連結公民身份認識與政治行動主義：29個民主國家的比較

Linking Understanding of Citizenship to Political Activism: A Comparative Study across 29 Democracies

積極、有行動力的公民是當代民主國家的重要特徵。本研究探討大眾對公民身份的認識，包括公民責任與權利，如何影響其政治行動主義；此外，我們也探索公民身份認識與政治行動主義的跨國差異。透過2014年國際社會調查計畫（ISSP）涵蓋29個民主國家的資料分析，本研究首先證實公民身份認識與政治行動主義的連結：在公民規範認知方面，公民規範減弱政治行動主義，政治與社會規範則分別能強化受訪者參與政治行動的意願；在權利意識方面，社會與公民權利、政治權利意識分別能強化政治行動主義。其次，本研究採多群分析來檢驗穩定、新興民主國家兩群體受訪者公民身份認識與政治行動主義連結的差異。實證結果顯示，大多數公民身分認識與政治參與的關係在穩定民主國家中有顯著較強的連結，反映穩定民主國家的民眾更能將公民身份認識運用在實際的政治行動中。本文證實公民身份認識對政治行動的重要性，研究結果對政治行為、民主鞏固與民主公民教育皆有重要的意涵。

"Active citizenship is one of the defining features of contemporary democracies. Many empirical studies on democratic citizens emphasize their attitudinal and behavioral characteristics, such as critical citizens, monitorial citizens, and self-actualizing citizens. However, few of them deal with how citizens understand “citizenship” itself. By addressing citizens’ understanding of citizenship, this study investigates how the understanding, including civic responsibilities and rights, can inspire political activism, and examines these relationships cross-nationally. The author employs citizenship norms and rights consciousness as individual-level notions of citizenship. These two indicate how people see civic responsibilities and rights, respectively. In terms of citizenship norms, since norms are able to shape role expectations that individuals believe they should satisfy, their content is expected to determine their related behavior. In this sense, duty-related norms can weaken political activism, but engagement-related ones will strengthen political activism. In addition, rights consciousness should encourage political activism, and its different domains may affect the willingness to act separately. It is because that perception represents an awareness of the need to defend one's rights, which would stimulate their willingness to act in politics. As for cross-national differences, it is expected that relation-ships between citizens’ understanding of citizenship and political activ-ism are generally stronger in stable democracies than in new democra-cies. At the national level, signs of progress in citizenship rights appar-ently differ between the two groups of countries. At the individual level, having more democratic experience and opportunities leads to citizens being more likely to apply their understanding in actual political activi-ties. The data analyzed are from the 2014 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). The scope of this study includes 29 democratic countries, and the final pooled sample size is 42,355. The empirical analyses are divided into two parts. This study first conducts several nested multiple regression models to demonstrate the links between political activism and understanding of citizenship. Regarding citizen-ship norms, civil norms are found to weaken political activism, while both political and social norms have a positive effect on individuals’ willingness to act in politics. As for rights consciousness, either the political or civil and social domain is able to increase political activism. The second step involves conducting a comparison between respon-dents in the stable and new democracies. Using multi-group analysis, this study examines how the relationships differ between stable and new democracies. The empirical results show that except for social norms, all the citizenship norms and rights consciousness have, as expected, a stronger effect on political activism in the stable-democracies samples than in their new-democracies counterparts, whether it is negative or positive. The evidence reflects the fact that with more democratic experience and opportunities, citizens in stable democracies are more likely than those in new democracies to apply their understanding of citizenship in actual political activities. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding of citi-zenship for affecting political activism and illustrates how these effects differ between stable and new democracies. The results contribute to our understanding of political behavior, democratic deepening, and democratic civic education."