{"title":"Widening the gap of political inequality? The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on political engagement","authors":"A. Belchior","doi":"10.1017/s1755773924000092","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n There is extensive evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has mostly affected the less well-off in society, boosting economic inequality. In contrast, little is known about how much such rising economic disparities affected the involvement of individuals in politics, thereby enhancing political inequality. Extending the research on political inequality to a key and somewhat neglected dimension of citizens’ involvement with politics - political engagement - this article claims that the COVID-19 depressed engagement and promoted political inequality. The analysis relies on a comparative European approach and on data before and after the emergence of the pandemic. Besides generally finding an overall socioeconomic gap with regard to political engagement, results also suggest that the pandemic somewhat lessened engagement, increasing the gap between the more and less socioeconomically advantaged. Generally, this is not strictly due to a tendency to decrease engagement among the latter but also to increase engagement among the former.","PeriodicalId":47291,"journal":{"name":"European Political Science Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Political Science Review","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1755773924000092","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
There is extensive evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has mostly affected the less well-off in society, boosting economic inequality. In contrast, little is known about how much such rising economic disparities affected the involvement of individuals in politics, thereby enhancing political inequality. Extending the research on political inequality to a key and somewhat neglected dimension of citizens’ involvement with politics - political engagement - this article claims that the COVID-19 depressed engagement and promoted political inequality. The analysis relies on a comparative European approach and on data before and after the emergence of the pandemic. Besides generally finding an overall socioeconomic gap with regard to political engagement, results also suggest that the pandemic somewhat lessened engagement, increasing the gap between the more and less socioeconomically advantaged. Generally, this is not strictly due to a tendency to decrease engagement among the latter but also to increase engagement among the former.