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

signing petitions. Major accounts of political participation were used to derive hypotheses
about how participation in non-institutionalized forms has changed over time, how these
activities can be explained and what implication they have for contemporary
democracies. Table C-1 provides a summarizing overview of the hypotheses testing:
some propositions found support in the analyses, while others did not. The main findings
of the five empirical chapters are:
Dynamics of elite-challenging activities
Over the past 30 years, participation in demonstrations, petitions and political
consumerism has increased in almost all regions of the world. There are pronounced
cross-country differences, most of which can be explained by the societies’ socioeconomic
development. Elite-challenging activities are particularly widespread in
postindustrial democracies – on average two thirds of the population have participated in
these activities. However, even in low income societies this form of participation is more
than a marginal phenomenon. The cultural variant of modernization theory suggested this
increase of elite-challenging activities whereas the social capital account, represented by
Putnam, claimed a general decrease of civic activism that expanded to noninstitutionalized
participation. No empirical evidence could be found for the latter
proposition: Rather, people are becoming increasingly active through demonstrations and
petitions, and they have discovered the marketplace as a political arena to pressure elites
by altering their own day-to-day consumption behavior. Citizens in contemporary
democracies have not withdrawn from participation in general but supplemented their
traditional action repertoire, using diversified channels to make their voices heard.
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