Political participation in the European countries: Decreasing trends and relations of conventional political participation

This thesis aims to determine whether political participation levels show decreasing trends, and examines the relationship between conventional political participation and confidence in institutions, along with the relationship between conventional and unconventional political participation. By also taking the previous studies into consideration, positive correlation between conventional political participation and confidence in institutions, and negative correlation between conventional and unconventional political participation are expected and argued in this thesis. In order to analyze these, the data were obtained from International IDEA, World Values Survey and European Values Study for the period between 1981 and 2022 for various European countries. First, decreasing trends tested by examining voter turnout in presidential, parliamentary and European Parliament elections, party membership, voluntary work for parties, and decreasing trends in political participation in Europe are observed while 5 different unconventional participation methods have an increasing trend. Later, decreasing trends in confidence in institutions were observed and its relationship with conventional participation was analyzed. The thesis reached an outcome that while both conventional participation and level of confidence in institutions have decreasing trends, there is no strong relationship among them. The study also showed that conventional and unconventional participation have opposite trend direction, and a weak relation was observed again. The thesis also showed two interesting points: Confidence in civil services and labor unions diverges positively from other institutions, and while the decreasing trend in participation continues, there is a sign of a stable or increasing trend in the last decade.