Erik Amna

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Civic Engagement

The Oxford Handbook of Political Participation

Abstract: The chapter focuses specifically on civic engagement as a distinct mode of political ac... more Abstract: The chapter focuses specifically on civic engagement as a distinct mode of political activity among citizens in contemporary democracies. In the first section, we review existing definitions of “civic engagement” in the literature, noting in particular the lack of common notions of what it entails, as well as the critique against too wide or all-encompassing definitions. In the second section, we develop a conceptual discussion about civic engagement and political participation, and suggest a thin notion of civic engagement that may be measured in a straightforward way in empirical studies. In the third section, we turn to an overview of recent empirical works on civic engagement and democracy, highlighting key findings and suggesting avenues for further research.

Föreningslivet i Sverige

Sociologisk Forskning

vid sociologiska institutionen, Umeå universitet, respektive expert vid Statistiska central byrån... more

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Ungdomars politiska utveckling : Slutrapport från ett forskningsprogram

Political Socialisation and Human Agenc

Politiskt deltagande och andra former av samhällsengagemang : en typologi

Kommunal decentralisering : utvärdering av försöken med kommundelsnämnder i Eskilstuna, Umeå och Örebro /

DECENTRALISERINGSPROCESSEN 46 3.1 Målsättningar med KdN 50 3.1.1 Syften med lokala organ enligt k... more DECENTRALISERINGSPROCESSEN 46 3.1 Målsättningar med KdN 50 3.1.1 Syften med lokala organ enligt kommunal-53 demokratiska kommittén (KDK) 3.1.2 Kommunernas beslutsunderlag 55 '4 Redan i de ursprungliga direktiven finns inskrivet att förvalt ningarna skulle planera för KdN i hela konmunen. Politikerna menade att dessa direktiv inte riktigt tagits på allvar. Tydliga direktiv gavs nu till förvaltningscheferna att planera för 10 KdN, de ekonomiska och demokratiska aspekterna betonades, som restpost skulle man få samverkan. Ledningsorganisationen och KdN-sekreterarnas roll diskuterades in gående och man enades om att samordningsfunktionen skulle bli mer uttalad och att sekreterarna borde göras budgetansvariga och där med få en stärkt roll. 1986 sågs san en lämplig tid för införandet av 10 KdN i kommunen. Kommunstyrelsens ordförande sanmanfattade konferensen i följande punkter : * Diskussionerna skall föras vidare i Demokratikorrmittén, Kommun styrelsen och Kommunfullmäktige. * De dubbla organisationerna under försöksskedet blir dyrbara därför bör tidpunkten för fullskaleinförandet noga övervägas. * Den centrala organisationen både på tjänstemannasidan och för troendemannas idan måste ses över och förändras. * Facknämnderna kan tillsvidare vara kvar men ny målskrivning måste i så fall tas fram för facknämnderna. Resurserna måste tas från centrala förvaltningar och nämnder. * Överväganden om vi verkligen har den rätta distriktsindelningen måste göras. * KdN bör stimuleras att utnyttja sin initiativrätt. De lokala "fritidspolitikerna" har ännu ej orkat med detta, vilket man måste ha förståelse för i ett genomförandeskede. * Områdesbudgetar måste snabbt arbetas fram. Provbudget bör pre senteras vid årsskiftet 1984/1985. "Vi måste hitta någon som kan dyrka upp förvaltningarnas pengapåsar." * Konmundelsberedningen måste bli aktivare och ta fram frågor san man vill ha belysta. Förvaltningscheferna måste bli service-chefer som hjälper till att "olja-upp" systemet. * Kcmmundelsn&indssekreterar-uppçiften måste ses över. * Kryss-listan måste renodlas och verkställas enligt tidigare beslut. Besluten som tagits kring X-listan (ärendeövertagandelistan) är ännu ej genomförda.

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Nordic Education in a Democratically Troublesome time : Threats and Opportunities

Enlightened understanding is central to the definition of the ideal democracy proposed by one of ... more Enlightened understanding is central to the definition of the ideal democracy proposed by one of the most prominent scholars of democratic theory (Dahl, 1989). Education is therefore a key aspect of democracy. International comparative studies of school performance such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS )have been paid extensive attention in recent decades. With the exception of Finland, which often performs well, the results have given input to discussions of schools as in crisis in the Nordic countries. The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) of 2016 paints a different picture. The four participating Nordic countries (i.e., Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) are all top ranked in civic knowledge and are also characterized by attitudinal patterns favourable to democracy. Although there are also aspects that ...

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Why Some Adolescents Are Open To Their Parents’ Political Communication

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

This study examines the conditions that make adolescents open to their parents’ attempts at polit... more This study examines the conditions that make adolescents open to their parents’ attempts at political socialization. Based on a reformulation of the perceptual accuracy argument, that parents’ messages are filtered through correct perceptions of these messages by adolescents, the study suggests that adolescents who accurately recognize their parents’ high political sophistication are particularly likely to attend to and be open to their parents’ political communication. This proposition was tested using cluster analysis of a sample of 505 Swedish upper-secondary students and their parents (51% girls; Mage = 16.56, SD = 0.67). The analysis yielded two clusters where adolescents correctly identified (26%) and failed to correctly identify (22%) their parents’ high political sophistication, and three clusters where both parents and adolescents reported low or medium parental political sophistication (10%, 11%, and 32%). In confirmation of the hypothesis, members of the cluster group of ...

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Unga politiskt intresserade engageras inte av partierna

Dagens Nyheter, 2013

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Stand-by citizens : motives and embeddedness of Swedish civic engagement

In contrast to often heard claiming about an overall weakened civic engagement in older Western d... more

Basic Values Transform Political Interest into Diverse Political Values, Attitudes and Behaviors

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

Since politically interested adolescents do not necessarily present humanistic, environmental and... more Since politically interested adolescents do not necessarily present humanistic, environmental and democratic values, this study addresses the hitherto ignored role that how these basic human values play in politically interested adolescents’ political values, attitudes and behaviors. A cluster analysis of 857 Swedish upper-secondary students (50.8% girls, Mage = 16.62, SD = 0.71) identified politically interested adolescents who attached high levels of importance to others’ welfare and politically interested adolescents who attached low levels of importance. They differed on most comparative measures: environmental values, inclusive attitudes towards immigrants, support of democratic principles, trust in social movements, and readiness to step in if something jeopardizes the welfare of others. The conclusion is that the value of attaching high importance to others’ welfare or not transforms youth’s political interest into diverse attitudes and behaviors. The cluster group of politic...

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Constructing AcTiveCitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions (CATCH-EyoU)

A major challenge for the EU is currently \u201cbridging the gap\u201d between young Europeans an... more A major challenge for the EU is currently \u201cbridging the gap\u201d between young Europeans and EU Institutions, and improving dialogue, in order to enhance young people\u2019s trust in EU Institutions and their active engagement in EU issues. Including young people\u2019s perspectives is essential to ensuring the continuation of participatory and representative democracy. Through the joint contribution of different disciplines (Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, Media and Communications, Education) CATCH-EyoU has the aim to identify the factors, located at different levels (psychological, developmental, macro social and contextual) influencing the different forms of youth active engagement in Europe. Through different studies, qualitative, quantitative, and an active citizenship intervention in schools, the project will provide a multifaceted understanding of the different factors influencing the perspectives of young people on Europe and of the ways in which young people...

CATCH-EyoU: Processes in Youth’s Construction of Active EU Citizenship: Cross-national Wave 1 Questionnaires: Italy, Sweden, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Czech Republic, UK, and Estonia – EXTRACT

The file contains the working dataset for the article entitled 'Cross-border mobility, Europe... more

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The deve lopment of c i v i c engagement f rom ado les cence to adu l t-hood

After decades of a silence, the research field on political socialization now is undergoing revit... more After decades of a silence, the research field on political socialization now is undergoing revitalization. A number of important studies have been published and there has been an intensification of the theoretical debate, stimulated partly by contemporary changes in political culture and social institutions. There are, however, limitations that can be identified in research. Together they raise at least eight challenges our research program systematically will approach.

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Running head: YOUTH POLITICAL PASSIVITY IN THE EU 1 Apathy or Alienation? Political Passivity among Youths across Eight European Union Countries

Political participation is one of the most studied aspects of the contemporary development of wes... more Political participation is one of the most studied aspects of the contemporary development of western democracies (Ekman & Amnå, 2012; van Deth, 2014). A recent trend focuses the lack of political participation among younger generations (e.g., Henn, Weinstein & Forrest, 2005; Kimberlee, 2002). At the same time, the last decades have also witnessed a growth in the share of young European Union (EU) citizens who express alienation, and distrust toward social and political institutions at the national as well as the European level (Dalton, 1998; Henn et al., 2005; Mierina, 2014). By studying young people across different countries of the EU, the current study aims to examine if youths’ political passivity is better explained by political apathy or alienation. Our analyses are based on a comparative survey data collected by the Catch-EyoU project comprising approximately 4,454 late adolescents assembled from eight member countries of the EU. Results from logistic regressions predicting ...

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En arena för tillit och tolerans

This is the published version of a chapter published in Föreningen, jaget och laget: 7 perspektiv... more

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Adolescents’ Patterns of Citizenship Orientations and Correlated Contextual Variables: Results From a Two-Wave Study in Five European Countries

Youth & Society, 2020

Studies on youth participation tend to characterize youth as either active and trustful or as pas... more Studies on youth participation tend to characterize youth as either active and trustful or as passive and alienated. This cross-national and longitudinal study examines patterns of citizenship orientations characterized by both manifest and latent involvement differentiated by one’s position toward institutional politics (trustful or distrustful) among 1,914 adolescents from five European countries (53.5% female; Mage = 16.27). Demographic and proximal contextual correlates associated with different orientations at a 1-year interval were also assessed. Latent profile analysis identified four groups of citizenship orientations among adolescents: engaged trustful, engaged distrustful, unengaged trustful, and unengaged distrustful. Differences of membership likelihood were found for background characteristics (gender and family income), school characteristics (track, democratic climate, student participation, and its perceived quality), family, and peer norms of participation.

Citizenship’s tangled web: Associations, gaps and tensions in formulations of European youth active citizenship across disciplines

European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2017

How does academic literature across various disciplines conceptualize and empirically address act... more How does academic literature across various disciplines conceptualize and empirically address active citizenship? What are the potential benefits and dangers of dominant epistemological and ideological perspectives on 'good citizenship'? Our paper engages with these questions by drawing on literature across 8 disciplines. We used textual analysis software T-LAB to quantify and visualize co-occurrences, word associations and thematic clusters in the abstracts of 770 texts gathered by eight country teams and original in-depth qualitative analyses of ideological positions and discourses taken up in a selection of key texts across the corpus. Our paper elaborates the findings: that many of the key themes surrounding young people and citizenship in the literature share little or no connection with European citizenship; that there is a significant gap in the literature on young European citizens; and that studies connected to internal, status-based factors connected to citizenship are far more prevalent than those examining external, practice-based factors or dissidence and dissent. Our conclusions examine the potential normative implications of the disjuncture between dominant conceptions and critical accounts of youth active citizenship.

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Bidra med vad? Effekter av statsbidrag till kvinnors organisering och jämställdhetsprojekt : i Ungdomsstyrelsens skrifter 2010:5, Vad hände sedan? En utvärdering av statsbidragen för kvinnors organisering och jämställdhetsprojekt

Bidra med vad? : Effekter av statsbidrag till kvinnors organisering och jamstalldhetsprojekt

Anticipated political action : a cross-national comparison of adolescents’ participatory intentions

Youth is claimed to play a crucial role in changes of political behavior. In this analysis, 14-ye... more

Apathy or alienation? Political passivity among youths across eight European Union countries

European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2017

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