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

mobilized into elite-challenging activities. This aspect also poses the biggest challenge to
the future study of non-institutionalized participation. Early studies have almost
exclusively focused on personal resources and motivation, whereas social movement and
activists studies have rather examined network structures and mobilization effects. The
main objective of future studies should be to bring those two approaches together.
Finally, the consequence dimension of elite-challenging activities deserves further
attention. Almost all theoretical approaches to political participation make implicit (a
few: explicit) claims about the consequences of an increase or decrease, or a specific
composition of determinants of non-institutionalized actions – be it for democracy,
political inequality, social cohesion, or democratic accountability. A systematic empirical
testing of these propositions, however, is rather scarce. Instead, anecdotal evidence is
presented, or individual-level findings are the basis for drawing conclusions on the
societal level. 85 Without systematically testing the proposed relationships at the adequate
level of analysis, the conclusions made must remain speculative. In my point of view, this
is especially true for the recuring crisis scenarios in the relationship between the citizen
and the state.
Looking at the long-term implications of rising elite-challenging activities for
contemporary representative democracies, the consequences largely depend on the ability
of democratic institutions to adapt to those changes in the citizen participation repertoire.
The direction and speed of social change and individualization processes make it very
unlikely that the withdrawal from traditional – largely hierarchical – mass organizations
that we could observe over the past decades is trend that can be reversed. This study has
shown that citizens are not turning their back on politics per se, but that they get involved
on their own terms when they are concerned about specific political or social issues. In
the past, democracies have proved to be astonishingly flexible and adaptive in meeting
challenges. The great challenge for contemporary democracies today – which is at the
same time a tremendous potential – is to reform the democratic process to meet these
participation demands by its citizens.
85 This means committing an individualistic fallacy (Inglehart and Welzel 2003: 62).
200