Participation and Democracy: Dynamics, Causes ... - Jacobs University

Summarizing the results so far, elite-challenging activities as forms of community
involvement depend both on networks and trust, in short: they are an outcome of social
capital. Social capital was examined in its effect on collective activities on two levels: as
an individual characteristic (embeddedness in a network and social trust) and a societal
condition (organizing capacity of a society) for participation. However, as the two-level
characteristics have not been included in one and the same analysis, it is not possible to
determine whether social capital has the greater impact on participating in elitechallenging
activities as an individual or as a societal characteristic. This will be done
now in a final step: social capital variables on the individual and on the societal level will
be incorporated into one multilevel model explaining people’s participation in elitechallenging
activities.
As understanding the logic of multilevel models is necessary to follow the interpretation
of the results, this final empirical test is presented in more detail. A multilevel analysis
allows singling out independent effects of the variables on each level on a dependent
variable (measured on the lowest possible level), but also interaction effects between
level-1 (individual level) and level-2 (societal level) factors that might explain why
people participate. As the dependent variable, participation in elite-challenging activities,
is measured as a dichotomous variable, a hierarchical nonlinear regression model must be
applied. A nonlinear model (also: generalized linear model) is in many ways similar to a
linear model, except that the level-1 model follows a logistic function instead of a linear
one. In general, a multilevel model follows a three-step logic. In the first model, only
individual-level predictors are included; the second model introduces the direct effects of
societal-factors; the third model is the full model that finally incorporates the interaction
effects.
As a first step, a baseline model is calculated, taking into account individual-level
variables only (Model 1). For the social capital model explaining elite-challenging
activities, these are (1) membership in voluntary associations, (2) embeddedness in
informal networks, and (3) social trust. It is assumed that group differences can be
observed, meaning that the individual-level variables have different effects across
societies. The first model looks like this:
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