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

Figure 8-4 displays the relationship between inequality in a society and its level of elitechallenging
activism – both are only weakly linked (r = -.40 *** ), its distribution resembles
more an exponential than a linear function. There is a modest trend that more equal
societies are also more active, for example all postindustrial democracies in the upper left
of the figure, but most postcommunist societies with a similar score on the inequality
measure (here: low) show significantly lower levels of elite-challenging participation.
Tertiarization
As a third indicator for socioeconomic opportunity structures, the level of tertiarization is
introduced. The shift of the major workforce from the industrial to the service sector did
not only change the modes of production, but most importantly the communication
structures in a society. Information and knowledge formation have gained tremendous
importance, creating new demands for people at the workplace: “Service and knowledge
workers deal with people and concepts, operating in a world where innovation and the
freedom to exercise individual judgements are essential. Creativity, imagination, and
intellectual independence become central” (Inglehart and Welzel 2005: 28-29). The
experience of these activities does not leave people’s value orientations unaltered: They
show an increasing emphasis on autonomy, choice, creativity and self-expression, which
should be positively linked with elite-challenging activities.
Tertiarization is measured by subtracting the share of labor force working in industry
from the share of the labor force employed in the service sector of a society. Data come
from the International Labour Organization, more specifically from their Key Indicators
of the Labour Market (KILM, fifth edition, 2007). Most of the data refer to the year
2000. 65 Figure 8-5 shows how tertiarization and mass participation in a society are linked:
there is a positive relationship (r=.54 *** ), but with quite some deviation from the trend.
65 Missing or questionable data have been cross-checked with other data sources and then either replaced by
an alternative year of the ILO measure, or supplemented with data from the CIA Factbook (Nigeria 1999,
India 2003, Mali 2005) or from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE, Bosnia
Herzegovina 2006, Serbia and Montenegro 2000).
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