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

IDS WORKING PAPER 285the enjoyment of rights and entitlements constitutive of contemporary citizenship.The tradition in political science has been to focus on political participation, butmany of the new democracies fall particularly short on this civil dimension.Furthermore, with the dramatic expansion of both government’s duty to act andforms of societal accountability in the short twentieth century, this civil dimensionhas become increasingly important.The findings pose a particular challenge to the society-centered focus found in thecivic engagement debate. The different types of relations individuals have togovernment across the two cities, irrespective of their citizens’ common belief thatgovernment has the primary responsibility for providing access to public goods,points to the fact that the polity itself plays an important role in shaping activecitizenship. A society-centered approach cannot explain the difference in patternsbetween the two cities. And however much associations contribute to the civicvalues or skills of citizens, individuals who participate and who do not participate inassociations have the same types of relations to government – whether it is directrelations in São Paulo or detached or mixed relations in Mexico City.In our view, creating civil relations that conform more closely to the ideal underthe democratic rule of law may depend less on individual citizens’ values orbehaviour than on that of collective actors such as labour movements, socialmovements, networks of civil organisations and on the larger political game thatplays out in the institutional arena of the party system and institutions ofrepresentative democracy. Associational life, through its effect on individual citizens,does not produce a change in the type of civil relations to government. The qualityof the polity clearly does not improve as a result of the higher levels of activecitizenship to which associations contribute.A number of studies in affluent democracies show that participation in theassociational sphere, or civil society, has a strong class bias but in much democratictheory the assumption remains that this sphere is egalitarian and free of obstaclesto collective action. 46 Our findings confirm that associational participation is highlystratified outside of affluent western democracies as well. Even in cities such asSão Paulo and Mexico City, settings that are more likely to favour relatively equalparticipation, we find remarkable stratification across education, gender, andlabour market status. As a consequence, associations have only a limited, and adifferentiated, impact on the stratification of active citizenship, reducingeducation-based stratification to some extent but potentially increasing others,such as that by gender. The differences in forms and levels of stratificationbetween São Paulo and Mexico City, however, do warn against making a priori andsimplistic claims about the inherent inegalitarian nature of associational life.Political parties have historically played a central role in the political and legalconstruction of citizenship and in mediating citizen-government relations. In thispaper we have examined citizens’ relations to political parties only in terms of thelatter’s brokerage role. We do not examine citizens’ relations to parties in terms oftheir political-electoral role, as our concern is the civil dimension of citizenship and46 Putnam (2000); Verba et al. (1995); Rosenstone and Hansen (1993).40