Permeable Participation: Civic Engagement and Protest Mobilization in 20 OECD Countries,1981

Abstract

Civic engagement and protest mobilization have generally been treated as distinct activities, with separate literatures examining each form of participation. This differentiation largely rests on the political nature of protest, which is treated as inconsistent with more apolitical civic engagement. We argue that the boundaries between protest participation and civic engagement became more permeable over time. We link this to consistency in the profiles of individuals who become engaged and the institutionalization of protest, which expanded the participatory base of protest to new groups. Using four waves of the European and World Values Survey, we analyze 78,524 individuals from 20 member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Results from a multilevel multinomial logistic regression analysis demonstrate that while there have been modest increases in protesting and civic engagement over time, individuals participating in both types of activities have experienced the most growth, consistent with our argument.

Keywords

protest participation civic engagement volunteerism World Values Survey

Introduction

Several decades of research on civic engagement and social movement mobilization have produced robust literatures detailing when, how, and why individuals join organizations, attend demonstrations, volunteer, or otherwise become involved in civic life (Dalton 2013; Norris 2002; Putnam 2000; Sampson et al. 2005). Despite the growth of attention to participation in social movements and civic engagement, work on these topics has progressed largely independently, omitting systematic consideration of the substantial overlap in both types of participation (Minkoff 1997). This is unfortunate that the line between different types of engagement has become more blurred over time. Robert Sampson et al. (2005) find that Chicago witnessed an increase of hybrid events, which combine elements of both protest and civic engagement. Consequently, questions remain open concerning who participates and the degree to which the profiles of joiners are consistent across different types of activities, and this is especially true over time.

The body of research on these topics points to differences and similarities in the profiles for the types of individuals who participate in social movements or in civic associations. Among those with high levels of civic engagement, some have found that considerable suspicion is directed at explicitly political forms of participation by participants (Bennett et al. 2013). Social movements scholars have argued in favor of an expansion of protest tactics across a much wider set of the population (Dodson 2015b; Meyer and Tarrow 1998). Further research to assess and compare who participates in particular types of activity can provide a more unified perspective on how individuals become engaged, whether in civic associations, social movements, or both.

Understanding patterns of engagement is important, as heated debates have emerged about trajectories of how individuals participate in a wide variety of activities. Robert D. Putnam (2000), for example, famously argues that civic engagement has declined in the United States, unleashing a torrent of inquiry into the state of civic engagement in western democratic societies (see Stolle and Hooghe 2005 for discussion). Yet those who would traditionally join civic associations may have drifted over to participate in more explicitly political activities. Several studies suggest that as protest becomes institutionalized, social movement tactics diffused to new social groups in western democratic states (Meyer 2007; Meyer and Tarrow 1998; Tarrow 2011). Research taking a more inclusive view of participation is needed to more accurately assess patterns of engagement, as well as to assess the growth or contraction in how individuals become joiners over time.

This research addresses the limitations of prior work by examining both protest participation and civic engagement, contextualizing the ebb and flow of participation, broadly understood, by time and place. To do so, we argue that portfolios of engagement, which represent the set of participatory activities available to and of interest to individuals, have grown over time. We interpret this process as the growth of permeable participation, where the boundaries between civic engagement and social movement mobilization have become less rigid as historically salient divisions between explicitly political and apolitical activities have faded, and protest has become increasingly institutionalized in western democracies (McCarthy and McPhail 1998; Meyer and Tarrow 1998). To examine how participation in both protest and civic life has evolved, we use four waves of the European and World Values Survey (2014; hereafter WVS) to analyze 78,524 individuals residing in 20 member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) between 1981 and 2009. We estimate multilevel multinomial logistic regression models and show that despite significant country-level variability, there is strong evidence that, in general, individuals’ portfolios of engagement have expanded, and participation has become more permeable.

Civic Engagement, Protest, and Permeable Participation

The literatures on social movement mobilization and civic engagement have historically operated in parallel with surprisingly little cross-communication. Debra C. Minkoff (1997) suggests the source of the disjuncture is the framing of civic engagement as a process that increases social trust and generally operates to the benefit of communities, while social movement mobilization is viewed as contentious engagement of national scope that proffers comparatively fewer benefits to local communities. Research has long suggested, however, that social movement mobilization can produce public goods that benefit all (Olson 1965), making this juxtaposition of civic engagement and protest mobilization less salient when considering participation in practice.

One issue repeatedly used to differentiate the two lines of research is a conceptual boundary placed between overtly political and apolitical forms of participation. This distinction is perhaps most apparent in the empirical literature on protest participation and civic engagement. Much of the literature on civic engagement, for example, concentrates primarily on participation in apolitical community, professional, or fraternal organizations (e.g., Beyerlein and Hipp 2006; Driskell, Lyon, and Embry 2008; Egerton 2002; Leroux 2007). A review of the empirical research on social movement mobilization suggests that few quantitative studies include measures of civic engagement as independent variables (Corrigall-Brown 2011; Dodson 2015b; Schussman and Soule 2005).

The distinction between political and apolitical engagement is sometimes, but not always, present in conceptual discussions of what activities count as civic engagement. Joakim Ekman and Erik Amnå’s (2012) typology explicitly treats activism as a separate form of engagement, noting that while civic engagement and political mobilization are similar in their collective nature, they are chiefly distinguished by the political nature of the latter relative to a more apolitical focus of the former. Several scholars have argued that “civic engagement” has been widely stretched, encompassing all types of activity ranging from voting to joining a bowling league (Adler and Goggin 2005; Berger 2009). More general discussions of volunteering in civic associations, such as the work by John Wilson (2000) and Marc A. Musick and John Wilson (2008), are more inclusive in their orientation. Wilson (2000:215), for instance, defines volunteering quite broadly as “. . . any activity in which time is given freely to benefit another person, group, or organization.” We adopt his definition here, as it not only captures the ethos of other widely used definitions of civic engagement (e.g., Putnam 2000:49) but also concentrates on the concrete activities that people do, opening up a wider range of participatory options than distinctions resting on the political nature of involvement.

While research on civic engagement has debated extensively over how to best conceptualize and operationalize the concept, social movements scholars have been more unified. Research has made it clear that the set of tactics available to social movements are highly varied (Tilly 2004), that the set of targets available to social movement actors are a product of multi-institutional political fields (Armstrong and Bernstein 2008). However, an extensive number of scholars have focused on protest participation as a proxy of broader social movement mobilization (see, for example, Caren, Ghoshal, and Ribas 2011; Dalton 2013; Norris 2002; Schussman and Soule 2005). Participating in a protest differs in longevity compared with joining an organization; however, protest remains a highly symbolic activity, as it requires airing one’s political views in a public forum. As a result, it represents a reasonable proxy of broader social movement mobilization.

Expanding Portfolios of Engagement and Permeable Participation

While to some degree an intuitive difference exists between joining a bowling league and attending a demonstration, we propose a more unified approach, grounded in how individuals make choices when a wide variety of participatory options is available. We argue that framing the debate around the permeability of participation yields conceptual leverage over understanding patterns of engagement over place and time. By permeability, we refer to the degree to which individuals are specialized and concentrate their efforts in only one type of participation, or, instead, whether there is overlap in one’s portfolio of engagement—the set of activities that an individual participates in—that cuts across distinctions between civic life and protest mobilization.

This has the advantage of shifting focus from participation in specific activities to a broader emphasis on concrete decisions individuals make about how to use their discretionary time, as evidenced by their actions. At the same time, our emphasis on portfolios of participation and permeable participation allows us to bridge two literatures that are often lacking in communication (Minkoff 1997), and provides a more inclusive and exhaustive way to understand the choices individuals make when it comes to finding an outlet for participation. We suggest that the boundaries between civic engagement and protest have become more permeable over time, as a result of two factors. First, the degree to which civic engagement is apolitical is questionable, and as we discuss below, many aspects of volunteering and community work have either implicit or explicit political connotations. Second, the nature of protest has changed considerably in western democratic states over time, which may make the boundaries between civic engagement and social movement mobilization more permeable. We now discuss each of the points in more detail.

The politics of engagement and participatory overlap

In practice, the line between apolitical volunteering and political advocacy regularly blurs (Eliasoph 2013), and civic engagement can be a politicizing process that may in turn spur participation in social movement activities (Walker 2008). Instead, both bodies of literature refer to considerable similarities not only in the profile of individuals who join either type of activity but across several other key dimensions as well. Table 1 compares both types of engagement, outlining major points of similarity and difference between the two types of engagement.

Table 1.

Comparison of Civic Engagement and Protest Participation across Key Dimensions.

	Civic engagement	Protest participation
Demographic characteristics	Male, mid or high socioeconomic status, young, white, employed (Foster-Bey 2008; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995)	Male, mid or high socioeconomic status, young, white, employed (Fisher et al. 2005; McAdam and Paulsen 1993)
Educational attainment	At least some postsecondary education completed (Campbell 2009; Egerton 2002)	At least some postsecondary education completed (Schussman and Soule 2005), college students (McAdam 1990; Putnam 2000)
Family and relationship status	Married, few or no children (Galston 2001)	Single, few or no children (Corrigall-Brown 2011; McAdam 1986)
Political orientation	Political left and right (Smith 2013), a politicizing effect of participation (Eliasoph 2013; Walker 2008)	Progressive or leftist (McAdam 1988; Norris 2002; Oegema and Klandermans 1994), increasing use by the right over time (von Beyme 2013)
Religious participation	Positive (Levitt 2008) or selective impact (Beyerlein and Hipp 2006; Driskell, Lyon, and Embry 2008)	Positive (Morris 1986), selective (Sherkat and Blocker 1993), or null impact (Corrigall-Brown 2011)
Scope of activity	Local, community oriented (Putnam 2000)	National (Minkoff 1997), transnational (Tarrow 2005)
Temporal trajectory	Decreasing participation (Putnam 2000:200) or unclear trajectory (Stolle and Hooghe 2005)	Increasing participation (Meyer and Tarrow 1998) or unclear trajectory (Soule and Earl 2005)

Civic engagement and protest participation overlap substantially across several key dimensions, most notably in the demographics and educational attainment of individuals who become engaged. In both cases, the modal participant comes from a relatively privileged background: They are white, middle or upper class, have at least some level of postsecondary education, are employed, and, on average, young. However, the two groups are not identical. College students often have atypically high levels of involvement in protest mobilization (see Van Dyke 1998; Van Dyke, Dixon, and Carlon 2007). Civic engagement is generally local in scope, whereas protest more often focuses on national or transnational issues. Another point of distinction is that individuals who become engaged in civic life are more likely to be married (Galston 2001), while individuals who have protested are more likely to be single (Corrigall-Brown 2011). Last, the two types of engagement have different temporal trajectories in terms of how rates of participation have changed, though there is debate in both literatures on the extent and direction of engagement.

The institutionalization of protest

A second reason to expect that the boundaries between civic engagement and social movement mobilization have become more permeable over time rests on profound changes in the nature of the latter that have both widened the set of actors who use social movement tactics, and reduced the overall level of contentious political activism (Meyer and Tarrow 1998). In particular, we argue that the boundaries of participation in civic life and social movement mobilization have become more permeable as a consequence of the institutionalization of protest in western democratic societies. By institutionalization, we refer to the standardization and routinization of protest tactics coupled with the ascendance of professional organizations that spur much of the social movement mobilization in western democratic countries (McCarthy and McPhail 1998; McCarthy and Zald 1977).

Scholars have theorized that protest has diffused to groups across the political spectrum, and the tactic has a broadening appeal to social groups that did not traditionally rely on demonstrating to voice their concerns, which David S. Meyer and Sidney G. Tarrow (1998) describe as the advent of social movement societies. This hypothesis makes a variety of claims (Meyer and Tarrow 1998:4) that have been the subject of fairly vigorous debate unearthing confirmatory and disconfirming evidence (see, for example, Caren et al. 2011; Soule and Earl 2005). Nonetheless, research has verified that demonstrating is a regularly invoked component of the political engagement in western democratic nation-states (Dalton 2013), and this appears to hold even in nation-states that have lower levels of democratization and economic development (Norris 2002). A recent review of social movement society hypothesis by David S. Meyer and Amanda Pullum (2015) suggests that the kernel of its insight remains correct: Protest has diffused widely and has become a standard form of engagement in western democracies, and likely beyond.

A central reason for the expansion of protest is a by-product of its institutionalization: As protest becomes more quotidian and less contentious, barriers to participation are lowered. Several studies have confirmed that the tactics used by social movements have softened over time. Doug McAdam et al. (2005) and Sampson et al. (2005), for example, find that protest in Chicago became increasingly peaceful and predictable over time, as did a survey of contemporary activism by John D. McCarthy, Patrick Rafail, and Ashley Gromis (2013). Research has long shown that repression can result in disengagement from social movement mobilization and that fear of repression can increase an individual’s reluctance to participate (Earl 2005; Opp and Roehl 1990), while more confrontational tactics may limit participation of specific social groups (Dodson 2015a). It follows that the ascendance of more peaceful forms of activism will open up protest participation to a wider variety of groups.

Summary

We have argued that the literatures on civic engagement and protest often operate in parallel, despite overlap in the characteristics of joiners. Drawing on these similarities, as well as the historical shift where protest becomes institutionalized, we hypothesize that participation has become more permeable over time, resulting in an expanded portfolio of engagement for western democratic countries. An implication of our hypothesis is that if participation has become more permeable, we should expect an expanded portfolio of engagement. Specifically, if the boundaries between participating in civic life and protest have become more permeable, we should expect to see a growth in individual engagement in both types of activities. Research has been somewhat ambiguous on this point, and inquiry that is both cross-national and temporally sensitive is needed to assess trends in multiple types of participation. We now turn to a statistical analysis that engages with these issues directly.

Data and Method

This analysis uses the cumulative longitudinal files of the WVS (2014), an international effort to conduct large, nationally representative, cross-sectional surveys in waves that began in 1981 and continue to the present in more than 90 nation-states. The WVS collects information pertaining to beliefs, values, and motivations of individuals throughout the world on numerous topics. As noted in the WVS documentation, each survey wave is based on a probability sample with a minimum size of 1,000 people over the age of 18 for each participating nation-state, though often a much higher sample size is attained. The surveys use a combination of face-to-face and phone interviews. The sampling strategy requires repeated contact attempts as replacement of participants is generally permitted, resulting in high response rates. Specific response rates vary by wave and country and can be found in the technical documentation (see WVS 2014). The survey’s variables cover a wide variety of topics, including one’s protest participation record, civic engagement patterns, ideological orientations, religiosity, and a relatively exhaustive set of demographic variables. Each participating country’s survey shares a common dictionary of core questions and survey methodology that permits integration and facilitates cross-national analysis, though beyond the core set of questions, individual countries may include questions on additional topics.

This study analyzes data from 20 countries in the WVS: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States.¹ The selected countries have been members of the OECD since before 1990, indicating long-term stability and development in those nations. The 1990 cutoff date also excludes former members of the Soviet Union, which went through political transitions outside the scope of the social movement society hypothesis. Other factors in country selection come from the practical reason that not all countries included questions necessary for constructing the dependent variable, such as those on civic engagement and protest participation. The remaining 20 countries in both the OECD and WVS fit the criteria of nation-states where protest has become institutionalized (Meyer and Tarrow 1998), and therefore are suitable to assess our discussion of the permeability of participation.

We include four waves of the WVS in our analysis, each based on the combination of independent cross-sectional surveys for each county: Wave 1 took place between 1981 and 1984, Wave 2 between 1989 and 1990, Wave 3 is based on data collected between 1999 and 2001, and Wave 4 occurred between 2008 and 2009. A relatively high level of consistency in the core questionnaire across all waves and among the countries surveyed makes the integrated WVS ideal for cross-national comparisons. We use all available waves of the WVS for the selected countries when the key variables of interest for this analysis are included.

Several advantages come with this research design. First, the theory under study, on the development of protest and civic engagement participation, has been previously tested through empirical research on developed western countries such as the OECD countries included here. Inclusion of these OECD countries adds to the existing empirical evidence regarding these theories. Accordingly, if there is empirical support for our hypotheses, one can reasonably assume it will be most pronounced in these countries. Second, the nuances within the political, economic, and social structures particular to each country are controlled for by the use of multilevel models, as we discuss below. This allows for more powerful cross-national comparative strategy, as several potentially confounding variables that are difficult to quantify are implicitly controlled for. Third, analyzing a 28-year window is a sufficient length of time to allow for direct assessment of changes in patterns of civic engagement and protest behavior.

Variables and Operationalization

The focal dependent variable in this study measures different types of engagement using four categories: (1) protest participation only, (2) civic engagement only, (3) both protest participation and civic engagement, and (4) no participation in either activity. To construct this variable, we first built a measure of participation in protest activity by summing indicators for whether the respondent had participated in a lawful demonstration, attended an unofficial strike, occupied a building or factory, and engaged in property damage, or used violence in the course of political activities. Then, we recoded this variable into whether (= 1) or not (= 0) the respondent had engaged in any of those forms of protest. Next, we constructed an indicator for civic engagement using 14 variables in the WVS listing affiliation or completing unpaid work in different types of civic associations, including those focusing on sports, culture, youth, welfare, health, or communal organizations, as well as professional associations. Similar to protest, we summed these indicators and then recoded them to a binary measure of whether the respondent had any form of participation in these associations. To build our polytomous dependent variable, we combined these two measures, ultimately producing the four categories noted above. The advantage of this operationalization is that it allows us not only to examine the individuals who select only one of the two major types of engagement that we analyze here but also to compare the profile of these individuals with those who participate in both protest and civic associations. This more inclusive operationalization therefore allows room for individuals to be selective in how they participate, while providing a category for those with a more expansive portfolio of engagement.

We use five substantive groupings of independent variables in our statistical analysis. The first contains eight demographic factors that influence the likelihood of either protest participation or civic engagement. Specifically, we use a dichotomous indicator for sex (female = 0; male = 1), the respondent’s marital status (single = 1; all other statuses = 0), whether the respondent works full-time (yes = 1; other = 0), and a count variable measuring the number of children the respondent had at time of survey. We also include a variable for age, however, we use its natural logarithm in our analyses to reduce skewness.² Next, we built an indicator variable for whether (= 1) or not (= 0) the respondent had completed at least some college.³ Last, we use two variables to measure income, which are indicators for whether respondent reported having middle (yes = 1; 0 = no) or high (yes = 1; 0 = no) income.⁴ We use individuals with low income as the reference category in our statistical models.

Our second variable group focuses on the political views held by each respondent. This is operationalized using two indicators for whether (= 1) or not (= 0) the respondent held left-wing or right-wing political views at the time of survey. These indicators are based on where each respondent placed themselves on a scale from 1 (left) to 9 (right). This was recoded such that individuals responding with 1, 2, or 3 were treated as aligning to the left and 7, 8, or 9 were coded as right wing. Several cases had missing values on this variable, and to minimize listwise deletion, we adopted an alternative strategy that recoded the missing respondents based on their mean response to several other items measuring political ideology. Specifically, if on average the respondent valued equality over freedom, income equalization over the free market, state control of business over the free market, government responsibilities over individual rights, and the right for unemployed people to refuse a job, they were coded as belonging to the left. Those who answered in opposition were coded as belonging to the right. These variables had similar 1 to 9 scales as the original scale of political views, and similar conventions were used to impute the missing cases (i.e., 1–3 = left; 7–9 = right). To ensure that this recoding was successful, the frequency distributions of these variables were examined for the nonmissing cases, and this pointed to a high level of agreement. Moderates are used as the reference category.

Our third block of variables uses two measures to gauge religious attendance. First, we use an indicator for whether each respondent frequently attended religious services, which we defined as daily, weekly, or monthly attendance (1 = yes; 0 = no). Our second variable is for respondents who occasionally attend religious services (1 = yes; 0 = no). We define occasional attendance as participating in religious services only on specific holy days, or attending annually or less. Individuals who did not attend religious services are the reference category for our analysis.

Fourth, we use a single measure of trust, which we operationalize as whether (= 1) or not (= 0) the respondent reported that most people could be trusted. Although most often discussed as an outcome of civic engagement (e.g., Putnam 2000), research has found that there is also a bidirectional relationship between engaging in social movement mobilization and trust (Garate, Cohen, and Perez 2010). Other measures of trust were not asked in a systematic manner across the different countries in our sample and would have increased the number of missing cases.

To examine the evolution of different types of participation over time, our final group of variables contains a series of indicators for survey wave, all coded as 1 = yes and 0 = no. Our analytic sample makes use of four waves of the WVS: Wave 1, which took place between 1980 and 1984; Wave 2, between 1989 and 1990; Wave 3, which occurred between 1999 and 2001; and Wave 4, between 2008 and 2009. Although there are other waves of the WVS, these are the only four that contain the core variables for our countries of interest. The measures of civic engagement, for example, were not asked in other waves of the WVS. In our statistical analysis, Wave 1 is used as the reference category, which allows us to examine trends in participation, and whether they expand, contract, or stay the same over time.

Analytic Strategy

Our analysis uses multilevel multinomial logistic regression, which controls for country-level variation in the WVS that may influence types of participation (Gelman and Hill 2007). As we assume that there may be country-level covariation linked to the type of engagement one pursues, we allow covariation across our different response categories. In all of our analyses, we use the base category of no participation in either protest activities or civic engagement. A central advantage to multilevel models is that they do not require an identical set of time-points for all of the countries we examine (Gelman and Hill 2007). Although the WVS is generally consistent over time, in certain nation-states key questions needed for our analysis were not used in a specific wave. Our analytic strategy is sufficiently flexible that this does not pose a problem for our study.

Results

Descriptive statistics for our variables are provided in Table 2. On the whole, nearly 50 percent of the cases in our analytic sample did not report any form of participation, whether in protest or civic associations. Among those that do participate, the most common outlet is civic engagement only, which represented another 28 percent of our sample. Although less frequent, our categories for both protest alone and both types of engagement still, respectively, represent 12 and 14 percent of cases. Our sample’s demographics suggest a relatively even split between men and women, approximately 24 percent are single, and nearly 42 percent of respondents work full-time. On average, respondents had between one and two children and were 41 years old. Forty-three percent of respondents consider themselves in the middle income bracket while 28 percent are high income. The majority of respondents in the WVS are political moderates, as 15.7 percent consider themselves politically on the left wing, while 14.9 percent identify as right wing politically. Most individuals reported at least some level of religious attendance, with 33.7 percent frequently attending religious services and 33.4 percent occasionally attending. Many respondents also reported having trust in others, with approximately 40 percent of cases answering in the affirmative. Finally, the sample is relatively evenly split across the four waves of the WVS that we examine here. There are slightly more cases in Waves 2 and 3 and somewhat fewer in the first wave, but the sample provides a reasonably consistent cross-section of the countries we examine over time.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics of Variables Used in the Analyses (N = 78,524).

	M or proportion	SD	Minimum	Maximum
Type of participation
No participation	0.460		0	1
Protest only	0.121		0	1
Civic engagement only	0.278		0	1
Both types	0.140		0	1
Demographics
Male	0.476		0	1
Single	0.239		0	1
Work full-time	0.416		0	1
Number of children	1.687	1.570	0	16
Age (ln)	3.717	0.412	2.708	4.682
At least some college	0.215		0	1
Middle income	0.434		0	1
High income	0.277		0	1
Political views
Left-wing political views	0.157		0	1
Right-wing political views	0.149		0	1
Religious attendance
Frequent religious attendance	0.337		0	1
Occasional religious attendance	0.334		0	1
Trust
Respondent has trust in others	0.393		0	1
Survey wave
Wave 1	0.198		0	1
Wave 2	0.282		0	1
Wave 3	0.279		0	1
Wave 4	0.241		0	1

Source. Data are drawn from the European and World Values Survey, 1981–2009.

The overall distribution of participation in Table 2 masks significant variation in how respondents engaged with social movement mobilization, civic associations, or both, as well as considerable variation in the trajectory of participation across the countries that we examine. We show this in two ways: First, we plot the temporal trends in participation for all countries over time in Figure 1. Second, we conduct a more fine-grained analysis of each country in Figure 2.

Figure 1.

Patterns of participation in civic engagement and protest in 20 OECD countries (N = 78,524).

Figure 2.

Participation in civic engagement and protest by country (N = 78,524).

Starting with Figure 1, we see that the proportion of nonparticipators declined sharply between Waves 1 and 3 of the WVS, to the point where civic engagement become the most common form of participation by Wave 3. This effect did not last, however, as there was a rise in nonparticipation evident in the final wave of WVS that we examine. While we cannot exhaustively explain the source of this decline here, we note that the 2008–2009 wave of the WVS took place during a significant global recession, and was also a time when smartphones and social media became widely adopted. Either or both of these factors may have dampened all types of participation. We note, however, that the sample of countries changes in Wave 4 of the WVS, with the United States and Canada missing from our sample. As a result, some of the apparent decline in participation may be a result of country-level variations influencing the zero-order results (see also Table 3, which is consistent with this point).

Table 3.

Multilevel Multinomial Logistic Regression Predicting Participation (N = 78,524).

	Protest only	Civic engagement only	Both types
Demographics
Male	0.377***	0.274***	0.480***
Male	(0.023)	(0.017)	(0.021)
Single	0.027	0.062*	0.173***
Single	(0.033)	(0.025)	(0.031)
Work full-time	0.191***	0.037*	0.219***
Work full-time	(0.025)	(0.018)	(0.022)
Number of children	−0.058***	−0.003	−0.022*
Number of children	(0.010)	(0.007)	(0.009)
Age (ln)	−0.150***	−0.232***	−0.279***
Age (ln)	(0.037)	(0.027)	(0.035)
At least some college completed	0.607***	0.557***	1.060***
At least some college completed	(0.029)	(0.022)	(0.025)
Middle income	0.102***	0.266***	0.323***
Middle income	(0.028)	(0.021)	(0.028)
High income	0.233***	0.620***	0.842***
High income	(0.032)	(0.023)	(0.030)
Political views
Left-wing political views	0.944***	−0.097***	1.022***
Left-wing political views	(0.027)	(0.026)	(0.025)
Right-wing political views	−0.142***	0.072**	−0.186***
Right-wing political views	(0.037)	(0.023)	(0.034)
Religious attendance
Frequent religious attendance	−0.362***	0.642***	0.334***
Frequent religious attendance	(0.032)	(0.022)	(0.028)
Occasional religious attendance	−0.205***	0.339***	0.123***
Occasional religious attendance	(0.027)	(0.021)	(0.026)
Trust
Respondent has trust in others	0.251***	0.299***	0.635***
Respondent has trust in others	(0.024)	(0.017)	(0.022)
Survey wave
Wave 2	0.268***	0.593***	1.005***
Wave 2	(0.033)	(0.026)	(0.039)
Wave 3	0.609***	1.663***	2.362***
Wave 3	(0.037)	(0.027)	(0.038)
Wave 4	0.599***	0.878***	1.563***
Wave 4	(0.037)	(0.029)	(0.042)
Intercept	−1.685***	−1.473***	−3.118***
Intercept	(0.171)	(0.162)	(0.157)
Country-level variance	0.194**	0.309**	0.124**
Covariance with protest only		−0.162**	0.021
Covariance with civic engagement only			0.103*

Source. Data are drawn from the European and World Values Survey, 1981–2009.

Note. The base category is no participation. Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 (two-tailed tests).

Individuals who exclusively engaged in civic organizations are the most common category of participators at all time periods. Yet, this group showed only a modest increase over the period between 1981 and 2009, moving from 21 percent in the former period to 24 percent in the latter. Protest as the sole type of activity remained fairly steady with a slight rise in the respondents choosing this option for the most recent wave, which also showed only a negligible increase from 13 to 14 percent between Waves 1 and 4. The category for those who both protested and were participants in civic associations was relatively rare at the onset of our analytic period, capturing just 7 percent of our respondents. Over time, this category experienced growth, peaking at nearly 20 percent of respondents in Wave 3 before moving back down to 15 percent of cases by Wave 4. Although participating in both protest and civic association remains statistically infrequent, it is also increasingly common over time. Indeed, the set of individuals who participated in both protests and civic associations was the only category that meaningfully grew in frequency between 1981 and 2009. This provides baseline support for our argument that the boundaries between different types of engagement have become more permeable over time.

Country-level trends in participation provided in Figure 2 show substantial variation occurs in participation across the 20 OECD nation-states we examine here. Several points of commonality between the disaggregated results in Figure 2 and the overall patterns of participation in Figure 1 are clear: Nonparticipation is generally the most common category across time and place, and when individuals do become joiners, civic engagement is the most likely outlet. Individuals joining protests alone are also largely consistent, in that the rates of participation are relatively constant across our sample of countries. Turkey presents an outlier in that nonparticipation is by far the highest category, with other participation types garnering less than 10 percent combined in Wave 2, with only civic engagement rising significantly in Wave 4. Of particular note is the growth of individuals who participated in both protest and civic life, which increased in all of the countries we examine other than Greece, Luxembourg, and Portugal at an average rate of 8 percent over time. The country-level variation reinforces the need to contextualize claims about engagement in a way that is sensitive to the participatory choices that individuals make.

Table 3 provides the coefficients, standard errors, and random effects estimates from our statistical analysis. Starting with the variables measuring respondent demographics, strong patterns of commonality emerge across the different types of participation that we examine. Relative to those who have never protested and are not engaged in civic associations, joiners of all types are significantly more likely to be male, work full-time, be younger in age, have at least some amount of postsecondary education, and from either a middle or high income bracket. A few differences show in the demographic profiles of participants for specific types of engagement. For example, compared with those who do not participate, respondents who reported joining demonstrations alone are not significantly different from nonparticipators in their marital status. In contrast, individuals who join civic associations or both protest and civic groups are significantly more likely to be single. Differences exist in effects for the number of children each respondent had as well as across the different types of engagement we examine. The coefficients for number of children are negative and significant for those participating in demonstrations exclusively, or both protest and civic associations, but no significant differences for cases exclusively participating in the latter type of activity.

The groups of variables measuring political views, religious attendance, and trust point to important similarities and differences in our participation categories. The measure of left-wing political views is positive and significant for individuals who only protest, or participate in both demonstrations and civic associations, and negative for civic engagement only. Those with right-wing views are significantly less likely to engage in protest alone or both civic engagement and protest, suggesting that there are limitations to the diffusion of protest across the political spectrum over time. Holding left-wing political views negatively predicts whether a respondent joined a civic association exclusively, while right-wing beliefs are positively associated with this form of participation. The overall pattern of results suggests that despite arguments that protest has expanded across the political spectrum (Meyer and Tarrow 1998), it remains squarely within the form of engagement preferred by the left. Furthermore, when individuals engage in both protest and civic engagement, holding left-wing views is a primary predictor of making the transition. The positive relation of left-wing politics to participation fits with previous scholarship (Caren et al. 2011), and suggests that political views may create boundaries around permeable participation, and consequently limit the range of one’s portfolio of engagement.

Estimates of religious attendance indicate that individuals who only protest are significantly less likely to either frequently or occasionally attend religious services. Respondents who only join civic associations show the opposite pattern: They are more likely to participate in religious services, regardless of whether one examines occasional or frequent attendance. The coefficients predicting joining both protests and civic associations are again positive and significant, indicating that participating in both activities is perhaps viewed by individuals as an extension of their faith. Although the influence of religious attendance on participation follows familiar patterns to previous research (Driskell et al. 2008), in the present context these results provide important clues about the factors shaping individual decision making. Protest and civic engagement are perhaps viewed as complementary activities by the religious left, but this is not the case for those with left-wing views that do not participate in religious life. The effects for trust in others are uniformly positive and significant, indicating that individuals who engage in various types of activities tend to have higher levels of trust than those who do not participate.

The estimates for survey wave point to an unequivocal increase in participation across our response categories over time. The coefficients are all positive and significant for Waves 2 through 4, relative to Wave 1. These findings have two implications. First, we contribute to the literature in both civic engagement (Putnam 2000; Skocpol 2013; Stolle and Hooghe 2005) and social movements (Caren et al. 2011; Meyer and Tarrow 1998; Soule and Earl 2005), debating whether each type of activity has grown or contracted in frequency over time. Based on our analysis, all types of participation have clearly increased in the OECD countries. Although Figure 1 pointed to an increase in nonparticipation in the 2008–2009 wave of the WVS, this effect may be due at least in part to the specific sample of countries participating in the survey. Second, examining the magnitude of the effects, we see that the increase is most pronounced when comparing individuals who engage in both protest and civic engagement with respondents who do not participate in either type of activity. Thus, our analysis provides evidence that after controlling for country-level variation as well as our other variables, participation in both civic associations and protest experiences the most substantial growth. This provides supportive evidence that the boundaries between civic engagement and social movement mobilization have become more permeable over time in our sample of nation-states.

The random effects in Table 3 show that even after controlling for several variables measuring demographics, political orientation, religious participation, trust in others, and temporal context, statistically significant country-level variation in each of our categories of participation exists compared with those who do not participate. The country-specific variance estimates for countries for individuals who only protest, exclusively join civic associations, or participate in both activities are, respectively, 0.194, 0.309, and 0.124 (p < .01). A negative and significant covariance at the country level also exists between individuals who exclusively protest and those who only join civic associations (p < .01), and a positive covariance between civic engagement only and participation in both (p < .05). Even though our results point to a uniform increase in all types of participation over time, these estimates reinforce the importance of considering the extensive variation surrounding patterns of civic engagement when making general claims about the ebb and flow of participation among OECD nation-states.

Discussion and Conclusion

Our results point toward an important and significant dynamic: There are modest increases in joining protest and civic associations over time and place, but the type of participation experiencing the most growth is the individuals who engage in both types of activities. Participation in civic associations alone remains the dominant form of engagement, yet the increase in a more expansive participatory trajectory points to a more expanded portfolio of engagement in our data. We argued that this trend is due to an increase in the permeability of participation, that is, traditional boundaries between explicitly political mobilization and civic engagement have diminished over time, as more individuals came to adopt social movement tactics to join the political process. Using a sample of 20 OECD countries, our results largely, but not completely, support this explanation. Demographically, the type of individuals who become engaged have mostly similar profiles. Consistent with previous work (Dalton 2013; Norris 2002; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995), joiners tend to occupy the most privileged social strata. Key differences do exist in the political views and religiosity of engaged individuals, which may direct individuals toward one type of engagement over another. These differences suggest that despite an overall expansion of participatory forms, consistent with permeable participation, individual-level convictions and preferences, be they political or religious, continue to have a role in guiding individuals toward particular activities.

Moving forward, this study has several implications. First, we suggest that the separation between (debatably) apolitical community involvement on one hand, and social movement participation on the other is the result of conceptual boundaries rather than empirical reality. By this, we mean that the individuals involved in either social movement mobilization or civic associations might not see the decision to participate as an either/or decision. Instead, it may be part of a more holistic worldview, where participating in both movement and nonmovement related types of organizations is complementary rather than competing. In other words, the key theoretical and analytic distinction may be between participants and nonparticipants, rather than examining differences in the type of associations that individuals join. Thus, an individual decision to join a civic organization or attend a protest (or both) may be regarded as equal ways to make life better in one’s community, and beyond. According to Sidney G. Tarrow (2005), even transnational political activists may be viewed as rooted cosmopolitans, in that despite participating in decidedly nonlocal political mobilization, they retain a strong sense of community and neighborhood. As a result, the strong correspondence between activism and community involvement is not completely surprising.

Second, our findings point to the importance of expanding how scholars examine the trajectory of participation, rather than insular emphasis on only one type of activity. In our conceptual language, we suggest that our concept of a portfolio of engagement provides fertile ground for future research and can help to contextualize the results of prior work as well. For example, what may appear as disengagement from political protest may instead reflect an individual shifting from social movement participation to joining a community organization. Much of the existing literature does not consider this possibility when assessing trends in how individuals participate in either social movements or civic groups. Catherine Corrigall-Brown (2011:6–7), for instance, emphasizes four trajectories of social movement involvement: (1) persistence, where individuals remain committed to a particular cause; (2) transfer, where individuals shift from one cause to another; (3) individual abeyance, where individuals cease participating, only to return at a later period; and (4) disengagement, where individuals stop participating in all social movement activities. Absent here is consideration for individuals who chose to remain participants, but allocate their time and energy in other spheres, which would extend the category for activist transfer. Activist burnout is a serious consideration for long-term activists (Downton and Wehr 1998), and civic engagement can provide a viable alternative for participation. Likewise, the emphasis on apolitical civic engagement common in the literature (Ekman and Amnå 2012; Putnam 2000) may consequently misinterpret a decline in participation for civic associations as a lack of engagement, rather than a transfer of activity into more overtly political forms of mobilization.

Third, because we use a repeated cross-sectional design rather than panel data, we cannot directly examine the question of whether individuals tend to shift from social movement mobilization to civic engagement, or the reverse. Having established the growth in this category of participation, more research along these lines is necessary to unpack the temporal evolution of engagement. As we have noted, Nina Eliasoph (2013) and others (Walker 2008) point out that participating in civic associations may have a politicizing effect, which in turn may result in an individual becoming amenable to social movement mobilization. Our argument that participatory boundaries between protest and civic engagement have become more permeable is agnostic in directionality. We contend that there is likely not a single causal pathway explaining participation, and while some individuals move from social movement mobilization to civic associations, others may transfer their attention from the latter to the former. Future research more directly examining these dynamics would shed valuable light on how individuals become engaged.

Fourth, and finally, this study focuses on two of the most common forms of participation—protest participation and involvement with a civic association—but there is clearly a wider variety of activities that we do not consider here. For example, though much of the previous research on social movement participation has used protest participation as a proxy measure of larger involvement, membership-based associations remain a main outlet for individual participation (Walker, McCarthy, and Baumgartner 2011). Another important area that we do not systematically examine is participation in the traditional political realm, including activities such as voting, engaging in party politics, joining political parties, or contacting elected representatives.

Our focus on a subset of the larger class of venues for individual participation is largely due to data restrictions, as the WVS is limited in its coverage of activities beyond what we have examined above across waves and countries. Extending the scope of the analysis is an important topic for future research, as our conceptual boundaries around each individual’s portfolio of engagement stretch beyond protest participation and involvement in civic associations. An important area of research not examined here concerns the role of Internet technologies not only as a form of participation but also as a bridge between different types of engagement. Creating a more nuanced understanding of how participation is defined and carried out in practice would go a long way in accounting for individual-level differences in engagement. Prior research has found, for instance, that age (Gauthier 2003), the intensity of participation (McAdam 1990), or areas in prior engagement (Leroux 2007) may directly influence the boundaries between activities for individuals. As research continues to map out the terrain in participation, the factors influencing the choices individuals make across a wide range of activities remain an area of central importance.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Katherine Johnson, the anonymous reviewers, and the editor for comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Patrick Rafail is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Tulane University. His research examines the structural, contextual, and technological factors influencing social movement mobilization. He is currently working on a project examining the Tea Party between 2009 and 2014 that is funded by the National Science Foundation. His other research examines the policing of protest and the use of social media by social movement actors.

Isaac Freitas is a sociology doctoral candidate in the City, Culture, and Community interdisciplinary PhD program at Tulane University. His research interests are in topics which intersect with disaster, media, communication, collective behavior, and technology. Currently, he is involved in a project studying the use of social media during disaster recovery and another project on the effects of home sharing services like Airbnb on urban areas.

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Permeable Participation: Civic Engagement and Protest Mobilization in 20 OECD Countries,1981–2008

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Civic Engagement, Protest, and Permeable Participation

Expanding Portfolios of Engagement and Permeable Participation

The politics of engagement and participatory overlap

The institutionalization of protest

Summary

Data and Method

Variables and Operationalization

Analytic Strategy

Results

Discussion and Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Notes

Author Biographies

References