Associations and the Exercise of Democratic ... - Citizenship DRC

IDS WORKING PAPER 285manner according to law. 7 These presuppositions underpin civic engagement’semphatic society-centered focus. The focus on the civic values (or motivation) andresources needed to voice interests presupposes, first, that the determinants ofpolitical participation are social rather than political. In the sophisticated civicengagement model developed by Verba et al. (1995: 3) engagement depends on thepossession of a combination of time, money, and civic skills which are acquired inthe family, school, the workplace, church, and/or voluntary association.Second, the societal focus presupposes that government responds to interests, oncevoiced, in a relatively unproblematic manner. Association, in this view, enhancespolitical participation because it (i) socialises individuals into core civic values – i.e.deliberation, tolerance, trust, reciprocity, and working collectively towards commongoals – and (ii) provides the civic skills and resources necessary to pursue these valuesin the public sphere (Putnam 2000: 338–9; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993: 12–16;Verba et al. 1995: 15–16, 528–9). Such a society-centered perspective precludes onefrom exploring questions about the (democratic) quality of citizens’ relations togovernment and the vertical power relations that shape these relations.Comparative democratisation, and work on new middle or low-income democraciesin particular, takes a different view. 8 Democracy depends not on individuals andtheir values and resources, but on political processes driven by collective actors andpolitical institutions involved in interest intermediation. The nature andresponsiveness of government to demands emanating from society is not assumedbut believed to be contingent. Responsiveness is explained by the power resourcesof collective actors and the institutional formations through which they negotiaterelations. 9 Whereas civic engagement is especially concerned with individualcitizens’ unequal endowment of motivation, skills and resources, comparativedemocratisation is concerned with inequality in relations between large classes ofcitizens and government, and the substantive content of citizenship. 10 Associations in7 The central question for democracy in the civic engagement literature is how cooperativebehaviour for a collective (or common) good can emerge in a world that is fundamentallyindividualistic and defined by the pursuit of narrow interests. In this literature it is theindividual citizen who must take responsibility for deciding who holds public office and forgenerating the pressure on government to respond to their interests and values (Verba et al.1995: 1). Civic engagement is consequently defined as any voluntary (non-paid) activity toinfluence government, or any other voluntary collective endeavour, such as participation inassociational life or in the community, or indeed in bowling (Putnam 1993, 2000;Rosenstone and Hansen 1993; Verba et al. 1995).8 This research agenda includes the work on democratic transitions (Schmitter, O’Donnelland Whitehead 1986), democratic consolidation (Linz and Stepan 1996; Mainwaring andScully 1995), measuring democracy (Przeworksi, Alvarez, Cheibub, and Limongi 2000), andthe quality of democracy (Diamond and Morlino 2005; O’Donnell 1993 and 2005).9 Increasingly, the nature and responsiveness of government is seen as contingent on itsrelation to different sectors of society, a relation constructed in an iterative process overextend periods of time (Skocpol 1992; Evans 1995 and 1996; Houtzager 2003; Whiteheadand Gray-Molina 2003).10 See for example Yashar’s (1999: 77 and 2005) discussion of corporatist and neoliberal‘citizenship regimes.’ Yashar combines the substantive content of citizenship (types of rights)and forms of interest mediation. See also Friedman and Hochstetler (2002).14