Dietlind Stolle Marc Hooghe McGill University University of Leuven

Emerging Repertoires of Political Action?

A Review of the Debate on Participation Trends in Western Societies

Paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions

April 13-18, 2004

Uppsala (Sweden)

Session 24:

Emerging Repertoires of Political Action

Abstract

This paper has a twofold ambition. In the paper itself we present an overview and a

critical analysis of the current debate about the transformation of civic engagement in

Western societies. The argument that civic life and social capital are declining in Western

democracies, and particularly in the United States, has been received with much

scepticism. While some authors question the accuracy of downward trends for the US,

others offer evidence that the same trend does not hold for other Western societies. Still

others accuse the decline literature of being one-sided as it fails to incorporate new forms

of participation, while at the same time there are those who argue that mass participation

has become obsolete as a means of ensuring the vitality of democratic systems. In this

paper we specifically address the third thesis: that the decline of old and traditional

participation forms has been compensated by the rise of new participation acts and

repertoires.

In the appendix to this paper (separate file) we present some empirical evidence for these

claims. A summary review of the various waves of the World Values Survey, and a

comparison between the 1974 Political Action survey and the 2002 European Social

Survey show that while some more traditional (‘conventional’) forms of participation

seem to be eroding, this is not the case for more recent participation acts. In an

exploration of the European Social Survey, we try to determine the characteristics of the

new participation forms, before venturing into a discussion about the democratic

potential, and/or the democratic pitfalls associated with this transformation process.

Note: This is a shortened and adapted version of a review article that will appear in the British

Journal of Political Science, 34(3). Both authors contributed equally to this paper, and they wish

to thank Ric Uslaner, Henry Milner and the BJPS reviewers for their comments on an earlier

version of the article. © BJPS 2004.

Introduction

In his 1790 address to the Académie Française in Paris, Condorcet noted that

every new generation has a tendency to accuse itself of being less civic-minded than

previous cohorts.1 Two centuries later, this argument has once again regained front-page

status. The debate is currently focussed on the question of whether or not social capital

and civic engagement are declining in Western societies. In his academic best-seller

Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argues that younger age cohorts, socialized in the

prosperous economic conditions of the 1960s and onwards, are less inclined to engage in

community life and in politics, and also less likely to trust their fellow citizens.2 By

contrast, the ‘long civic generation,’ born roughly between 1910 and 1940, is portrayed

as much more motivated in these respects. They readily volunteer in community projects,

read newspapers, and take on more social responsibilities.3 In this view, a process of

generational replacement is responsible for a steady decline of social capital and civic

engagement in American society. As the long civic generation is replaced by younger age

cohorts, the social capital stock of American communities slowly diminishes. The

indicators used to substantiate this claim are numerous and diverse: measures for voter

turnout, attendance of club meetings, generalised trust, the number of common family

dinners, the number of card games played together, and even respect for traffic rules. All

of these attitudes and behaviours, it is argued, depict a significant downward trend.

Although Putnam is by far the most vocal of all scholars in the ‘decline of social

capital’-choir, he certainly is not the only author describing an erosion of traditional

societal relations. Almost two decades ago, Robert Bellah and his team warned that more

individualistic motivations are threatening the traditional social bonds in American

society.4 Robert Lane, among others, finds that this decline in social cohesion is not just a

phenomenon of American society, but can be seen as a manifestation of a general process

of disenchantment in Western societies: ‘The haunting spirit is manifold: (…) increasing

distrust of each other and of political and other institutions, declining belief that the lot of

the average man is getting better, a tragic erosion of family solidarity and community

integration (…)’5

These arguments have encountered fierce academic opposition. The Bowling

Alone thesis has been variously characterized as plainly wrong, pessimistic, and

traditional. A number of authors have claimed that Putnam idolizes the vanished

hierarchical world of the 1950s, in which most women were home-makers and therefore

had more time at their hands to engage in various civic duties. Others depict the decline

thesis as pure nostalgia, a manifestation of the longing for a civic and engaged era that

has clearly ended. As with many hotly debated phenomena in political science, these

have come in multiple or even contradictory versions.

1 Badinter, Elisabeth and Robert Badinter, Condorcet, 1743-1794. (Paris: Fayard, 1989).

2 Putnam, Robert, Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon

and Schuster, 2000). 3 Putnam, Bowling Alone, p. 247ff.

4 Bellah, Robert et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

5 Lane, Robert, The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

While some social scientists have claimed that the numbers do not show the

erosion of social capital6, others portray the decline of civic engagement as another

manifestation of American exceptionalism. Still other authors have taken the argument a

step further; while they accept the claim that traditional forms of cohesion and

participation are losing ground, they emphasize that newer forms of participation and

interaction, all too easily dismissed in the work of Putnam and others, can replace

traditional forms. Yet another body of researchers largely accepts the evidence

substantiating the decline thesis, but they do not, unlike Putnam, perceive this as being a

threat to the viability of democratic political systems. Conversely, they argue that

processes of postmodernization have produced a cohort of critical citizens who embrace

democratic values, such as autonomy, self-expression and support for democracy.7

In the remainder of this part of the paper, we first give an overview of the decline

thesis, followed by a review of the four different types of arguments and evidence

formulated against it. In the final section, we show the limits of these critiques and build

a research agenda aimed at testing the grounds more thoroughly for each one of these

positions.

Worries about social capital and participation

Concerns about the erosion of traditional social ties and institutions have always

been a centre of attention in the social sciences. As early as the 19th century, authors like

Tönnies, Durkheim and Weber wondered how social order and cohesion could be

maintained given the political and economic modernization of Western societies. Since

the 1980s, philosophical debates between liberals and communitarians seem to have

fostered a revived interest in the maintenance of social cohesion among political and

social scientists. The most systematic account of the potential erosion of social and civic

life, however, can be found in the work of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam.8

According to Putnam, the loss of confidence and degradation of social ties has pervaded

all aspects of society. Not only do Americans participate less actively in all kinds of

voluntary associations, but they also refrain from typical political involvement, such as

membership in political parties. Drawing on commercial life-style surveys, Putnam finds

a negative trend even with regard to various forms of social interactions involving face-

to-face contact beyond formally organised engagements; indeed, even the frequencies of

traditional common meal at the family dinner table, visits to friends and neighbours, card

6 Ladd, Everett C, ‘The Data Just Don’t Show Erosion of America’s ‘Social Capital,’’ The Public

Perspective, June 1996, 5-22. 7 Inglehart, Ronald, Modernization and Postmodernization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

8 Putnam, Robert, ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,’ Journal of Democracy, 6(1)

(1995), 65-78; Putnam, Robert, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community;

Putnam, Robert, ed., Democracies in Flux. The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society

(Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002); Pharr, Susan and Robert Putnam, eds., Disaffected Democracies

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Putnam, Robert and Lewis Feldstein, Better Together.

Restoring the American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003).

games with friends, and social dinners at restaurants have all been the victims of this

trend.

Especially with regard to the political domain, an impressive array of empirical

evidence has been marshalled to substantiate the claims about the decline of institutional

trust and civic engagement. Since the 1960s Americans have been losing trust in their

government and in government institutions, a trend that has been documented for most

liberal democracies.9 In addition, various conventional forms of political participation

have lost much of their appeal. Political parties have traditionally served as a connection

mechanism between citizens and the political system, but in a number of countries the

party system is confronted with a rapid decline of party identification. Not only are

membership figures dwindling,10

especially among young people,11

but in addition

citizens seem to rely less on ideological clues provided by political parties to establish

their own political and world views; as a consequence, voter volatility is on the rise.12

Partly as a result of diminishing trust in government and the weakening of party

identification, voter turnout as well has followed a downward spiral. This phenomenon is

not limited to the United States, but has indeed been shown to be prevalent in other

Western societies.13

In sum, studies supporting the decline thesis not only describe and document the

erosion of traditional integration mechanisms; they also interpret this evolution as a

fundamental threat to the survival of healthy communities and democratic political

systems. As stated at the outset, this kind of literature has been met with fierce

opposition, the different facets of which will be revisited and examined in the remainder

of this review article.

9 Lipset, Seymour M. and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap (New York: Free Press, 1983); Nye,

Joseph, Philip Zelikow and David King, eds., Why People don’t Trust Government (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1997); Jennings, M. Kent, ‘Political Trust and the Roots of Devolution,’ in Valerie

Braithwaite and Margaret Levi, eds., Trust and Governance (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), pp.

218-244; Pharr and Putnam, eds., Disaffected Democracies. 10

Mair, Peter and Ingrid van Biezen, ‘Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980-2000,’

Party Politics, 7(1) (2001), 5-22. 11

Hooghe, Marc, Dietlind Stolle and Patrick Stouthuysen, ‘Head Start in Politics. The Recruitment

Function of Youth Organizations of Political Parties in Belgium (Flanders),’ Party Politics, 10(2) (2004),

193-212. 12

Wattenberg, Martin, The Decline of American Political Parties (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1996); Schmitt, Hermann and Sören Holmberg, ‘Political Parties in Decline?’ in Hans-Dieter Klingemann

and Dieter Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 95-133; Dalton,

Russell and Martin Wattenberg, eds., Parties without Partisans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 13

Nie, Norman, Sidney Verba and John Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1979); Teixeira, Ruy, The Disappearing American Voter (Washington D.C.: Brookings

Institution, 1992); Jackman, Robert and Ross Miller, ‘Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies during the

1980s,’ Comparative Political Studies, 27 (1995), 467-492; Lijphart, Arend, ‘Unequal Participation.

Democracy’s Unresolved Dilemma,’ American Political Science Review, 91(1) (1997), 1-14; Putnam, ed.,

Democracies in Flux. The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society.

Trench-Warfare Revisited

Four distinct modes of criticism have emerged to counter the decline thesis. First,

one group of authors rejects it on empirical grounds. Their claim is that authors

supporting the Bowling Alone thesis did not get their numbers right and therefore do not

offer an adequate description of real trends in contemporary American society.14

Proposing a careful reconsideration of time-series data for the United States, these critics

argue that there are no grounds for pessimistic concern about participation levels and

social cohesion.

A second group of critics accepts the decline thesis with the reservation that it is

merely another example of American exceptionalism. They claim that in other Western

societies, social capital and civic engagement are not declining to the same extent as in

the United States.15

This particular criticism calls for wide-ranging comparative research

on meaningful indicators of social capital and civic engagement.

The third critique accepts that traditional social and civic participation have

declined, but accuses the decline thesis of conceptual one-sidedness, in that it fails to pay

attention to the simultaneous rise of new participation and forms of interaction that fulfil

the same functions with regard to socialization and interest mediation.16

This view is

echoed by feminist scholars who argue that the participation indicators being used in

most of the research focus too exclusively on formal participation acts, thus neglecting

more informal forms of connectedness and participation that are traditionally preferred by

women.17

This kind of criticism entails a fundamental challenge for survey and other

quantitative research, as new instruments will have to be developed to capture these

informal and network-based interactions before their social importance and prevalence

can be effectively assessed.

Finally, a fourth group of authors accepts the decline thesis, but disputes its

normative consequences. The decline of traditional participation formats is seen as

largely irrelevant for the future of democratic systems. The radical version of this

14

Schudson, Michael, ‘What if Civic Life didn’t Die?’ The American Prospect, (March, 1996), 17-28;

Ladd, Everett C, The Ladd Report (New York: Free Press, 1999); Paxton, Pamela, ‘Is Social Capital

Declining in the United States?’ American Journal of Sociology, 105(1) (1999), 88-127; Wuthnow, Robert,

‘The United States: Bridging the Privileged and the Marginalized?’ in Putnam, ed., Democracies in Flux,

pp. 59-101. 15

Hall, Peter, ‘Social Capital in Britain,’ British Journal of Political Science, 29(3) (1999), 417-461;

Mayer, Nonna, ‘Democracy in France: Do Associations Matter?’ in Marc Hooghe & Dietlind Stolle, eds.,

Generating Social Capital (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 43-66; Norris, Pippa, Democratic Phoenix.

Reinventing Political Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Gabriel, Oscar et al,

Sozialkapital und Demokratie (Wien: Universitätsverlag, 2002); Torpe, Lars, ‘Social Capital in Denmark:

A Deviant Case?’ Scandinavian Political Studies, 26(1) (2003), 27-48. 16

Beck, Ulrich, The Reinvention of Politics (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997); Lichterman, Paul, The Search

for Political Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Castells, Manuel, The Rise of the

Network Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997); Eliasoph, Nina, Avoiding Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1998). 17

Inglehart, Ronald and Pippa Norris, Rising Tide. Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the

World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

argument avers that democracies can prosper even in the absence of conventional

widespread mass participation, as highly educated postmaterialist citizens have other

means at their disposal to get their voices heard in political decision-making.18

This thesis

calls for a different test altogether: in the absence of mass-based interest mediation

organizations, how can we ensure that governments and political systems are accessible

to citizen influence?

The disentangling of these distinct counterarguments to the Bowling Alone thesis

is absolutely essential if we are to arrive at scientifically-tested findings about the actual

evolution of social capital and civic engagement in the US and other democratic societies.

We examine each of the arguments and their evidence in turn.

‘The numbers don’t match…’

The first argument against communitarian pessimism is largely empirical: it is

stated that the available data simply do not support the conclusion that engagement and

cohesion are on the decline in the United States. A number of authors question the

validity of the data used by Putnam and other authors, in addition to their method of

analysis.19

Building upon a careful analysis of the General Social Survey for the period

1975-1994, both Paxton and Wuthnow argue that not all social capital and civic

engagement indicators seem to be declining simultaneously. Their conclusion is that

generalized trust has been eroding significantly throughout this period, but the same

declivity cannot be observed with respect to associational membership, or even trust in

institutions. While in 1975 respondents in the General Social Survey reported on average

1.77 group memberships, this was still 1.61 in the 1994 Survey, and the trend line does

not show any obvious or significant decline.20

These kinds of empirical criticisms obviously call for a careful re-examination

and re-interpretation of American time-series data. However, an important issue in such

an analysis is that fewer and fewer citizens agree to participate in national or cross-

national surveys.21

In the US National Elections Studies (NES), for example, the response

rate declined from 80% in the 1960’s to about 60% in the year 2000,22

which by itself

might serve as an indication for a civic decline. Most importantly, declining response

rates seriously threaten the validity of time-series data and analysis. As far as the decline

thesis is concerned, lower response rates will lead most likely to an overestimation of

18

Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization; Inglehart, Ronald and Wayne Baker, ‘Modernization,

Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,’ American Sociological Review, 65(1) (2000),

19-51. 19

Schudson, ‘What if Civic Life didn’t Die?’; Ladd, The Ladd Report; Paxton, ‘Is Social Capital Declining

in the United States?’; McDonald, Michael and Samuel Popkin, ‘The Myth of the Vanishing Voter,’

American Political Science Review, 95(4) (2001), 963-974; Wuthnow, ‘The United States: Bridging the

Privileged and the Marginalized?’ 20

Ladd, The Ladd Report. 21

de Heer, Wim, ‘International Response Trends: Results of an International Survey,’ Journal of Official

Statistics, 15(2) (1999), 129-142. 22

NES (2003). http://www.umich.edu/~nes/studyres/datainfo/dataqual.htm

participation in the most recent surveys, as civic engagement in the real world and co-

operation to participate in a survey are strongly related. Therefore, one can assume that in

contemporary surveys participation is overestimated more strongly than in surveys of a

previous era, and this can be used as an argument to strengthen the decline thesis. In

short, the issue of declining responses in surveys has to be integrated into a statistical re-

evaluation of social capital and civic engagement time-series trends.

American exceptionalism?

A second critique invoked against the Bowling Alone thesis is that an erosion of

civic life may indeed be taking place in the United States, but that this phenomenon

should be seen as another manifestation of American exceptionalism. The same trend

cannot, the argument goes, be observed in other Western societies. At least for the

moment, we do not have any conclusive evidence that participation levels in general are

indeed declining in Western Europe as well as the United States23

. Only for some specific

and rather traditional forms of participation has a general declining trend been

documented. In Europe too, for example, political parties and trade unions have lost

members in recent decades.24

With the notable exception of the Scandinavian countries,

voter turnout also shows a downward trend in most industrialised countries.25

It should be

remembered, however, that this decline has largely been a departure from the all-time

high that was recorded in the 1950s and the 1960s;26

even so, the trend is significantly

downward. Most blatant, perhaps, is the strong evidence for systematic decline of

political trust in most European countries, with notable exceptions in Germany and the

Netherlands.27

While in the mid-1990s scholars still expressed doubts about a general

decline of political trust,28

there is more certainty by the end of the decade.29

Overall,

European societies are plagued, as the United States is, by political disenchantment,

increasing cynicism and political alienation.

23

Hooghe, Marc, ‘Why Should We Be Bowling Alone? Cross-Sectional Results from a Belgian Survey on

Civic Participation,’ Voluntas, 14(1) (2003), 41-59. 24

Mair and van Biezen, ‘Party Membership in Twenty European Democracies, 1980-2000’; Ebbinghaus,

Bernhard and Jelle Visser, ‘When Institutions Matter: Union Growth and Decline in Western Europe, 1950-

1995,’ European Sociological Review, 15(2) (1999), 135-158; Putnam, ed., Democracies in Flux. The

Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society. 25

Dalton and Wattenberg, eds., Parties without Partisans; Gray, Mark and Miki Caul, Declining Voter

Turnout in Advanced Democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 33(9) (2000), 1091-1121; Mair, Peter,

‘In the Aggregate: Mass Electoral Behaviour in Western Europe, 1950-2000,’ in Hans Keman, ed.,

Comparative Democratic Politics (London: Sage, 2002), pp. 122-141. 26

Norris, Democratic Phoenix. Reinventing Political Activism. 27

Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization; Listhaug, Ola, ‘The Dynamics of Trust in Politicians,’

in Klingemann & Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 261-297;

Norris, P, ed., Critical Citizens. Global Support for Democratic Government (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1999). 28

Klingemann, Hans-Dieter and Dieter Fuchs eds., Citizens and the State (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1995). 29

Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, Mapping Political Support in the 1990s, in Pippa Norris, ed., Critical Citizens.

(Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), pp. 31-56.

With regard to forms of participation that are not expressly political, however,

results are far less convincing.30

The enormous amount of evidence assembled for the

Beliefs in Government project, for example, did not support the pessimistic conclusions in

this respect for West European countries.31

In line with this evaluation, no evidence has

been found of downward trends in non-political membership and civic participation

figures, or for that matter generalized trust across European societies.32

Nor do the

various country studies assembled in Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social

Capital in Contemporary Society offer any support for a clear pattern of decline in non-

political associational membership in European countries. Faced with this evidence, even

Putnam has recently acknowledged: ‘At the most general level, our investigation has

found no general and simultaneous decline in social capital throughout the

industrial/postindustrial world over the last generation.’33

These findings do not imply that there is no reason for concern in Western

European societies. It is entirely plausible that Europe will be confronted with the same

structural process of social change and its consequences as that witnessed in the United

States, but with a certain time lag. In the Netherlands, for example, participation has

dwindled among younger and well-educated cohorts.34

Similar observations have been

made in Canada; even though voter turnout has been stable for most age cohorts, the

youngest generation in Canada clearly lags behind.35

For the time being, however, we do

not have sufficient information to determine whether these younger age groups are

simply somewhat slower in picking up a participatory habit (because of extended

education, for example,) or whether their abstention will continue once they move on to

adulthood. Nevertheless, the fact that young people seem to refrain from political activity

could be an important finding. Previous studies have shown that those who begin

participating in elections immediately upon reaching voting age retain this habit even

many years later.36

Research suggests that the specific character of one’s first

experienced elections is particularly important for their further electoral involvement.37

30

Topf, Richard, ‘Beyond Electoral Participation,’ in Klingemann and Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 52-91; Dekker, Paul and Andries. van den Broek, ‘Civil

Society in Comparative Perspective: Involvement in Voluntary Associations in North America and Western

Europe,’ Voluntas, 9(1) (1998), 11-38; Hall, ‘Social Capital in Britain’; Putnam, Robert, Conclusion, in

Putnam, ed., Democracies in Flux (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 393-415; Hooghe, Marc,

‘Value Congruence and Convergence within Voluntary Associations,’ Political Behavior, 25(2) (2003),

151-175. 31

Klingemann and Fuchs, eds., Citizens and the State. 32

Gabriel et al., Sozialkapital und Demokratie. 33

Putnam, Conclusion, in Putnam, ed., Democracies in Flux, p. 410. 34

Dekker, Paul and Joep de Hart, ‘Het sociaal kapitaal van de Nederlandse kiezer,’ in M. Hooghe, ed.,

Sociaal kapitaal en democratie. (Leuven: Acco, 2000), pp. 83-112; Thomassen, Jacques, Cees Aarts and

Henk van der Kolk, eds., Politieke veranderingen in Nederland, 1971-1998 (Den Haag: SDU, 2000). 35

Blais, André, Elisabeth Gidengil, Richard Nadeau and Neil Nevitte. Generational Change and the

Decline of Political: The Case of Voter Turnout in Canada. Paper presented at the McGill Workshop

Citizenship on Trial: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Political Socialization of Adolescents, June 2002. 36

Plutzer, Eric, ‘Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood,’

American Political Science Review, 96(1) (2002), 41-56. 37

Franklin, Mark, The Dynamics of Voter Turnout in Established Democracies since 1945 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2004).

These findings are in line with the well-established mechanism that early life experiences

play an important role in shaping adult political behaviour.38

The ‘exceptionalism’ argument calls for a comparative longitudinal research

project across societies. A major challenge for this kind of research, however, is the

almost insurmountable lack of long-term empirical sources. Time-series data are either

not directly comparable to each other and/or to the US data sources, or they go back only

a few years, leaving researchers unable to formulate any definite conclusions. Although

various research efforts are underway to gather comparable and reliable data for a

number of European countries (the Civic Involvement and Democracy project (CID), for

example, as well as the European Social Survey (ESS)), for the foreseeable future the

empirical ground for this debate will remain much weaker in Europe than it is in the US.

Emerging substitutes?

The third argument against communitarian pessimism does not question the

figures and trends described in the erosion literature. These authors acknowledge the fact

that traditional participation and integration mechanisms, such as parties and trade unions

may indeed wear out in Western societies. The fundamental line of critique here is that

the communitarian authors put forward a one-sided description of social trends as a result

of their exclusive focus on the disappearance of traditional mechanisms. Meanwhile, the

communitarians are said to be neglectful of emerging participation styles and methods

that are rapidly replacing the old ones.39

The willingness to participate in politics and

societal affairs is still as strong as it was a few decades ago, critics argue, but this will no

longer translate into membership of traditional political organisations, a point already

made in the 1979 Political Action study.40

Rather, citizens today, especially younger

generations, prefer participating in non-hierarchical and informal networks, in addition to

a variety of life-style related sporadic mobilization efforts. Membership in informal local

parental groups, the tendency to consume politically, membership in advocacy networks,

the regular signing and forwarding of e-mail petitions, and the spontaneous organization

of protests and rallies are just a few examples of this phenomenon.41

The problem with

this argument is that systematic evidence on the new forms of involvements has yet to be

collected, and thus studies in this field are often anecdotal in nature (though two studies

discussed below do tackle this issue empirically.)

Structured ideologies seem less important as a mobilizing agent in these new

forms of protest and participation, and in a number of instances their role is replaced by

38

Jennings, M. Kent and Laura Stoker, ‘Generational Change, Life Cycle Processes and Social Capital,’

paper presented at the McGill Workshop Citizenship on Trial: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Political

Socialisation of Adolescents, June 2002. 39

Gundelach, Peter, ‘Social Transformation and New Forms of Voluntary Associations,’ Social Science

Information, 23(6) (1984), 1049-1081. 40

Barnes, Samuel, Max Kaase et al. (1979), Political Action. Beverly Hills: Sage; Eliasoph, Avoiding

Politics; Lichterman, The Search for Political Community. 41 Hustinx, Lesley and Frans Lammertyn, ‘Collective and Reflexive Styles of Volunteering: A Sociological

Modernization Perspective,’ Voluntas, 14(2) (2003), 167-187.

more emotional or personal motivations.42

One could refer here to the protest rallies

following the school shooting in Dunblane (Scotland), the violent protests that emerged

against paedophiles in Britain, and the silent marches against various incidents of street

violence in the Netherlands. These rallies were not organized by established

organizations or elite actors, but rather they emerged spontaneously as a kind of

emotional reaction in response to perceived threats against society. Nevertheless, they

have proven themselves to be politically effective, resulting, for example, in stricter

weapon laws in the United Kingdom.

The theoretical or anecdotal discussion of new action and participation repertoires

has also been supported by an empirical agenda. A rather famous example of this kind of

empirical criticism involves the way Putnam used declining membership figures of the

national American PTA (Parents Teachers Association) to support his claim that parental

involvement in the education of their children is on the wane. E.C. Ladd, as well as

Crawford and Levitt, draw attention to the fact that a large number of local PTA chapters

are no longer affiliated with the national umbrella organization, which would explain the

downturn of national PTA membership figures.43

To some extent this can be seen as a

simple empirical argument: national membership records of the PTA umbrella

organization no longer serve as a valid indicator for the total number of American parents

actively involved in the school education of their children. However, we also observe

here the emergence of a new and more loosely structured form of involvement. As Ladd

demonstrates, a preliminary analysis of various forms of parents’ involvement in two

selected American states shows that their engagement goes beyond the traditional PTA.

Instead, parents become involved in more localized, looser, and more fluid parent

organizations that are not captured in classic PTA membership statistics. These new

groups tend to be more issue-oriented, and they devote less attention to state level or

national policy issues.44

Although we are confronted with a large diversity in these new participation

mechanisms, they have common characteristics with regard to: 1) their structure; 2) the

substantive issues they address; 3) the ways in which they mobilize, and; 4) the style of

involvement by individual members; 5) they tend to be associated with a highly skewed

recruitment pattern.

First, these new forms of participation abandon traditional (that is to say formal

and bureaucratic) organizational structures in favour of horizontal and more flexible ones.

Loose connections, in other words, are rapidly replacing static bureaucracies.45

Instead of

collaborating in formal umbrella structures, these grassroots associations opt for co-

operation in flexible and horizontal networks that are better adapted to the needs of

42

Goodwin, Jeff, James Jasper and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social

Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 43

Ladd, The Ladd Report, pp. 31-43; Crawford, Susan and Peggy Levitt, ‘Social Change and Civic

Engagement: the Case of the PTA,’ in Theda Skocpol and Morris Fiorina, eds., Civic Engagement in

American Democracy. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1999), pp. 249-296. 44

Crawford and Levitt, ‘Social Change and Civic Engagement: the Case of the PTA,’ p. 283. 45

Wuthnow, Robert, Loose Connections. Joining Together in America’s Fragmented Communities

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

information-driven societies.46

This kind of network structure can also be found in

various global organizations and mobilization efforts, which rely on loose contacts and

electronic communication to co-ordinate their actions for reform in trade regimes, labour

practices, human rights or environmental quality.47

Second, in general these new initiatives are also less concerned with institutional

affairs, such as party politics, which brings them into sharp contrast with more traditional

political organisations. Life-style elements are being politicized and although the actors

no longer label their action as being expressly ‘political,’ these preoccupations do lead to

political mobilization.48

These new forms of participation clearly break the traditional

boundaries between the public and the private sphere; some authors have heralded this

transition as the advent of ‘subpolitics,’ where daily life decisions take on a strong

political meaning.49

Micheletti, for example, describes how women in Sweden, largely

motivated by private concerns, started to fight food prices and became increasingly

involved in political discussions and further political protests.50

In other words, spheres

traditionally perceived as private, such as food consumption, have the potential to

become a platform for political mobilization. Eliasoph, by the same token, documents

how housewives avoid becoming entangled in large ideological debates about politics or

the environment, but instead prefer actions ‘close to home,’ such as those involving

consumer behaviour or household waste.51

The participation in a recycling project can

contribute to a feeling of connection with large-scale environmental issues, without

requiring any formal memberships or ideological identification.

Third, these new forms of participation tend to mobilize in a very characteristic

way. On the one hand, they rely on apparently spontaneous and irregular mobilization.

The signing of petitions, or participation in protests and consumer boycotts all seem

based on spontaneity, irregularity, easy exit and the possibility of shifting-in and shifting-

out. This is certainly the case with new, more emotion-driven forms of protest and

mobilization. While in October 1996 some 300,000 people (three per cent of Belgium’s

total population) participated in a protest rally against the inertia of their nation’s police

46

Castells, The Rise of the Network Society. 47

Bennett, W. Lance, ‘Branded Political Communication: Lifestyle Politics, Logo Campaigns, and the Rise

of Global Citizenship,’ in Michelle Micheletti, Andreas Føllesdal and Dietlind Stolle, eds., Politics,

Products and Markets. (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 2004), pp. 101-126; Levi, Margaret and David

Olson, ‘The Battle in Seattle,’ Politics and Society, 28(3) (2000), 309-329. 48

Bennett, W. Lance, ‘The UnCivic Culture. Communication, Identity, and the Rise of Lifestyle Politics.’

Political Science and Politics, 31(4) (1998), 741-761; Bennett, ‘Branded Political Communication:

Lifestyle Politics, Logo Campaigns, and the Rise of Global Citizenship’; Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics. 49

Beck, The Reinvention of Politics. 50

Micheletti, Michelle, ‘Why More Women? Issues of Gender and Political Consumerism,’ in Michelle

Micheletti, Andreas Føllesdal and Dietlind Stolle, eds., Politics, Products, and Markets (New Brunswick:

Transaction Press, 2004), pp. 245-264. 51

Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics.

force in the face of abductions and killings of young children; two years later, though, the

organizing committee was out of business as its membership had all but evaporated.52

On the other hand, the rise of various check-book organizations implies that

passive members will become more important than has been the case in traditional mass-

membership organisations. Check-book activism does not rely on intensive and regular

face-to-face contact between members, and the organizational model of these

organizations no longer stresses voluntary participation in local chapters. Check-book

membership organizations operate mostly on a national scale, with a professional staff

relying on print and electronic media to stay in touch with their members.53

Such

memberships, too, allow for easy exit and spontaneous irregular involvement, which

renders this type of network much more vulnerable to sudden fluctuations in its

membership base and thus its income.54

Fourth, new forms of participation are potentially less collective and group-oriented in

character. This is the case even though they might be triggered by larger societal

concerns (such as global injustice), organized and supported by advocacy networks and

other loose organizations, and also have aggregate consequences (a change of corporate

practices, for example). Despite all this the actual act of participation is often

individualized in character, whether this involves the decision to forward a selected e-

mail as did Jonah Peretti, who subsequently triggered a world-wide response to Nike’s

footwear production practices,55

or whether it involves the decision to purchase a certain

product for ethical reasons.56

Such individualized acts do not necessarily lead to group

interaction or face-to-face meetings of the kind we typically encounter in unions,

voluntary groups, regular council meetings, and so forth. Passive memberships in check-

book organisations are relatively individualised acts as well. This leads to a certain

paradox: while this form of protest and participation can be seen as an example of co-

ordinated collective action, most participants simply perform this act alone, at home

before a computer screen, or in a supe²rmarket.

Fifth and finally, these new forms of participation raise the spectre of a highly biased

form of political engagement. In most cases, the new participation repertoire requires

quite some intellectual and political sophistication, and therefore, these new acts are

predominantly practiced by just a small portion of the entire population. With regard to

52

Hooghe, Marc & Gita Deneckere, ’La Marche Blanche en Belgique (octobre 1996), une mouvement de

masse spectaculaire mais éphémère,’ Le Mouvement Social, 202 (2003), 153-164. 53

Wollebæk, Dag & Per Selle, ‘The Importance of Passive Membership for Social Capital Formation,’ in

Marc Hooghe & Dietlind Stolle, eds., Generating Social Capital (New York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 67-88. 54

Skocpol, Theda, Diminished Democracy. From Membership to Management in American Civic Life.

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). 55

Peretti, Jonah and Michelle Micheletti, ‘The Nike Sweatshop Email: Political Consumerism, Internet,

and Culture Jamming’ in Michelle Micheletti, Andreas Føllesdal and Dietlind Stolle, eds., Politics,

Products, and Markets (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 2004), pp. 127-144. 56

Micheletti, Michelle, Andreas Føllesdal and Dietlind Stolle, eds., Politics, Products, and Markets:

Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 2004).

check-book activism and other money-mediated forms of civic engagement, the

inequality even becomes more blatant. While the availability of resources already plays a

major role in determining traditional volunteering and participation levels, inequalities

are even more outspoken with regard to donating money and comparable forms of

engagement (Verba, Schlozman & Brady 1995). The transformation toward more

intensive and demanding forms of participation, therefore, clearly entails the risk that this

will serve as a new political arena, that is open only to the well-off in society (see

appendix to this paper).

The argument that formal and fixed membership structures are being replaced by more

informal interaction repertoires is strongly reflected in the gender literature as well.

Scholars working on gender relations have argued that most of the current social capital

research is misguided because it looks in the wrong places for sources of social cohesion.

By focusing almost exclusively on the decline of formal organisations, the

communitarian authors fail to acknowledge the fact that there are many other ways for

people to participate and express political and social involvement.57

These critics would

argue that networks and social engagement can be found in daily social interactions,58

namely at the workplace,59

in schools and neighbourhoods,60

or in caring networks such

as baby-sitting circles and other informal child-care networks.61

Women, in general, tend to prefer more egalitarian networks, which are reflected in

some examples of ‘feminist organisations.’62

Lowndes’ point in particular urges us to

reconsider how informal and small-scale care networks actually contribute to the

maintenance of social cohesion within a society. A typical example would be young

mothers in the suburbs jointly bringing their children to and picking them up from school.

These kinds of arrangements are mostly informal and ad hoc, and they are therefore

usually not registered in survey research on participation. Nevertheless, they are likely to

contribute significantly to the maintenance of social cohesion and social interaction and

the advancement of quality of life within these suburbs, as well as to the learning of civic

skills and generalized values.

To summarize, this third camp of critics urges us to broaden our view of what is

relevant political and social participation. The critique maintains that we might have

missed recent developments in forms of participation that are not easily observed,

57

Ackelsberg, Martha, ‘Broadening the Study of Women’s Participation,’ in Susan Carroll, ed., Women

and American Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 214-236. 58

Dekker, Paul and Ric Uslaner, eds., Social Capital and Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 2001). 59

Mutz, Diana and Jeffrey Mondak, ‘Democracy at Work. Contributions of the Workplace Toward a

Public Sphere,’ Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association,

Chicago, April 23-25 1998. 60

Newton, Kenneth, ‘Social Capital and Democracy in Modern Europe,’ in Jan van Deth et al., eds., Social

Capital and European Democracy (London: Routledge 1999), pp. 2-24. 61

Lowndes, Vivien, ‘Women and Social Capital: A Comment on Hall’s ‘Social Capital in Britain,’’ British

Journal of Political Science, 30(3) (2000), 533-537. 62

Ferree, Myra M. and Patricia Martin, eds., Feminist Organizations (Philadelphia: Temple University

Press, 1995).

counted or measured. These forms of participation are more fluid, sporadic and less

organized, and consequently they will be much harder to detect accurately in survey

research. In addition, we might have looked in the wrong places all along, because many

individuals, (and women in particular,) have been regularly involved in unobserved social

interactions that have wider societal consequences.

‘So what?’

The fourth argument against communitarian pessimism is the most fundamental,

and, from a theoretical point of view, also the most interesting. These authors accept the

data substantiating the decline thesis, but dispute the normative consequences that have

been attributed to it by communitarian scholars. Namely, they claim that a decline in

participation and face-to-face interaction does not necessarily have negative effects for

social or political stability and democracy overall. Though it is possible that formal

participation mechanisms and traditional political organizations were necessary during

the development phase of mass democracies, within contemporary societies they have

lost much of their relevance. These authors argue that the decline of trust in government

and in politics should not be seen as a threat to political stability, but rather as an

indication of the fact that these systems have reached adulthood, and have therefore

learned to live with the scrutiny of critical citizens.63

Inglehart summarizes this point of

view succinctly in his title: ‘Postmodernization erodes respect for authority, but increases

support for democracy.’64

The data indeed show that younger age cohorts, who Putnam views as the partial

‘culprit’ for the overall decline of civic participation, are also most strongly attached to

democratic values. Especially in Inglehart’s work, the decline of traditional political

integration is conceptualized as part of a global and structural transformation of value

patterns in western societies; there has been, he claims, a move away from survival

values like obedience and trust in hierarchies and towards more self-expressive and post-

materialist values such as tolerance, freedom and individual fulfilment. Support for

freedom of expression, in addition to tolerance for ethnic or sexual minorities is found to

be stronger and more widespread among the younger age cohorts, and not the members

of the ‘long civic generation.’ In sum, in Inglehart’s view, younger cohorts

understandably develop distrust in traditional political and hierarchical institutions.

However, their deep belief in democracy, as well as their political actions (such as protest

actions and new modes of organizations) makes those generations democratic in a new

way.

63

Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization; Welzel, Chris, Ronald Inglehart and Hans-Dieter

Klingemann. ‘The Theory of Human Development,’ European Journal of Political Research, 42(2) (2003),

341-380; Norris, ed., Critical Citizens; Norris, Democratic Phoenix. 64

Inglehart, Ronald, ‘Postmodernization Erodes Respect for Authority, but Increases Support for

Democracy,’ in Pippa Norris, ed., Critical Citizens. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 236-256.

The value pattern described by Inglehart therefore is perfectly compatible with

what Schudson has labelled the ‘monitoring citizen.’65

This concept of citizenship

suggests that most people will not be involved in politics as a day-to-day routine. Rather

they monitor the political system from a distance, relying heavily on the information

provided by the mass media. The act of monitoring does not threaten the feeling of

political efficacy, as citizens do and will participate and exert pressure on governments or

other political actors if and when the need arises. Conventional forms of political

participation therefore lose their routine character, but this does not imply that citizens

lose their ability to influence political decision-making. In this view, declining levels of

participation should not cause any concern about the future viability of democratic

systems, as they are merely reflecting a transition from routine participation to a more

reflexive and monitoring form of political involvement.

A Research Agenda

What are the implications of these four counter-positions to the Bowling Alone

thesis? Do we arrive at any definite answers if we accumulate their insights? Ironically, at

first sight the various arguments seem to contradict each other; some critics vehemently

question the evidence pointing to a decline, whereas others accept it but perceive

different consequences. As yet, hard-nosed empirical evidence is scarce and many causal

relationships are still left unexplored. Each of these four avenues of criticism opens a

research agenda that should demonstrate how we can get closer to a definite answer about

whether social capital and civic engagement are declining or just transforming, and about

the consequences of this evolution.

The first argument, which patently denies that a decline is in fact taking place,

calls for the continuation and replication of already existing time-series. Following

research by Theda Skocpol,66

we might also think about ways to incorporate historical

evidence in the debate in order to establish a clear picture of the actual civic behaviour of

previous generations. While for most survey-oriented political scientists the world seems

to have been created in 1948, at the advent of the National Elections Studies, historical

material allows us to build longer time-series. In this way, the changes we have witnessed

during the past four decades can be put into historical perspective. The 1960s were

indeed an era of unprecedented civic activism that involved neighbourhood engagement

and memberships of various political and non-political associations, which might imply

that the current decline stands for a return to ‘normal’ levels of participation.

The second argument leaves us with a difficult task: outside the US, few long-

term and reliable time-series are available. True, voter turnout, party, and union

memberships are well-documented, but most informal forms of social interaction are not.

65

Schudson, Michael, The Good Citizen (New York: Free Press, 1998). 66

Skocpol, Theda, ‘How Americans Became Civic,’ in Theda Skocpol and Morris Fiorina, eds., Civic

Engagement in American Democracy (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1999), pp. 27-80; Skocpol,

Diminished Democracy. From Membership to Management in American Civic Life.

However, from the first and second critiques it is clear that not all social capital indicators

evolve simultaneously, and maybe not even in the same direction. The available

evidence, therefore, should not be used to espouse a universal model of longitudinal

social and political involvement. Clearly, developments of political trust do not directly

translate into insights in time-patterns of generalised trust. Similarly, the fact that social

interaction patterns seem to change in the United States should not be used for

predictions of this evolution in other Western societies. Various research efforts are now

under way in Western Europe to establish social capital benchmark studies, but long-term

results, by their very nature, emerge only slowly. In the meantime, national longitudinal

surveys and local over-time comparisons, as well as unexplored data sources, can be

exploited for the analysis of national or even regional trends.

The third counter-hypothesis to the decline thesis calls for the development of new

survey questions and instruments that adequately measure the occurrence and the

magnitude of new forms of political and social participation. Politicized life-style

elements such as forms of political consumerism, political or ethical dress codes, online

political chat-rooms, etcetera, should be taken into account in this kind of research. A

number of case studies demonstrate that these new participation forms are indeed making

an appearance, but this approach does not inform us about their overall prevalence, or

about the extent to which these findings can be generalized. As Offe and Fuchs (2002,

243) observe: ‘There is a remarkable lack of data on the less formal types of associative

activity.’67

Clearly, taking the third counter-argument seriously implies the necessity of moving

from case studies towards the use of cross-national survey data, a step which has not been

taken thus far.68

Inevitably, these new forms of citizens’ involvement will be difficult to

measure because of their fluid, spontaneous, and unstructured character.69

The

development of new survey instruments is again an essential prerequisite towards

determining what these new forms of participation mean in an individual’s life, and

whether or not they take on a political character. How can we distinguish privately

motivated acts without wider societal consequences from acts that are intended to have,

or may have, a political meaning? To what extent can private motivation serve as a

mobilizing force for public or societal acts? These kinds of questions will have to be

addressed in any future survey research on political involvement that takes life-style

politics into consideration.

67

Offe, Claus and Susanne Fuchs, ‘A Decline of Social Capital? The German Case,’ in Robert Putnam, ed.,

Democracies in Flux (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 189-243, p. 243. 68

However, see: Goul Andersen, Jørgen and Mette Tobiasen, Politisk forbrug og politiske forbrugere.

Globalisering og politik i hverdagslivet (Aarhus: Magtudredningen, 2001); Goul Andersen, Jørgen and

Mette Tobiasen, ‘Who are These Political Consumers Anyway? Survey Evidence from Denmark’ in

Micheletti, Føllesdal and Stolle, eds., Politics, Products, and Markets (New Brunswick: Transaction Press,

2004), pp. 203-222; Stolle, Dietlind, Marc Hooghe and Michelle Micheletti, ‘Political Consumerism – A

New Phenomenon of Political Participation? An Exploratory Study in Canada, Belgium and Sweden.’

Paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions in Edinburgh, March 28-April 2, 2003. 69

Beck, Ulrich and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization. Institutionalized Individualism and its

Social and Political Consequences (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2002), p. 19.

Let us clarify this point with an example. Over the past decades a flourishing

commercially-organized gay subculture has emerged in metropolitan areas such as San

Francisco, London and Amsterdam. Gay and lesbian magazines, shops and travel

agencies are an important constitutive element of this culture. However, while some

authors consider these commercial ventures as a public and even politically inspired

manifestation of gay and lesbian identity, for others it is just a form of individual

consumer preference, without any political consequences.70

To determine whether such

forms of interaction can still be seen as manifestations of civic engagement, it is essential

to know the both the intention and the motivations of the actor involved. For example,

booking an occasional trip with a gay travel agency because it costs less could not be

defined as political participation, whereas deliberately doing so to support the gay and

lesbian movements could be considered as a political act which has wider societal

consequences. In sum, the motivation and regularity of the new political acts should be

included in our attempts to measure these forms of involvement.

While the previous three counter-arguments presented against the decline thesis

confronted us with the need for better and richer survey and other data, the fourth

challenge goes a step further. It is by now well established that younger and better-

educated age cohorts indeed adhere to a more postmodern value pattern; they are more

critical with regard to authority and institutions, but they strongly support democratic

values.71

Therefore it seems safe to conclude that traditional associations and

participatory mechanisms are not irreplaceable with regard to their socialization function;

democratic value patterns can be established and maintained, even without formal

memberships with voluntary associations or political parties. In other words, one of the

worries of communitarians can be soothed, in that the internal function of voluntary

associations and other types of organisations can be replaced by other socialization

agents.

There are fewer indications, however, that a functional equivalent might exist for

the external function of intermediary associations. The fourth argument, therefore, leads

us to suggest further research at the macro level, and a re-invigoration of the old

governability debate.72

Young age cohorts might be ‘critical citizens,’73

yet the question

has not been addressed as to whether democratic political systems are able to function

when faced with large numbers of such citizens. Political systems depend on routine and

diffuse forms of support, and we cannot be certain whether the better-informed citizens of

today and tomorrow will actually provide this kind of support. Furthermore, traditional

intermediary organizations like trade unions or political parties, which are losing

members in most Western societies, have historically been highly effective instruments

70

Adam, Barry, Jan Willem Duyvendak and André Krouwel, eds., The Global Emergence of Gay and

Lesbian Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999). 71

Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization. 72

Crozier, Michael, Samuel Huntington and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy (New York: New

York University Press, 1975). 73

Norris, ed., Critical Citizens. Global Support for Democratic Government.

both in aggregating interests of voters and members, and in introducing these interests

into the political decision making process.74

Whether new forms of participation

preferred by younger age cohorts are just as effective in fulfilling this instrumental

function has yet to be examined in depth. Although various examples of new forms of

political and social involvement demonstrate their success, it is still open for debate as to

whether these new action repertoires enable citizens to influence political decision-

making efficiently. Political systems might fall below the threshold of ‘democracy,’ if the

collective pressures of citizens on decision-making are exerted only sporadically and

without a stable organizational force. One of the main problems in this respect is that

within parliamentary democracies, decision-making is inevitably a long-term process,

one that respects extensive procedural and consultative mechanisms. If mobilization

campaigns become short-lived events, their impact could be dampened before any really

changes are brought about. How are long-term institutionalized decision-making

processes affected given the absence of an ingrained organizational structure that

aggregates citizens’ opinion? That question has not even been addressed by most authors

writing about postmodernization.

74

Baumgartner, Frank and Beth Leech, Basic Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

ECPR Joint Sessions 2004 in Uppsala

Dietlind Stolle, McGill University

Marc Hooghe, University of Leuven

PART 2:

WORK IN PROGRESS

AN EMPIRICAL EXPLORATION OF NEW FORMS OF

PARTICIPATION

WHAT CHANGED BETWEEN 1974 AND 2002?

In this empirical exploration and in light of our workshop theme, we will focus on the

claims of the four camps that vehemently oppose the decline thesis.75

First, we need to

establish whether the decline of conventional politics is also present in Europe. We

therefore examine whether and how participation patterns have changed over the last

decades using comparative data from the last three decades. Second, we need to explore

whether new forms of participation are rising and whether they have the potential to

substitute for the lack of traditional political involvement. What is involved in this

transformation, who is participating in these new rising forms of participation, how do

they influence the actual process of participation? Third, we need to test whether those

engaged in new forms of participation are also those most critical and alienated from the

established political world as the scholars in this ‘postmodern’ camp would have it.

Data

Since no one data set can answer all of these questions, we will have to rely on several data sources that are

currently available. Our data sources include:

- The Political Action dataset, that was collected in eight nations in the early 1970s (see the paper

by Samuel Barnes). In our analysis we only use the 7 European nations, not the US data76

.

- The various waves of the World Values Surveys (1980/1990/1995-97/1999-2000)77

.

- The results from the 1st European Social Survey (ESS), conducted in 2002 in 21 European

countries (including Israel)78

.

American Exceptionalism: Some Longitudinal Evidence

In our attempt to cover as long of a time span as possible, the comparison between the Political Action data

set from the early 1970s, the World Value Survey and the most recent ESS in 2002 seem most plausible.

For a number of countries, and for a number of participation acts this comparison is indeed possible,

although extreme care should be taken, since sampling procedures, and the wording of various items have

changed since the early 1970s. The figures reported in Table 1, therefore, should only be taken to indicate a

general trend, not as a precise measurement.

75

. See part 1 of this paper. We will not address the arguments of the first camp for reasons of time and

space. 76

. For a full description of the Political Action data, see Barnes & Kaase (1979), pp. 537-591. Fieldwork

for this survey was done in 1973-1975, with most interviews being conducted in 1974. 77

. For a full description of the data set, see www.worldvaluessurvey.org. 78

. For a full description of the ESS data, see www.europeansocialsurvey.org.

Table 1: Frequency of political acts, 1974-2002

Country 1974

1981

WVS

1990

WVS

1995/97

WVS

1999/00

WVS

trend in

WVS

2002

Germany*

- signed a petition

- boycott

- demonstration

- occupy buildings

- contact politician

- worked for party

- member of party***

30.5

43

8.5

0.2

27.4

20.8

5.7

47.4

7.5

14.7

1.5

--

--

8.1

57.0

10.4

21.0

1.1

--

--

7.6

65.9

18.1

25.7

2.3

--

--

8.6

47.0

10.2

21.7

0.8

--

--

3.1

Rise**

Rise**

Rise**

Stable

Decline

29.1

28.1

10.6

--

12.7

4.0

3.6

Great Britain

- signed a petition

- boycott

- demonstration

- occupy buildings

- contact politician

- worked for party

- member of party

22.2

5.3

5.6

0.8

23.8

7.7

4.4

63.3

7.2

6.9

2.5

--

--

4.6

75.3

13.8

10.0

2.4

--

--

5.0

57.6

--

--

--

--

--

--

80.7

16.6

13.3

2.1

--

--

2.6

Rise**

Rise

Rise**

Stable

Decline

40.6

16.1

4.4

--

18.4

4.5

2.8

Netherlands

- signed a petition

- boycott

- demonstration

-occupy buildings

- contact politician

- worked for party

- member of party

20.9

5.2

7.0

1.5

26.9

8.8

5.0

35.1

6.5

12.6

2.4

--

--

7.6

50.9

8.5

25.3

3.2

--

--

10.1

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

61.4

21.9

32.3

5.4

--

--

9.3

Rise**

Rise**

Rise**

Rise

Stable**

22,5

10,4

2,9

--

14,4

3,4

4,8

Austria

- signed a petition

- boycott

- demonstration

- contact politician

- worked for party

- member of party

34.2

2.1

6.2

27.8

12.2

15.6

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

27,3

21,6

9,6

18,5

10,3

14,0

Italy

- signed a petition

- boycott

- demonstration

-occupy buildings

- contact politician

- worked for party

- member of party

9.9

0.8

16.7

4.3

28.8

12.6

5.6

42.1

6.0

26.7

5.8

--

--

6.4

48.1

10.9

36.0

7.6

--

--

5.3

--

--

--

--

--

--

--

54.6

10.3

34.8

8.0

--

--

4.1

Rise**

Rise**

Rise**

Rise

Decline

17,4

7,6

11,0

--

12,0

3,0

3,9

Switzerland

- signed a petition

- boycott

- demonstration

- contact politician

- worked for party

- member of party

44.3

4.4

8.0

33.3

23.6

6.7

--

--

--

--

--

--

63.3

--

16.0

--

--

9.0

68.0

--

17.3

--

--

16.9

--

--

--

--

--

--

Rise**

Rise

Rise**

Rise**

39,3

31,4

7,9

17,4

7,8

8,8

Finland

- signed a petition

- boycott

- demonstration

- occupy buildings

- contact politician

- worked for party

- member of party

18.7

1.1

5.7

0.0

26.7

12.4

7.9

29.8

8.5

14.4

0.7

--

--

3.2

--

--

--

39.2

12.2

12.8

0.5

--

--

9.8

50.8

15.2

14.8

0.1

--

--

6.1

Rise**

Rise

Rise**

Decline

Stable

24,0

26,7

1,9

--

24,3

3,6

7,4 Entries are percentages of respondents indicating that they have participated in these acts. Source: Political Action survey;

1981/1990/1995/97 and 1999/00 World Values Surveys; 2002: European Social Survey. In the Political Action survey as well as in the

WVS usually no time frame was included, in the ESS the question was asked about the previous 12 months. * For all data points only figures from (the former) West Germany were included.

** Trend was slightly reversed for last data point.

*** Party membership was asked nearly identically in the Political Action and the ESS surveys, however, the WVS asks about membership in political parties and groups.

This comparison across three decades already gives us some indication regarding the decline debate, but

again, caution is to be advised. We cannot directly compare the percentages of the previous surveys and the

ESS, because the question wording was restricted to activities done in the last 12 months in the ESS, but

not in the Political Action and WVS data. Such a comparison would underestimate a rise in activities and

overestimate a decline. In addition, activities that are reported by only a small group of the population, such

as party membership are to be taken with most caution. E.g., in most countries there is only a moderate

decline in the number of respondents reporting their party membership. The comparison is made even more

difficult since the WVS has included political parties and organizations into its question. From actual

membership records, however, we know that this decline has been steeper, as political parties in most

Western European countries have been losing members rapidly (Mair & van Biezen 2000). If we compare

the trend from the survey results, with Mair and van Biezen’s actual membership figures, we observe that

in several countries the survey results reflect the basic downward trend, but that this trend is usually

underestimated (except in Germany).

Table 2: Party Membership Trends

Country Survey trend (1974-2002) Actual Membership (1980-2000)

Germany -37 % - 9 %

Great Britain - 37 % - 50 %

Netherlands - 4 % - 32 %

Austria - 10 % - 30 %

Italy - 30 % - 51 %

Switzerland +31 % - 29 %

Finland - 6 % - 34 %

Source: Survey trend: our comparison between Political Action and ESS in which the same membership

question has been asked; Membership: Mair & van Biezen (2000)

The only outlier is Switzerland, where survey figures suggest that there has been a rise in party

membership. However, there is some reason to be cautious about these findings. Switzerland had one of the

lowest response rates in the entire ESS sample, which makes us believe that this resulted in a rather

selective sample of Swiss respondents79

.

However, Table 1 shows a clear general trend. Relatively new forms of participation that were surveyed

such as signing petitions, boycotts, and demonstrations show overall upward trends. There is not one

country included that shows a downward trend in these kinds of acts. The wording of the questions is

largely the same in the Political Action and WVS surveys80

as it did not include any time reference, so we

could assume that even a distant experience with e.g. boycotting might lead to a positive answer. In 2002

the question was stricter: “During the last 12 months, have you (…) boycotted certain products”? But even

despite the fact that the wording of the question has become more restrictive, there is an impressive rise in

the number of positive answers when we compare the results of the Political Action survey and the ESS.

The trend is less stable when we compare the so-called unconventional activities, in this case, the

occupation of buildings. Clearly, this radical activity does not follow a general pattern across countries, and

in general the frequency of this act is so low, that a general population survey does not seem an appropriate

instrument to analyse this kind of participation. In some countries, such as Italy or the Netherlands,

occupying buildings is increasing over time, whereas fewer people use this form of engagement in

79

. The goal of the ESS was to reach a response rate of 70 per cent in every participating country.

Switzerland, however, only obtained a response rate of 33.5 per cent (!), by far the lowest rate of all 21

countries. 80

In 1974 the exact question was: “Are you willing to join boycotts”, with a first answer category: “I have

done this”. All the other answering possibilities ventured into the possibility that the respondent might ever

consider taking part in this kind of action.

Germany or Finland. Overall, such radical activities have not been adopted as regular forms of involvement

over the last decades. Reading back Political Action, it seems clear that in the 1970s the expectation was

that this kind of radical action repertoire would spread out through the population, but clearly this has not

happened. The innovation in the action repertoire of ordinary citizens since the 1970s is not dominated by

radical or even openly confrontational acts, but rather by less radical acts like signing a petition, or buying

‘the right’ products.

Nevertheless, Table 1 confirms the notion that there is reason to believe that conventional forms of

participation have declined. The critics who argue that Europe might be exempt from this process are not

necessarily correct: for a number of acts, we observe a clear negative trend in European countries, too.

However, the critics of the decline thesis who suggest that new forms of participation have increased over

time seem to have a point. This is particularly true for boycotts, signing petitions and demonstrations. We

might expect that this trend might also hold for other unmeasured activities, such as buying products for

political reasons or more recently joining online internet campaigns, forwarding political messages etc.

which are currently blossoming and for which we do not have any survey measurements. The point is that

we do not have any longitudinal data on several forms of political involvement, many of which will be

dealt with in our workshop this week. Overall, we did not only learn that certain forms of participation are

on the rise, but that some of them such as boycotts and petitions are also much more wide-spread than

many conventional forms (with the exception of voting, which has always enjoyed a distinct status in

participation research). This emerging transformation of political action repertoires might have

consequences with regard to the question who participates in them.

In the remainder of this paper, we will address two questions:

- are these new forms of participation inclusive, i.e., are they being practised by various segments of

the population?

- are they, as some authors have argued, the expression of a distrustful and alienated outlook toward

the political system?

Voice and Equality--Shifting Inclusion?

It is plausible that the steady increase of the number of people involved in these ways of engagements

might have also changed the make-up of those who participate. To what extent is the rise of new types of

engagement linked to a wider distribution of participation, reducing the all too visible inequalities that

participation usually brings about (Verba 2003). At least three scenarios are feasible. First, new forms of

participation might just engage more of the same kind of people: more educated citizens, male citizens, and

those with more resources and civic skills overall. Second, new forms of participation in fact might

increase the inequalities found in participation research, as these forms might require more resources and

thereby involve a homogeneous part of the population that has a substantial amount of resources available.

Or third, these forms might reach beyond the usual clientele of participants thereby reducing the existing

inequalities. The hypothesis in part of the literature is that this last scenario is most likely because we

assume that new forms of participation are less time-consuming, more sporadic, less organized and unlike

party organizations or unions they are embedded in a less hierarchical structure therefore might attract a

broader group of citizens, including the young generations and women.

One obvious group that is mobilized through these new forms of participation are women. If we look for

example at boycotts, while in the 1970s this was still a predominantly male activity, throughout the decades

we see that in 10 out of 16 West European countries included in the World Value survey, the gender gap

for boycotting decreased steadily and was even reversed in some Scandinavian countries. In the 2002 ESS

survey, we find in 9 out of 21 countries a reversed gender gap for boycotts. For the usually unmeasured

activity of “buycotting” (i.e., deliberately buying products for ethical or political reasons), we find an even

stronger reversal: in all countries but Spain do we find more women involved in buycotting than men81

. For

81

. A counterargument could be that in general women are more often responsible for shopping, so they

have more opportunities to participate in this kind of action. This might be true, however, in a pilot survey

among 1,015 students in Sweden, Belgium and Canada, we showed that there is no relation between the

the comparison in Figure 1 between gender inequalities in boycotts we used the data from 1974 (Political

Action) and 2002 (ESS). Clearly, political consumerism has become a well-integrated part of women’s

political action repertoires. Not only are more citizens overall involved in this activity, but there are

selected forms of engagement that draw disproportionally more women into it than men. In other words,

the rise in these new forms of participation has affected more women than men (see also Stolle and

Micheletti forthcoming).

Figure 1: Participation in boycott actions, Political Action (ca. 1974) and ESS (2002)

This ‘feminization’ of boycott actions can be seen as part of a larger social trend. It is quite striking to

observe that the actions that are on the rise or have remained stable between 1974 and 2002 are gender-

neutral, and at least with regard to political consumerism, are actually being practised more by women now.

As Figure 2 demonstrates, the acts of signing petitions, boycotting and demonstrations started out with the

typical gender gap in the 1970’s, but by now the gender gap has been either reversed, overcome or

declined.

propensity to participate in this form of action and the frequency of shopping (Stolle, Hooghe & Micheletti

2004).

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40 men

women

Figure 2: Gender distribution of all political acts 1974 and 2002

For acts that clearly show a downward trend (party membership, contacting a politician etc.), on the other

hand, the traditional gender gap remains present, and does not even show a visible sign of being reduced.

For example, party membership and contacting politicians not only decline in the general population, but

they also remain predominantly male activities. Voting is a special case, as the gender gap here has been

overcome already in the 1970’s at least in the selected European countries, and this remains unchanged in

200282

.

This preliminary analysis shows that some new forms of participation mobilize and include groups of the

population (in this case women) that have been previously excluded altogether, or at least included in an

unbalanced way. At first sight, there is therefore a good potential of these types of participation to

overcome the widespread inequalities in political participation. At this moment in research, we cannot go

much further than observing that politics is changing because of the introduction of participation forms that

are ultimately preferred by women. Political scientists should acknowledge this trend. Whether normatively

speaking this transformation will lead toward more democratisation is still an open question. We know

from the traditional “male”, partisan acts, that they can be highly effective to get one’s views across to

political decision makers. There is indeed a clear danger that these new acts are located mostly outside the

traditional political arena. Given that they are usually low-cost involvements outside the system, perhaps

they are less effective than the traditional forms. So in a way, some scholars might still worry that this

transformation might actually weaken the impact citizens have on the political system. To them,

participating in a boycott action is a case in point: it might be an inclusive way to practice politics (at least

with regard to gender), but it is targeted mostly at companies and it therefore might leave politicians off the

hook. Putnam (2002, 394) at least is concerned about “the possibility that the rising forms of civic

participation might be less suited to the pursuit of collective goods than the forms they are replacing”.

82

. The fact that these surveys do not depict a clear downward trend with regard to voting is especially

troublesome, since the figures show that indeed fewer citizens participate in elections (Blais, Gidengil &

Nevitte 2004). This means that surveys underestimate this trend, and the fact that response rates tend to fall

could be partly responsible for this loss of quality: it is reasonable to assume that those who do not vote are

less likely to participate in surveys.

Given the available evidence in our data, however, we cannot make any definitive statements on that

possibility but we hope to discuss these themes when we look at some case-studies in the workshop.

Increasing equality?

With regard to one very basic and ubiquitous form of inequality, we can observe some progress. As shown,

women are strongly involved in these new forms of participation, sometimes even outnumbering men. This

was not yet the case back in the early 1970s, when women were still a minority for each and every form of

activism. How has inclusiveness changed for dimensions of age and education?

Figure 3: Participation ratios in six forms of political engagement, for 3 education categories.

Our first comparison beyond gender is on education. The graph demonstrates that education has a

tremendous influence on who the participants are throughout nearly all forms of participation in the

1970’s. This is particularly true for protest politics--back then one of the newest form of participation.

Citizens in the highest educational group were five times as likely to participate in protests than

citizens with the lowest education. Also boycotting already showed significant signs of inequality then.

In 2002 the picture is not much different: education still divides the participants and non-participants,

also among the new forms. The new forms do not help to diminish the inequalities in terms of

education. In fact the exclusive influence of education is strongest for political consumerism. Citizens

in the highest educational group are 3.5 times as likely to engage in this form of action than those with

lowest educational resources.

The only exception to this is that in the 1970s apparently voting was more widespread among those

with little formal education. Looking at the countries separately shows that this trend was strongest in

Great Britain and in Finland, two countries with strong working-class based parties. Apparently the

effort by these parties to mobilise votes, resulted in a rather egalitarian distribution of participation in

elections.

In sum, new forms of participation do not diminish the inequalities between participants regarding

educational resources. The following comparison regards the ability of participation forms to include

citizens from different age ranges. It is particularly important to understand which forms discriminate

against younger and/or older people. Given our previous discussions we would expect that young

citizens are more drawn toward new forms of participation, whereas we would expect older citizens to

engage in traditional forms.

Figure 4: Participation according to age group, Political Action 1974. For voting: age above 21.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

15-30

31-45

46-60

61+

Figure 5: European Social Survey, 2002. For voting, age above 18.

In this regard the pattern has clearly changed. Back in the early 1970s the youngest age groups were often

the ones experimenting with new forms of political participation, especially for boycotts, petitions and

demonstrations. The pattern is less visible in the 2002 data. Young people still demonstrate more often than

others, but with regard to political consumerism and the signing of petitions, the middle age group now has

taken the lead. One interpretation of these findings is that we perhaps witness the ageing of the ‘protest

generation’ (Jennings 1987). Those who initialized demonstrations, petitions and boycotts at the time are

also those who continue to do it today but their habit is maybe not picked up as strongly by younger age

cohorts. Even two additional interpretations are feasible here: a) young people are indeed disaffected and

overall participate less often, or b), young citizens engage in other forms of participation—and for them

demonstrations, boycotts and petitions are perhaps already outdated. They might engage in those political

acts that we rarely measure, such as internet campaigns, culture jamming, forwarding of e-mails, etc.

Overall, we have found some evidence against the second camp of critics of the decline thesis who argue

that this is a phenomenon unique to the United States or North America. The analysis of selected European

countries so far has shown that also in Europe certain traditional political activities are dwindling over time,

particularly party membership, and there is some evidence that contacting a politician and working for a

party are also down. We also found that the third camp of critics in the decline debacle has a point:

although some traditional forms of participation are in decline, new forms have become more wide-spread

within the populations of selected European countries. Moreover, they have partially integrated formerly

excluded groups such as women, but they remain exclusive for the poor and uneducated and they are not as

frequently practiced by the very young generations either.

Alienated or integrated?

The fourth camp of critics goes a step further—not only do they claim that new individualized action

repertoires are on the rise, but they also state that they are a result of an overall societal change toward

more postmaterialist values. New action repertoires will become wide-spread because citizens distrust

hierarchical institutions and the participation in them. If this was true, we should not only see a rise of new

action repertoires, and the rise of political distrust, but we should also see that those adopting new forms of

engagement also let go of traditional politics. Are the activists of the new forms also those who least likely

perform other traditional kinds of acts? Barnes et al (1979) found that this is not the case, but perhaps the

last 25 years have further contributed to the political alienation of those who like to play politics from an

outside perspective.

Figure 6: Full ESS data set 2002.

Clearly, both graphs indicate the opposite: those active in new forms are also those who engage in

traditional style politics. New action repertoires are being added to existing action repertoires. This

relationship is even more extreme in the case of those who engage in protest politics. In other words, it

seems as if those who engage in new forms of participation are not necessarily those who oppose the

current political structures, or at least they have not completely dropped out of the traditional political

process. In fact, only 1% of the entire ESS sample respondents have only engaged in new forms of

participation while at the same time avoiding all forms of conventional engagement including voting. And

only 3.5% of the sample has engaged in new forms but nothing traditional except voting. This evidence

does not fare well with the claims of the postmodern camp.

Figure 7: Full ESS data set 2002.

A First Multivariate Test

Thus far, we have been looking at various indicators one by one: gender, age, education, and conventional

participation. These bivariate explorations are useful for indicating trends of inequality. Yet we need to

explore whether these relationships hold in a multivariate model as well.

Since we like to determine the significant changes between 1974 and 2002, we had to limit ourselves to

acts that were measured the same way in the two surveys. For both data sets we therefore work with three

preliminary models explaining:

I) new participation acts (petition and boycott measured as a dichotomous variable)

II) conventional participation acts (contacting politician and party membership, ibid)

III) new participation acts, with conventional acts included as control variables

In the third model, we do not wish to imply a causal structure between conventional and unconventional

acts, but this model allows us to test whether and how these forms are related.

Because we deal with a dichotomous dependent variable, we used a binary logistic regression as our

method of analysis. We also included political interest as a control variable and income as another

demographic measurement.83

When reading Tables 3 and 4, again our main focus of attention is not the absolute level of the relations

(since this is only a very thin model), but rather the comparison between the effects in 1974 and those in

2002.

Table 3: Participation in 1974

Model I

Petition and boycott

Model II

Contact and party

Model III

New forms controlled

83

. Tests revealed no multicollinearity between any of the independent variables including education and

income.

membership for traditional

Cte. -.431 (.189) 1.262 (.202) -.279 (.193)

Gender -.234 (.059)*** -.845 (.062)*** -.134 (.060)*

Education level .230 (.025)*** .164 (.027)*** .215 (.025)***

Income level

-1 lowest

-2

-3 highest

***

-.349 (.081)

-.165 (.068)

ref.

***

-.398 (.087)

-.239 (.072)

ref.

**

-.298 (.082)

-.131 (.068)

ref.

Age

-15-30

-31-45

-46-60

-61+

***

.432 (.095)

.425 (.092)

.274 (.093)

ref.

***

-.001 (.102)

.283 (.097)

.297 (.097)

ref.

***

.448 (.096)

.397 (.093)

.236 (.094)

ref.

Political Interest .346 (.033)*** .718 (.037)*** .266 (.034)

Conventional -- -- .625 (.065)***

Nagelkerke’s r2 .11 .23 .13

Source: 1974 Political Action, 5 European countries (without Italy and Finland84

)

Entries are results from a binary logistic regression, B and (SE) ***:<.001, **:<.01; *:<.05

Table 4: Participation in 2002

Model I

Petition and boycott

Model II

Contact and party

membership

Model III

New forms controlled

for traditional

Cte. -.686 (.112) -.651 (.144) -.957 (.115)

Gender .305 (.037)*** -.139 (.047)*** .329 (.037)***

Education level .196 (.017)*** .221 (.021)*** .171 (.017)***

Income level

-1

-2

-3

***

-.248 (.061)

-.112 (.058)

ref.

***

-.144 (.082)

.079 (.080)

ref.

***

-.234 (.062)

-.122 (.059)

ref.

Age

-15-30

-31-45

-46-60

-61+

***

.474 (.057)

.507 (.052)

.426 (.053)

ref.

***

-.791 (.083)

-.199 (.064)

.044 (.064)

ref.

***

.565 (.058)

.552 (.052)

.434 (.054)

ref.

Political Interest .492 (.023)*** .576 (.032)*** .437 (.024)***

Conventional -- -- .854 (.050)*** Nagelkerke’s r2 .10 .12 .13

ESS, 2002. Binary logistic regression. Same five countries as in 1974.

The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from a comparison between the 1974 and the 2002 logistic

regression is that most of the relations we observed in our bivariate exploration do seem to hold, even when

building a slim multivariate model. We therefore can be more confident about the validity of our

observations:

1. Inequalities with regard to gender have been reduced substantially. This is true for conventional, party-

related acts, although the gender gap is still present there. With regard to the two new forms, the gender gap

has even been reversed, with women more active in boycotts and petitions.

2. Inequality with regard to education remains firmly in place, and there is no indication that this form of

inequality is being weakened. Education is highly significant both for conventional and what we call new

acts, and this is true both in 1974 and in 2002. So no progress toward more equality on that account at all.

3. With regard to income, inequalities are persistent for new acts.

84

. Italy and Finland were excluded from this analysis because income was measured differently, and in a

non-comparable manner, than in the other five European countries.

4. With regard to age, it is striking to observe that the youngest age group withdraws from party life more

strongly than was the case in 1974. It seems clear that political parties have a problem in reaching young

people. With regard to new actions, the 46-60 age group is clearly more active than in 1974.

5. The cumulative relation between ‘conventional’ and ‘new’ acts remains just as strong in 2002 as in 1974,

mirroring the conclusions from the Political Action survey.

Does the broadening of participation repertoires lead to a more equal voice in politics? On one account: yes

– gender inequalities have been dramatically reduced in three decades time. All other forms of inequality

(income, education) however, remain firmly in place. Given our current level of analysis, we cannot

determine yet whether these inequalities actually have become more outspoken. It should be remembered,

however, that back in the 1970s, education and income equalities with regard to party politics were already

quite strong, something that is all too often forgotten by authors depicting a rosy picture of the ‘civic

generation’: in the early 1970s party politics was an elite game, and this is something to be taken into

account when discussing the democratic potential of new forms of political engagement. As we all know,

two wrongs don’t make right, but is always good to see things in perspective: the new political action

repertoire is not necessarily more exclusive than the conventional political action repertoire, and in fact ahs

shown more potential for inclusiveness already.

Comparing Sources of Participation

In this last section of our empirical analysis we like to turn to a fuller model of participation acts in order to

better understand their different attitudinal, behavioral and demographic sources. How do various resources

and skills necessary for the engagement in political acts compare to attitudinal resources and political

orientations? How can we distinguish the various types of political acts in terms of the individual level

factors that predict them? Although we already established that new forms of participation require high

education levels as well as income, is it true that their ad-hoc nature and the low time commitment might

demand fewer civic skills of those who engage in them?

Further, many authors in fourth battle camp propose that the new forms of participation draw in citizens

who hold anti-hierarchical values. In fact the argument goes further, citizens are less inclined to participate

in traditional forms of actions because these exhibit hierarchical power structures (e.g. rigid party

organizations). Authors like Inglehart would predict that those who drop out of the traditional engagement

in political systems do so because they are the ones most critical of the standard political institutions

(1997). They would further predict that participants in new forms would not necessarily find the national

level governments legitimate to deal with societal problems. Instead, citizens who engage in new forms of

participation believe more in political institutions beyond one’s own nation state. The objections against

decline in this camp have at least two major empirical implications: first, citizens who engage in new forms

must have anti-hierarchical values and they must be less trusting in traditional political institutions, and

second, they should give more legitimacy to political institutions beyond the nation state. We will put these

hypotheses to the test.

The ESS contains 8 questions for different policy areas for which the respondent is asked to indicate the

preferred level of government. The sample is skewed, most people think that the international level is only

preferred for very few policy issues. We created a variable that measures how many times the international

level or the EU level was indicated.

Although six institutional trust questions (on the parliament, politicians, the legal system, the police, the EU

and UN) loaded well together in a factor analysis, we separated the international institutions and formed a

factor score with trust items for four national level institutions. This step was necessary in order to

distinguish trust in national institutions from trust in international institutions. 85

85

The claim that people lose confidence in national political institutions, but remain hopeful or become

more inclined toward international organizations is not supported.

For values of hierarchy we created a scale of three survey items that seem to measure a preference for

hierarchy.86

The items asked the respondent whether he/she thinks of him/herself as a person who follows

the rules and does what he/she is told, or whether it is important to follow traditions or customs.

We have several measures of civic skills and resources. In the classic literature on political participation,

voluntary organizations play an important role. Verba, Schlozman and Brady have shown that in the United

States at least civic skills are learned particularly in churches, other face-to-face groups and at the

workplace. Putnam claims that voluntary associations might socialize their members into civic values that

are important for political engagement. Yet others argue that associations might display an important

network function which offers mobilization for political acts through one’s lifetime (Hooghe, Stolle and

Stouthysen 2003; Teorell 2003). We therefore included three associational measures: one that measures

membership in interest groups such as unions and professional organizations, one that measures

membership in cultural face-to-face groups such as churches and social groups, as well as membership in

so-called new type of checkbook organizations such as humanitarian groups or peace groups which often

do not bring members together. Furthermore we included a measure of employment status distinguishing

those with a job from those who do not work in order to understand how work and skills connected to

employment might influence political participation. In addition we also included a measure of skills learned

at the job, in our case skills of supervision which might positively influence political involvement. Given

our theoretical discussion, we expect that such resources might be more important for the more time-

consuming and regular traditional involvement types than for new forms of political participation.

At last, it might be interesting to understand whether certain types of participation are favored by different

political camps, and we therefore include a variable that measures left-right self placement of the

respondent.

Finally, we also included several control variables, such as those demographic variables that have been

shown to matter previously, as well as political interest, and since this dataset combines respondents from

older and stable European democracies and recent transition democracies, we also include a dummy

variable that distinguishes these experiences. As previously, we utilize logistic binary regressions for three

types of political acts this time: conventional participation (party membership, political organizational

membership, contacting politicians, donating money), new forms of participation (signing petitions and

political consumerism), and unconventional political acts (participation in demonstrations and illegal

actions).87

The results confirm our earlier analysis regarding gender, age and education. The traditional gender gap is

strongest for conventional acts, and its reversed for new forms such as political consumerism and signing

petitions. Education is always a significant predictor, and that is also true for political interest. And younger

people are significantly more engaged in new and unconventional acts, whereas less (though not

significantly so) in conventional acts.

For all three acts and controlled for various effects, citizens with left-leaning orientations are more involved

in political acts than citizens with right-leaning orientations, although the effect is strongest for

unconventional acts. Our control variable for Eastern Europe reveals interesting results that might be

helpful for the general interpretation of our findings. For new and unconventional acts, citizens in Eastern

Europe are clearly less involved, whereas they are more engaged in conventional politics than citizens in

Western democracies, controlled for various effects. We cannot really conclude anything definitive about

these findings as several interpretations are possible. Forms of political participation might develop

differently with the maturation of democratic practice, such that conventional politics are most important in

the early democratic phases and new forms develop with democratic experiences (or frustrations). Inglehart

86

The items scaled at a Cronbach’s alpha of .60, which is low, but still acceptable. 87

These three dependent variables are the result of a factor analysis of all political acts in the full ESS data

set which revealed three dimensions: conventional, new, and unconventional. The variables have been

coded as dummy variables distinguishing those who have engaged in this political acts form those who

have not.

and Welzel would argue that this process has its roots in economic development and prosperity and

resulting postmaterialist values which lead to a diversification of action repertoires.

Model I

Conventional

Participation

Model II

New forms

Model III

Unconventional

Cte. -.781 (.137)*** -1.911 (.138)*** -4.45 (.226)***

Demographic variables

Gender (male=ref.) .202 (.033)*** -.52 (.033)*** .115 (.053)*

Education level .047 (.005)*** .096 (.005)*** .040 (.007)***

Age

-15-30

-31-45

-46-60

-61+

***

-.036 (.055)

.041 (.053)

.17 (.051)***

ref.

***

.200 (.052)***

.229 (.051)***

.219 (.05)***

ref.

***

1.15 (.09)***

.547 (.093)***

.588 (.091)***

ref.

Attitudinal Controls

Left-Right Placement (0=left,

10=right)

-.04 (.008)***

-.062 (008)*** -.189 (.013)***

Political Interest .432 (.021)*** .519 (.020)*** .417 (.033)***

Eastern Europe

East=ref. -.142 (.05)** .96 (.05)*** .96 (.10)***

Workplace Civic Skills

Employed? (ref.) -.013 (.04) -.094 (.038)* .227 (.06)***

Supervision skills (ref.) -.326 (.035)*** -.146 (.035)*** .148 (.059)***

Associational Sources

Interest group member (ref.) -.220 (.037)*** -.385 (.036)*** -.143 (.059)*

Social-Cultural groups (ref.) -.624 (.035)*** -.396 (.033)*** -.200 (.055)***

Check book members (ref.) -.764 (.052)*** -.574 (.058)*** -.452 (.072)***

Church Attendance .57 (.011)*** .036 (.011)*** .027 (.019)

Distrust | Hierarchy

Political Trust -.01 (.017) .519 (.020)*** -.205 (.027)***

Anti-hierarchy .013 (.006)* .063 (.006)*** .045 (.009)***

International legitimacy -.009 (.008) .003 (.007) .037 (.012)** Nagelkerke’s r2 .17 .27 .13 Log Likelihood 23649.846 24654.893 11326.742 Chi square *** *** ***

Table 5: ESS excluding Israel and Slovenia.

Entries are results from a binary logistic regression, B and (SE) ***:<.001, **:<.01; *:<.05

Is it true that new forms of political participation require fewer civic skills and resources because they are

less time-consuming and performed less regularly? This did not turn out to be the case. Conventional acts

and new forms such as political consumerism are more performed by those who have learned supervision

skills at their workplace, whereas employment in itself does not have a strong effect. For unconventional

acts the relationship is reversed as they are more performed by citizens who do not work or who do not

supervise at work. Workplace skills do not transfer well to these kinds of engagements. However, all

participation acts are supported and mobilized by associational memberships of all kinds. The magnitude of

the effect is strongest for conventional political acts: The odds of non-members vis-à-vis members in

cultural groups and check book organizations to participate in traditional politics is only .50. At this stage

of our analysis we are unable to conclude whether this effect is due to civic skills learned in these groups,

socialization or network effects.

Finally, we examine whether citizens who are engaged in new and unconventional politics are also those

who are most distrusting of the national level institutions and of hierarchical structures. Interestingly,

political distrust is a significant factor for unconventional political forms, whereas new forms of

participation are supported by more political trust in national institutions. Given some theorizing about new

politics, this is a surprising finding, as we would have expected that political consumers, for example,

chose to target companies directly because they give less legitimacy to national political institutions. This is

not the case however. They also do not indicate that political decisions should be taken at the international

institutions. Yet, citizens engaged in new and unconventional politics clearly despise hierarchies and have

embraced anti-hierarchical values more than citizens engaged in conventional politics.

In sum, our results show then that only unconventional acts fit into the category of anti-system participation

dominated by those who distrust mainstream political institutions. New forms of participation such as

political consumerism and signing petitions are well integrated into existing political action repertoires and

they are wide-spread and require similar skills and resources as conventional politics. What distinguishes

them from conventional politics is that more people are currently political in this way, and disproportionate

shares of women and young people are drawn in. Furthermore, new as well as unconventional forms of

participation are disproportionally frequented by citizens who despise hierarchical values and structures.

Yet this sentiment does not translate into the fact that these citizens stop engaging in conventional political

ways. In fact there are hardly any citizens who only go for new or unconventional politics. This finding

does question the validity of the claims of the fourth camp of critics Western democracies do not yet shift

their action repertoires completely from conventional style politics to new forms of action.

Concluding Thoughts

Our examination of forms of political participation has revealed some interesting insights. In Western

democracies at least, we can observe a tendency that conventional politics is practiced less over time.

The critics of the second camp in the decline battle do not get it their way when it comes to political

participation: also in Europe this trend is similar to the one observed in North America, particularly

with regard to party membership and most likely contacting politicians.

Yet the third camp is correct, new forms of participation have blossomed over time. They have indeed

taken a different route than unconventional forms which have been practiced mostly by a minority of

people. What we find is that these new forms of participations are practiced by many more people than

conventional politics ever has (besides voting). This process has been accompanied by an emerging

inclusion of women and young citizens into these types of actions. Although some authors claim these

new actions are very different in nature and character, we have not found strong differences in the

factors related to these acts. In fact, new and unconventional political acts require education, political

interest, and associational connectedness as conventional acts.

Not all hypotheses of the fourth critical camp of the decline debate could be confirmed. Although

participants of new and unconventional forms are clearly anti-hierarchical, this anti-pathy has not

resulted in refraining from conventional politics altogether. Furthermore, although many of the

practitioners of new politics target companies directly, they are still trusting in their national level

institutions, more than those who do not engage in new politics. Perhaps, political consumers hope that

political institutions eventually regulate production practices of corporations. This is also the reason

why new politics is not necessarily connected to a more international outlook on politics (although

unconventional participation is).

Although young people seem more active when compared to the oldest group in our sample, in

comparison to 1974, they certainly are not anymore the forerunners of new forms of participation.

There might be several reasons for this finding: young people might experience delayed life cycle

effects which might prevent them from activism in their much expanded educational phase. It could be

a true generational effect confirming the fears of those who blame the decline on the low engagement

levels of young generations. Or another scenario would be that young generations engage already in

yet other new ways: they might forward political e-mails, join internet chat groups, or engage in

culture jamming. And we social scientists are just too slow in adapting our measurements to this kind

of social change.

Bibliography:

See part 1

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