Making Civil Society Work: Models of Democracy and Their Impact on Civic Engagement

Abstract

This article evaluates the influence of different models of democracy on individual volunteering in associations and organizations. More precisely, we investigate the extent to which the degree of liberal and participatory conceptions of democracy respectively shapes the conditions under which voluntary engagement thrives. We apply multilevel analysis-a method that corresponds well to the central hypothesis of institutional approaches and is most suitable for modeling the relationship between the democratic context and individual volunteering. We show that both a representative conception of democracy, as well as strong direct democracy, leads to advantageous conditions for civic engagement. In contrast, if the two models of democracy are combined, the two different logics of the democratic process disturb one another, resulting in less voluntary engagement.

Liberal and Radical Democracies: The Swiss Cantons Compared

“…533-534) summarize this widespread position as follows: "The Swiss cantons offer an excellent opportunity to assess the relevance of the participatory-inclusive and representative-delegative logic of democracy" whereby the German-speaking cantons match the former democracy type and the French-speaking cantons the latter. According to Stadelmann-Steffen and Freitag (2011), one can expect that the regional language differences of the two ideal types of democracy theory correspond to our dual measurement model. Thus the first hypothesis posits that the Swiss-German cantons follow the radical democracy model while Latin cantons match the liberal one.…”

“…Building on this new measuring instrument, the focus of this article is the empirical examination of the widespread language-cultural hypothesis of democracy-typical differences between the Latin and German-speaking cantons (Kriesi and Wisler 1996;Vatter 2002;Linder 2005Linder , 2010Freitag 2006;Ladner and Bühlmann 2007;Stadelmann-Steffen and Freitag 2011). Existing research assumes that the German-speaking cantons are characterized primarily by directdemocratic and participatory elements, while the Latin cantons are more liberalrepresentative oriented.…”

Vol 4 No 2 (Full Issue)

“…Differences between countries with respect to the types of voluntary activities are often considerable (Stadelman-Steffen & Freitag, 2011). In Finland, volunteering mostly takes place in the social and health sectors, and in connection with cultural, religious, sporting or other activities (Grönlund, 2012).…”

Civil Society and Political Participation: What Type of Political Participation is Influenced by Community Level Involvement in Civil Society?

“…To better understand the link between voluntary associations and specific forms of political participation, it is important to place voluntary associations in their political context (cf. Stadelmann‐Steffen and Freitag ; Schofer and Fourcade‐Gourinchas ).…”