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Abstract
Scholarly enthusiasm for voluntary association activity has been elevated ever since Tocqueville's famed nineteenth century trip to the United States. Countless studies report that individuals who belong to voluntary groups are more likely to participate in democratic politics—a phenomenon transcending differences in education, income, and other factors. Yet precisely what fuels this relationship is not well understood.
Using data from the 1990 American Citizen Participation Study, this study specifies the mechanisms by which voluntary groups promote political participation. Multivariate techniques are used to generate an Organizational Influence Model of political participation. The results are surprising. Civic skills and recruitment are not alone in generating political involvement, despite their recent emphasis in the literature. Political exposure and the practice of other- and community-regarding perspectives in voluntary groups are also effective. Moreover, recruitment has the most widespread effects on political participation; civic skills matter markedly less.
While voluntary groups affect an array of participatory acts, their impact is especially potent locally. Local participation is decidedly contingent on social and organizational involvement, while national participation conforms to a traditional, resource-based model of political behavior. This finding has important implications for those concerned with revitalizing civic and political engagement. Grassroots civic renewal is likely to impact local, far more than national, participation.
The Organizational Influence Model is also applied to eleven individual participatory acts. Voting is the least organizationally-contingent of those tested, while nationally-focused “contacting” is the most. These and other individual acts are examined in detail.
While the effects of voluntary organizations on political participation are sizeable, they are noticeably inegalitarian. Group-based political exposure is far more potent among joiners who are already politically engaged. The practice of civic skills is much more likely to draw group leaders into political activity than the rank and file. Most disturbingly, privileged joiners are decidedly more likely to realize the participation-promoting effects of group activity than those in the lower income and educational brackets. Thus voluntary organizations reinforce traditional socioeconomic biases in democratic political participation.
This study has important implications for scholars studying political participation, social capital, communitarianism, civic engagement, and democratic theory.
