The Importance of Social Reality for Europe's Economy - an Application to Civil Participation

¿The paper investigates the characteristics of social involvement in Europe by tracing and identikit of the shares of individuals that are more likely to be involved with different kinds of formal organizations and showing how each of these groups perceives the political, economical, and relational spheres of social reality. The analysis covers 19 European countries and is based on indicators for which the data has been principally drawn from the European Social Survey of 2002. The results indicate an heterogeneous Europe in which Nordic and Continental countries are adequately representing by the existing indicators, which determine the representation of reality that we are using. Mediterranean and Eastern countries, on the other side, appear follow different participatory schemes. Thus, alternative variables, such as informal participation, must be collected and analyzed to inform policies that can effectively support the different forms of interactions (both formal and informal) between State and Society. Moreover, education has a consistently positive effect for all kinds of participation in all the countries under analysis. Such result advocates for looking at education as one of the possibly most transversal policy actions to undertake and suggests the importance of working on the quality of education systems both at basic and higher level.

CANOY Marcel;  LERAIS Frederic;  MASCHERINI Massimiliano;  SALTELLI Andrea;  VIDONI Daniele; 

2008-10-15

OECD publishing

JRC44803

978-92-64-04323-7,