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Democracy and Depression: A Cross-National Study of Depressive Symptoms and Nonparticipation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2020

CLAUDIA LANDWEHR Open the ORCID record for CLAUDIA LANDWEHR [Opens in a new window]  and
CHRISTOPHER OJEDA Open the ORCID record for CHRISTOPHER OJEDA [Opens in a new window]
CLAUDIA LANDWEHR*
Affiliation:
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
CHRISTOPHER OJEDA*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee
*
Claudia Landwehr, Professor of Public Policy, Institute for Political Science, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, landwehr@politik.uni-mainz.de.
Christopher Ojeda, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Univeristy of Tennessee, ojeda@utk.edu.
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Abstract

Depression is the most common mental health disorder. It has consequences not only on individuals but also on social and political levels. We argue that depressive symptoms impair political participation by reducing the motivation and physical energy of sufferers. We test our hypotheses by conducting regression analyses of four nationally representative cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys that collectively span many democracies. Our results are threefold. First, we find that the severest depressive symptoms lower the probability of voting by 0.05–0.25 points, an effect that is exceeded only by education and age. Second, we show that depressive symptoms negatively affect political interest and internal efficacy, thereby confirming that they diminish political motivation. Third, we find that depressive symptoms most strongly affect physically demanding acts, thereby confirming that they reduce the physical energy required for participation. We conclude by urging scholars to take depressive symptoms seriously in the study of political behavior.

Type
Letter
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 323 - 330
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

We thank participants at a workshop on “Mental Health, Resilience and Political Participation” in Mainz, especially Oliver Tüscher, and Jana Morgan for their helpful comments and gratefully acknowledge financial support from the JGU research unit on Interdisciplinary Public Policy. All errors remain our own. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZABHCA

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