Malmö University Publications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Political Knowledge of The European Union among Finnish Citizens and Its Effects to Political Participation
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS).
2020 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

The discussion about what kind of standards are required from democratic citizens dates back to Ancient Greece, Aristotle, and Plato. Democracies require democratic citizens with specific knowledge, competences, and character to work properly (Galston, 2001, p.217). In this thesis, the main focus is on political knowledge on the EU matters and political participation in a form of voting. The research is conducted as a case study of Finnish citizens, were the turnouts in the EP elections have been consistently below the EU average. The data used in the thesis comes from the Knowledge of Politics and Society 2008 survey. The thesis uses a quantitative research method to analyze the distribution of political knowledge among Finnish citizens and the relationship between factual political knowledge and voting as a form of political participation, and how different sociodemographic factors affect political knowledge and participation. The findings reveal that the level of political knowledge on the EU matters among Finnish citizens is rather low and that respondents with higher political knowledge are more likely to think that voting in elections is meaningful or important. Finnish citizens do not consider EP elections very important to vote in, however, voting in overall is considered as a meaningful form of civic participation. The results of a low level of political knowledge and the idea that voting in the EP elections is not important might pose an issue to the legitimacy of the EU in the framework of democratic theory.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Malmö universitet/Kultur och samhälle , 2020. , p. 39
Keywords [en]
Political Participation, Political Knowledge, European Union, Finland, Democracy
National Category
Social Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23019Local ID: 32068OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-23019DiVA, id: diva2:1482960
Educational program
KS GPS European Studies
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2020-10-27 Created: 2020-10-27Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(470 kB)149 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 470 kBChecksum SHA-512
bccf482ad2e4f9b92d2334044ab10316001294dfc14a43ab43836abc68786f306c7a3685f38d3c069d15ebc7645253b4a611db8683c1a0b645f5073cc14e8923
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

By organisation
Faculty of Culture and Society (KS)
Social Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 149 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 128 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf