Collective Political Action as Civic Voluntarism: Analysing Ethnic Associations as Political Participants by Translating Individual-level Theory to the Organizational Level

Abstract

This paper presents and empirically evaluates an analytical experiment, in which individual level explanations of differences in political participation are translated to an organizational level. Utilizing the 'Civic Voluntarism Model' of participation research, we analyse consequences of voluntary associations' potentially politically valuable 'resources', 'motivation' and 'recruitment networks'. We use unique data from a survey of ethnic associations in Stockholm, Sweden-which may be considered as particularly interesting since in Swedish integration policy such associations are expected to fulfil a formal political role. Estimating a series of regression models, our results suggest that the overall logic of how associational level political participation is encouraged resembles corresponding mechanisms on the individual level. We find that quite basic resources, such as the number of members in a given association, promote participation; also when motivation, as reflected in assessed importance of political influence, is accounted for. Similarly, the results confirm that access to political networks stimulates political participation among voluntary associations. We conclude that both our theoretical argument and empirical findings merit further analyses of ethnic associations as well as other collective actors' political participation in accordance with the approach taken in this study. In the remainder of the paper, we first proceed by elaborating our theoretical framework, including our re-conceptualisation of the CVM. Next, we provide information on the data collection procedures and the sample of associations on which the analyses are based. In the section following, we present empirical results; and in the final section we conclude our findings and discuss the fruitfulness of our approach. Contact information Introducing the toolbox of the CVMIf voluntary associations are regarded as actors that, in principle, could choose to take political action in one way or the other, may this be studied by using a theoretical toolbox designed for individual actors? Considering the CVM as such a toolbox, we find the prospects in this regard to be promising.According to the original version of the model, the political participation of ordinary citizens is primarily influenced by three overarching factors: In a nutshell, those who have resources that facilitate participation, and those who are psychologically motivated to participate are expected to be more involved in political life; further, citizens are expected to participate more frequently if they have access to political recruitment networks, in which mobilization takes place through explicit requests for political action (VSB 1995: Ch. 9;Brady, Schlozman and Verba 1999).As further elaborated below, the resources considered valuable for political And recruitment is an important aspect in the study of interorganizational networks (e.g. Diani and McAdam 2003).We see, however, three potential benefits with applying the CVM to issues of association level p...

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