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

Based on pooled data from the World Values Survey/European Values Survey 1999-2001
and 2005-2007, Figure 5-1 shows for more than 80 societies how much experience
people have in signing petitions, attending demonstrations, joining boycotts, etc. The bars
indicate the share of people who have participated in at least one elite-challenging
activity, ranging from less than 10 percent in Jordan or Malaysia up to more than 80
percent of participants in New Zealand or Sweden. In general, the highest levels of elitechallenging
activities can be found among the English-speaking societies. New Zealand,
the United States, Great Britain, Australia and Canada make up five of the top ten most
active societies, with the Irish publics still being in the top quarter. Signing petitions has
been traditionally high in English-speaking societies as it requires little effort for the
signer, and it has reached participation levels comparable to voting (Parry, Moyser and
Day 1992: 46; Dalton 2002: 62). Most of the established Western democracies follow,
with at least half of the population engaging in elite-challenging activities. A continuous
exception to that are the democracies in Southern Europe, Spain and Portugal, displaying
lower levels (about 30 percent) of activism (see also Norris 2002: 199).
The lowest third of the figure is largely composed of three groups: Islamic societies
(Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Morocco, Azerbaijan), postcommunist
societies (Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Estonia, Belarus, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Georgia, Albania) and Latin-American societies (Mexico, Venezuela,
Colombia, Chile, Argentina). These groups are not inclusive. In particular among the
post-communist societies there are ‘deviant’ cases such as the Czech Republic or
Slovakia with relatively high activity levels. However, altogether elite-challenging
activities tend to be less pronounced outside well-developed societies.
This finding would support modernization theory in its suggestion that socio-economic
development has an important impact on people’s values and behavior. To examine this
in a second step Figure 5-2 groups the societies according to the World Bank’s
assessment of their economic performance. The World Bank uses the simple measure of
the gross national income (GNI) to generate four categories, ranging from low-income
societies (935 $) to high-income societies (11.456 $ and more). Even though the
limitation of a single indicator should be taken into consideration, a simple grouping of
this kind offers already interesting results. In general, levels of elite-challenging activities
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