CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Panov, Trajche |
|---|---|
| Title | Influence of the Party Ideology Shift on Political Apathy |
| Summary | The central aspect of the thesis is dedicated to party ideology and how a change in ideology of the parties measured, in their Manifestos and electoral programs, influences party apathy or results in a lower turnout. All of the theoretical and empirical researches in this work show that: First, the political apathy is not a strictly conceptualized political term and also refers to non-participation as well as low turnout. Second, there are various factors and determinants that influence political apathy, although that the exact effects of these factors remain unknown, and third the party ideology shift is already mentioned as a variable that influences political apathy or low turnout, but so far it is not adequately investigated by scholars. This thesis constructs two Multi Level Logistic Models and two Linear Regressions to test the influence of the party ideology shift on the individual as well as party level. The results from the MLM models and regressions provide enough evidence to support the hypothesis that the influence of the party ideology shift produces political apathy. Nevertheless, while the crucial variables are marginally or highly significant, variables and intercepts have low values, which show that these models have low explanatory power, although this is expected as a result of the fact that nonvoters are less than 10 % of the sample. The lack of significance in the second regression model, supports the claim that political parties will not necessary lose votes as a result of the apathetic behavior of their past supporters. Besides, some limitations of the research, the thesis contributes to the solving of the puzzle of political apathy or low turnout. |
| Supervisor | Littvay, Levente |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/panov_trajche.pdf |
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