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The current European climate and the revitalized Lisbon strategy have put social cohesion at the heart of the European policy agenda. An important dimension of social cohesion is the active citizenship with its determinant of values, representative democracy, civil society. Mascherini and Hoskins, (2009), measured Active Citizenship thought a composite indicator based on a list of 61 basic indicators drawn from the European Social Survey of 2002.

Following this framework, in this paper we estimate the effects of human values dimensions taken from the theory of basic human values, Schwartz (1992), Davidov et al. (2008), on active citizenship together with a set of socio demographic variables, (as age, gender, education, etc.), behavioral variables, (as the media impact, the politics interest, etc.) and contextual variables (GDP pro capita, Gini index, etc) by using a random- effect multi-level regression model.

Although the statistical legitimacy on comparing these effects across countries need to be discussed, preliminary results show the importance of the impact of human values on active citizenship. In particular the self-transcendence dimension displays a positive effect on active citizenship as well as the stimulation and self-direction dimensions. On other hands conservation present a negative effect. This result is robust also by controlling the several individual and contextual variables included into the model.

References:

Hoskins B.L., Mascherini. M. (2009) Measuring Active Citizenship through the Development of a Composite Indicator. Social Indicators Research 90:3, 459-488

Davidov E., Schmidt P., Schwartz, S.H. (2008) Bridging Values Back In: the adequacy of the ESS to measure values in 20 countries. Public Opinion Quartely 72:3, 420-445.

Schwartz S.H. (1992), Universals in the content and structure of values: theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In Zanna P. (eds). Advanced in the experimental social psychology. 25. San Diego Academic Press, 1-65