Nutzen durch Beteiligung? : Politische Partizipation nach der Katastrophe

Gaining Procedural Utility? Political Participation after 3/11

Since the triple disaster of March 11, 2011, many people in Japan who were not previously involved in, or even interested in, politics started to become engaged in the movement against nuclear energy and for protection against radioactivity. Demonstrations like the one on July 16, 2012 in Tokyo, where around 170.000 participants assembled, make this trend visible. This article poses the question: how does this new commitment to political activism affect the people who participated – regardless of the outcome of the political process? Do self-perceptions change to a certain extent in course of participating? So far, the literature has addressed these questions first and foremost from a theoretical perspective. The concept of procedural utility, for example, suggests that politically active citizens can benefit from processes of participation, depending not only on the results of decision making, but also on the process by which these decisions are reached. Thus, subjective feelings of well-being can increase, most notably when decision making processes fulfill certain psychological needs that contribute positively to self-perceptions such as, for example, feelings of autonomy, relatedness and competence.
This article aims to reassess empirically this theoretical concept of a correlation between political participation and subjective feelings. It develops three qualitative case studies of people active in the movement against nuclear energy and protection against radioactivity after the triple disaster of March 11, 2011. Results of the case studies indicate that procedural utility is indeed gained through political action, but psychological needs like autonomy, relatedness and competence are not fulfilled to the same extent.