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

IDS WORKING PAPER 2855.2 Socio-economic stratification of active citizenshipThe probit models tell us that associational participation, education, and someaspects of labour market insertion are very likely to influence active citizenship,mobilising government, and direct civil relations. These three factors are of course notdistributed randomly across the population in the cities. The socio-economiccomposition of the population in São Paulo and Mexico City raise two importantquestions. First, who then is more likely to be an active citizen in each of thecities? And secondly, to what extent is socio-economic stratification reflected inactive citizenship? We answer these questions by converting the probit modelcoefficients into the probability that a citizen with a particular set of characteristics,for example low education and associational participation, will be active or havedirect civil relations to government in each of the cities. 41 Tables 5.1 and 5.2 describethe predictions for each city.In São Paulo the probabilities reveal more clearly the importance of associationalparticipation, as well as the powerful impact socio-economic stratification has onactive citizenship. We find that individuals who participate in associations are twiceas likely to be active citizens as those without such participation, and that only thosewith associational participation are statistically likely to have the desirable direct civilrelations to government (Table 5.1). Individuals without associational participationhave such a low likelihood of having direct relations that it is statistically close tozero. Individuals with primary education or less, we estimate, are far less likely tobe active citizens than their counterparts with higher education, and very unlikelyto have direct relations. That is, only 20 per cent of those with primary educationor less, a fifth of the city’s population, are likely to be active and statistically thelikelihood of direct relations is almost zero. In contrast, 53 per cent of people withhigher education are active and 21 per cent have direct relations. Educationtherefore is likely to have a particularly large influence on direct civil relations.The picture in Mexico City is different. Associational participation and education alsoinfluence the likelihood of active citizenship, but not nearly as much as in São Paulo.Table 5.2 shows that in Mexico City 78 per cent of individuals who participate inassociations are likely to be active citizens, whereas 46.4 per cent of individualswithout participation are active. The gap between those with and withoutassociational participation is therefore proportionally smaller than in São Paulo. Wedo not have a model for direct relations in Mexico City. Table 5.2 also reveals that72.3 per cent of people with some higher education and 53.1 per cent of thosewith secondary education or less are active citizens. Again, education-basedstratification exists but it is far less than in São Paulo. We noted earlier on that inMexico City there is no statistically significant difference in active citizenshipbetween people with primary education or less and those with some secondaryeducation.41 We average the predictions generated by the models described in Tables B.1 and B.2 overindividual’s specific characteristics. For example, the proclivity for each individual withassociational participation is the predicted probability value; the average is obtained fromthese values for those with such participation.34