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

IDS WORKING PAPER 285informal relations, and public sector workers have the highest participation rates.The consequences of this distribution are starker for São Paulo, which has both alarger share of workers in informal employment and a smaller public sector). 35Summarising, associational participation is far more stratified than citizenship activity.Direct relations to government are, in turn, considerably more stratified than otherforms of civil relations to government. The sharp stratification of associationalparticipation suggests that any citizenship gains from participation in associationswill be distributed unevenly across the population.4.4 Associational participation and citizenshipIs there a correlation between participation in associations and active citizenship,and to the desirable direct civil relations to government in particular? To answer inpurely descriptive terms we leave aside for now concerns about the direction ofcausality and possible selection biases (addressed below). The share of the populationin the two cities that participate in associations and are active citizens is 17 per centin São Paulo and 24.4 per cent in Mexico City. Because about a third of thepopulation in both cities participates in associations, the higher percentage inMexico City reflects the larger share of the population that is active in that city.We find that individuals who participate in associations are more likely to be activecitizens than their counterparts without such participation. In São Paulo, an individualwho participates in the activities of associations is twice as likely to be an active citizenas those who do not, whereas in Mexico City the likelihood increases by 50 per cent.The correlation between associational participation and civil relations is thereforeparticularly strong in São Paulo. It is nonetheless substantial in Mexico City as well.Figure 4.3 Percentage of population that are active citizenship,with associational participation and with none35 The share in informal employment is far higher in São Paulo (50 per cent) than in MexicoCity (37 per cent), while the public sector is far smaller (4 per cent of workers) than inMexico City (19 per cent), and almost half of all workers have formal private sectoremployment in the two cities (around 45 per cent).30