items demonstrates the existence of more variegated facets of norms of citizenship, including norms to safeguard a sustainable future and distinct populist facets emphasizing the relevance of trust in authorities and experts as well as reliance on feelings and emotions. Contemporary conceptions of citizenship thus go beyond conventional distinctions between dutiful and engaged norms of citizenship.

Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene in Deutschland werden häufig als Hauptantriebskraft sinkenden politischen Engagements und zunehmender politischer Entfremdung identifiziert. Allzu oft wird jedoch außer Acht gelassen, dass die Niveaus und Trends der politischen Partizipation junger Menschen erst durch ihren Bezug zu gesamtgesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen sowie einen Vergleich mit anderen Altersgruppen innerhalb der Bevölkerung Aussagekraft und Bedeutung erhalten. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Partizipationsniveaus und -trends junger Menschen im Zeitraum von 2002-2014 und zeigt, dass eine Charakterisierung Jugendlicher und junger Erwachsener als (zunehmend) teilnahmslos und politikverdrossen im gesamtgesellschaftlichen Kontext nur wenig zutreffend erscheint.

What are the respective antecedents of individual citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities? In the third chapter of his book, Schnaudt analyzes whether the sources of citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities are the same or rather different ones. For this purpose, the author relies on the most widely used explanations of political confidence in the literature—namely social capital, institutional-performance evaluations, and political involvement—and examines their respective relevance and explanatory power with regard to a one-dimensional and a two-dimensional conception as well as a typology of political confidence. Using the same group of explanatory accounts for different conceptions and types of political confidence, Schnaudt is able to determine whether one and the same set of antecedents is related differently to citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities. In his empirical analysis based on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS), the author shows that different facets of social capital, institutional-performance evaluations, and political involvement exert a varying influence on citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities, respectively. The chapter’s main conclusion is that citizens’ decision to place confidence in representative institutions and authorities depends on a different set of factors than their corresponding decision to place confidence in regulative institutions and authorities. According to the author, it is therefore clearly misleading to assume that political confidence is a coherent, one-dimensional syndrome that emanates from one identical pool of antecedents.

Political confidence establishes a cornerstone of any stable democratic system, as it enhances both the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic governance. In recent years, however, growing and recurring concerns about low and decreasing levels of political confidence have been echoed among numerous scholars, politicians, and journalists alike. While some are skeptical about the implications of political confidence for the viability of modern democracies, others have labeled this situation a crisis, a malaise, or even a breakdown. In the introductory chapter of his book, Schnaudt argues that most of what is known about the levels, developments, and consequences of political confidence may be incomplete or even misleading. According to the author, research on political confidence is characterized by a restricted and unwarranted focus on representative institutions and authorities and a concomitant neglect of citizens’ confidence in regulative institutions and authorities. In order to arrive at a thorough and encompassing empirical picture about the relevance of political confidence for the functioning and well-being of contemporary democracies, the author makes a case for analyzing the distinctiveness, antecedents, and consequences of citizens’ confidence in both representative and regulative institutions and authorities. In doing so, Schnaudt challenges the predominant usage of so-called one-dimensional conceptions of political confidence that obscure important qualitative differences between citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities. The introductory chapter outlines the major research problems and challenges in detail, presents the research questions and strategy pursued throughout the book, and concludes with a discussion of the data basis used for the empirical analysis.

Does it pay off to rely on a distinction between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities rather than conflating citizens’ confidence in different institutions and authorities into one single, one-dimensional measure? In the concluding chapter of his book, Schnaudt summarizes the main results of his comprehensive empirical analysis, elaborates on the further implications of his findings and delineates promising perspectives and avenues for future research on political confidence. The author’s main conclusion states that, in comparison to the one-dimensional conception of political confidence as routinely used in most of previous research, the distinction between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities allows for empirically more encompassing and better informed conclusions about the relevance and impact of political confidence in contemporary European democracies. Not only do European citizens distinguish between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities, both types of political confidence also emanate from different sources and origins and imply different consequences. Schnaudt concludes his book with several recommendations for future research on political confidence, paying particular attention to questions of theory development and refinement, measurement, causality, as well as the broader implications and consequences of political confidence for the viability of democracy.

Do individual citizens make a distinction between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities? In the second chapter of his book, Schnaudt clarifies the general meaning and nature of the concept political confidence and elaborates on the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of the distinction between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities. The author identifies specific features that characterize the essence of political confidence and demarcate it from adjacent and related concepts such as interpersonal trust or political support. Based on his general understanding of the concept, Schnaudt develops three different conceptions of political confidence and elaborates on the respective nature and underlying logic of each of them. The author presents a one-dimensional and a two-dimensional conception as well as a typology of political confidence, all of which differ with respect to the question as to whether a distinction between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities might further enlighten our understanding about the relevance of political confidence for the viability of modern democracies. Following the conceptual and theoretical discussion, Schnaudt provides a careful operationalization of the concept political confidence and illustrates the empirical adequacy of each of the three conceptions developed earlier using data from several waves of the European Social Survey (ESS). The second chapter thus lays the conceptual, theoretical and empirical foundations on which political confidence is based and provides the starting point for the subsequent analysis on the respective antecedents and consequences of citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities.

What are the respective consequences of individual citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities? In the fourth chapter of his book, Schnaudt analyzes whether the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of citizens’ confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities are the same or rather different ones. According to the author, despite recurring lamentations about a lack of research on the implications of political confidence, so far much more effort has been spent on investigating the antecedents of political confidence rather than its consequences. In order to alleviate this omission from the literature, Schnaudt examines the respective influence of confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities on citizens’ support for different models of democratic citizenship as well as citizens’ political participation. Relying on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS), the author shows that confidence in representative institutions and authorities fosters citizens’ support for a participatory model of citizenship, whereas confidence in regulative institutions and authorities increases citizens’ support for a representative model of citizenship. Contrary to more recent findings in the empirical literature, Schnaudt’s analysis concerning the behavioral implications of political confidence shows that neither confidence in representative institutions and authorities nor in regulative ones exerts an impact on citizens’ institutionalized or non-institutionalized political participation. The fourth chapter thus provides novel insights into both the attitudinal and behavioral implications of political confidence, in particular in those instances in which the author is able to demonstrate varying consequences of confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities.

In a recently published article in this journal, Ross Campbell argues that adherence to socialist values establishes a hitherto neglected factor when it comes to the explanation of differences in East and West German citizens’ political trust. As the results of his study indicate, adherence to socialist values impacts negatively on citizens’ political trust, this effect is more pronounced and more stable over time for East German as compared to West German citizens and is sufficiently strong to eliminate aggregate-level differences in political trust between East and West Germany. However, this research note suggests that Campbell's article contains several substantial inconsistencies and obscurities that question the reliability and validity of the empirical findings presented. It provides a re-analysis of Campbell's main arguments and shows to what extent his initial conclusions can be upheld after the shortcomings have been remedied. The results of this re-analysis suggest that socialist values indeed exhibit a negative impact on German citizens’ political trust, which is relatively stronger for East as compared to West German citizens. However, contrary to Campbell's initial results, the negative effect of socialist values on political trust is robust over time for both East and West German citizens. What is more, there is no empirical evidence confirming that differences in adherence to socialist values between East and West German citizens are sufficiently strong to account for aggregate-level differences in political trust. In light of these findings, two of Campbell's three main conclusions are dubious and call for further examination.

This chapter analyses citizens’ identification with local, regional, and national levels. It asks whether these identifications constitute a multidimensional construct, indicating exclusive identifications, or a single unidimensional phenomenon, reflecting multiple identifications. To the extent that multiple identifications exist, it investigates whether these reflect a bottom-up or a top-down logic of identity construction. The results for the full national samples of the countries studied suggest that territorial identification represents a single unidimensional construct (with no clear internal order). When focusing on citizens from countries known for conflicts between the regional and the national level, the results hint at the presence of exclusive subnational identifications. Overall, the results establish positive news for modern democracies, as identifications with different territorial loci coexist. In some regions, however, national governments may find it difficult to implement important policies in light of exclusive subnational identifications, which appear to be at odds with a national identification.

Research concerned with a decline of associational involvement has examined whether the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, may reinvigorate or crowd out involvement in civil society. Yet, previous studies have not systematically investigated possible effects of Facebook use on associational membership. We posit that the effects of Facebook use are twofold: Facebook stimulates associational membership directly through its inherent networking features and indirectly by compensating for the lack of traditional mobilizing factors, such as social trust and internal efficacy. Relying on a probabilistic sample of German participants aged 18-49, our findings show that Facebook users are more likely to be members of voluntary associations and that Facebook use increases the likelihood of associational membership even for individuals with low levels of social trust and internal efficacy. Instead of crowding out offline associational involvement, Facebook use stimulates membership in voluntary associations, thus contributing to the vitality of civil society.

Immer haufiger werden wir im Alltag und den Medien mit Umfragen und deren Ergebnissen konfrontiert, wissen aber oftmals nicht, wie wir deren Qualitat und Vertrauenswurdigkeit einschatzen konnen. Dieser Aufsatz verdeutlicht am Beispiel des Umfrageprogramms European Social Survey (ESS), welche Standards Umfragen erfullen sollten, um ein verlassliches Abbild der Meinungen und Einstellungen innerhalb der Bevolkerung zu liefern.

Following its establishment in 2001, the academically led European Social Survey (ESS) has become one of the most important and informative resources concerning a broad variety of European populations’ moral, religious, social, economic and political attitudes and behaviours. In addition to its primary goal of tracking changes and stability in European citizens’ attitudes and behaviours, the ESS project also devotes itself to the development and dissemination of advanced standards in survey research. In particular, this applies to questionnaire design, cross-national equivalence of the instruments used and the sampling procedures applied (Jowell et al., 2007; Kohler, 2007; 2008). Designed as a biennial survey in its original blueprint, the ESS has by now been conducted in more than 30 European countries and currently offers data from the first six waves of the survey (2002–2012), including information and answers of approximately 300,000 respondents in total (at the time of writing, fieldwork for the seventh wave of the ESS has just been completed). Its integration of a variety of socially relevant topics, broad coverage of European countries and a growing number of time points make the ESS an increasingly suitable data source for single-country as well as cross-national analyses with time-series analysis now starting to become feasible. For policy makers and scholars from various disciplines and fields of interest alike, the ESS therefore provides a unique and innovative resource on the (changing) social, political and economic conditions in Europe at the outset of the 21 century.