Which form of political participation is the most effective and why? Include a news article from the last four weeks that illustrates this form of participation in action and how effective it is. Also

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Which form of political participation is the most effective and why? Include a news article from the last four weeks that illustrates this form of participation in action and how effective it is. Also, which form is the most useless and why?

Use and list at least two sources to support your post, and also write at least three substantive responses to classmates, and/or the professor.

Which form of political participation is the most effective and why? Include a news article from the last four weeks that illustrates this form of participation in action and how effective it is. Also
1 1 Voting Together If you were to ask most American citizens why they voted (or did not vote) in the last election, their explanations of their own choices would almost certainly take the form of a few familiar stories. One voter might speak of his deep and abiding interest in politics; another might speak passionately about her desire to see the right person win. A third might have little interest in the election yet still feel the pull of patriotism or civic duty, and yet another might worry that his family or coworkers would think less of him if he failed to make it to the polls. The stories of nonvoters would be similarly familiar stories. One would likely bemoan the fact that deadlines at work or long lines at the polling station had kept her from participating, another would rattle off a list of objection- able actions taken by politicians, and yet another might wistfully reply that people like him did not really matter anyway. Surprisingly, such stories, writ large, form the basis of most schol- arly explanations of variation in voter turnout. Voters, compared with nonvoters, are more likely to find politics interesting and less likely to find participation prohibitively costly. Strong partisans who care about election outcomes are more likely to vote than weak partisans or inde- pendents who care less about the results. Voters are more likely than nonvoters to have the education and skills needed to register and fig- ure out how to get to the polls and cast a ballot. Finally, citizens are more likely to vote if their family, friends, and housemates are voting as well. Traditional theoretical explanations are cast in terms of individual desires, motives, beliefs, and utilities: People who want to vote and are able to vote are more likely to vote, whereas those lacking the desire or the ability will abstain. Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 2 This book argues that such explanations are at best partial and at worst biased explanations of variation in political participation because they fail to account for the impact of social context. Individual reasoning does not take place within a social vacuum, but depends in various ways on the actions and opinions of other people. When individual decisions are (even in part) conditional or interdependent, the structure of social ties has the power to shape social outcomes to a much larger degree than previously recognized. Therefore, to avoid bias, explanations of variation in political participation and other social phenomena must go beyond stories about isolated individuals to incorporate the potential impact of social interaction on social outcomes. This is not an idle concern for researchers and policy makers, as the omission of social structure and social interaction limits our ability to understand the fundamental mechanisms through which the demographic correlates of American voter turnout drive participation. Over the years, political scientists have documented almost no change in the empirical predictors of turnout. Immigrants, minorities, young people, the uned- ucated, the poor, and the politically disinterested are systematically less likely to vote than those with higher social status (i.e., wealthy, white, and highly educated citizens), much as Merriam and Gosnell ( 1924 ) estab- lished close to a century ago. (Churchgoers and members of voluntary organizations have since been added to the list of turnout predictors.) Education, the most powerful predictor of turnout, is often described as enhancing benefits or reducing costs (see, e.g., Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ). However, recent work still acknowledges that the mech- anism connecting education to voting is mysterious (Sondheimer and Green 2010 ), and some scholars even question whether education has a causal effect on turnout at all (Tenn 2007 ; see also Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry 1996 ). The social theory of turnout offered in this book, on the other hand, argues that education is merely a proxy for belonging to a social world whose members have systematically different patterns of social relationships. As a result of incomplete understandings of the causes of turnout, policies designed to increase participation have often failed to achieve their aims. Many recent voting reforms, including absentee voting and Motor Voter legislation, were explicitly designed to lower the costs of participating. Schemes that actively encourage voting at home by mail or the Internet have proven ineffective or even reduced turnout (Berinsky 2005 ), at least after the relaxation of efforts put into marketing such alternative modes of participation. Reducing registration requirements Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 3 should raise turnout in the long run, although the impact may take some time to show up. Such cost-reduction policies may backfire, however, if the symbolic virtue of voting is reinforced by the requirement that one stand in lines and follow arcane procedures, or if citizens are less likely to behave in a public-spirited way if their neighbors are not at the polls to greet (and observe) them. This book takes a fresh perspective on this long-standing area of research, one that explicitly accounts for how social and political context drives political participation, and provides new insight into the empiri- cal correlates of voter turnout. The fundamental approach ties together existing strands drawn from scholarship on voting and other social phe- nomena. The ability of social interaction to alter social outcomes will not come as a surprise to game theorists, who have long been aware that most people condition their behavior on the expected choices of those around them. Behavioral economics, inspired by the groundbreak- ing work of Simon on bounded rationality and Kahneman and Tversky on heuristics, provides a firm foundation for the book’s core conditional decision-making model. Key links in the social theory are pulled from long-standing research into the impact of social and political context on mass political behavior. None of these threads contain a full-fledged account of individual decision making and social dynamics akin to con- ditional choice, but they contain important elements that remain present in the social theory of turnout. the social theory of voter turnout So why do some people turn out to vote whereas others do not? This book proposes and argues for a social theory of voter turnout, grounded in the conditional choice approach. This theory places voters not only in a social context, but also assumes a less familiar logic of decision making. Conditional decision makers rely on conditional decision rules, sometimes termed heuristics or cognitive shortcuts, rather than optimiz- ing payoffs in a forward-looking manner. Thus, it is possible to build a behavioral model of turnout based on a distribution of decision rules in situations like voting without solving the paradox of voter turnout. The social theory of participation may not speak to individual motives and reasoning, but it can provide a satisfying explanation of documented empirical variation in voter turnout, one in which variation in social net- work structures and citizens’ social locations underlie the well-known demographic patterns. Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 4 Boiled down to its essence, my argument is that the turnout decision is best represented as a conditionally cooperative response to cooperative decisions made by friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers – members of the social network of the citizen in question. Sometimes a handful of people are willing to cooperate unconditionally, whereas some people will not cooperate under any circumstances. The bulk of the population is willing to cooperate if enough other people will do the same. Having more family members and friends who vote makes one more likely to vote as well. But what of the long-standing empirical correlates of turnout? In the social theory of turnout, these individual-level correlates of voter turnout are reinterpreted as imperfect proxies for social structural variables: var – iation first in the size and structure of the social networks in which indi- viduals are embedded, and, second, in individuals’ social location within a given social network structure. These social structural properties have a primary and direct impact on whether a given individual is likely to vote or to abstain. The general view of turnout as generated by political and social con- texts has several important predecessors in scholarship on voting and other forms of mass political behavior. conditional choice and conditional decision making This book provides a formal model of the decision to vote, but it is a model built within the theoretical framework of conditional choice (see Rolfe 2009 ). Put simply, conditional choice posits that individual choices are a function of the subjective social meaning of the situation and of the observed and/or expected choices of other people. The conditional choice view is compatible with an assumption of bounded rationality (Simon 1955 ). It is perhaps more persuasive, however, to simply note that most people make decisions that are responsive to the decisions of those around them, at least to some degree. Thus, conditional choice is driven by the reality of observed individ- ual decision making rather than a commitment to a set of assumptions about individual goals and desires. Few people make decisions like clear- headed, forward-looking, goal-directed economists (even if we often wish that we could). Real people continue to vote even when they are not fully informed about the candidates; they will lend their neighbors a cup of sugar, but will also mow the lawn before 8 a.m . on weekends; contrib- ute to charities devoted to world peace, but also yell at their kids; and Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 5 iron their shirt each morning for work, but forget to brush dog hair off their jacket. In other words, most people continue to act in ways that are entirely unpredictable if we assume that their behavior is the result a decision-making process that involves the rational, consistent pursuit of personal goals or that can be described by a consistent set of individ- ual traits such as selfishness, altruism, aggression, kindness, laziness, or conscientiousness. How can we understand individual action if individuals do not act con- sistently on the basis of economic rationality, or even predictably on the basis of personal motives, traits, or characteristics (Mischel 1968 )? The answer is to direct attention away from individual decision makers to the social situations in which they find themselves, and to the social interac- tions that take place between them. Nothing of interest to social scientists takes place in a hypothetical social vacuum. 1 All individual action takes place within social situations, and individual action is only intelligible within the social context that gives rise to it. Conditional choice puts social cognition and social interaction – not individual preferences – at the center of individual decision making. How then do individuals make decisions if they are navigating social interactions rather than maximizing payoff functions or minimizing the risk of low payoffs? Conditional actors rely on conditional decision rules, sometimes termed heuristics (Kahneman 2002 ) or rules of thumb (Simon 1955 ).2 People may purposefully condition their actions on those of others, as in a conscious desire to “do one’s fair share.” Alternatively, conditional responses may be automatic and unthinking, operating out- side of the awareness of the individual decision maker. Conditional responsiveness can vary from person to person. Some peo- ple can be largely or even entirely unresponsive to others (“unconditional” actors, whose behavior is a constant when expressed as a mathemati- cal function of others’ decisions). Most people, however, will respond at least somewhat to the actions of others. To account for social interac- tion, conditional decision rules are mathematically modeled as a function of (1) the social meaning of the decision situation, (2) the observed or expected actions of other people, and (3) individual heterogeneity. The 1 Not even laboratory experiments take place in a social vacuum. Subjects enter the lab with a wealth of social knowledge that allows them to interpret all requests and respond accordingly, and leave the lab with that knowledge intact or perhaps even altered by the interactions in the experimental setting. 2 Social interaction is not addressed by the decision rules proposed by the Kahneman and Tvesrsky project. Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 6 social dynamics of individual decision making in a particular social sit- uation are modeled as a distribution of conditional decision rules – the basis of all conditional choice models. Evidence on the distribution of conditional cooperation comes from behavioral economics, a subfield within economics, which has documented that (seemingly) nonrational “anomalies” in individual decision making are the rule rather than the exception. 3 Considerable empirical evidence supports the conditional interdepen- dence of decision making. Conditional decisions are often consciously made in situations involving public goods or social dilemmas, when individual material benefits come into conflict with what is best for the group. (Voting may be such a social dilemma, or perceived as such by voters – this claim will be discussed in Chapter 3 in the analysis of the social meaning of voting). Conditional decision makers do not seek to maximize their own immediate benefit; rather, they behave in ways that involve cooperation with others but not complete capitulation to them. Cooperative acts, or contributions to the group, are conditional on the cooperation or contributions of others. The conditional choice approach is neutral on the rationality of deci- sion making, and indeed is silent on the matter of people’s ends or goals; whether or not these ends conform to any external standard is beside the point, for the purposes of this book. What is essential is that people actu- ally do make decisions that reflect social interaction with other people. Thus, a conditional decision model is strictly a mathematical represen- tation of decision outcomes as conditional on the decisions of others, regardless of the rationale, motivation, or mental process of the decision maker (López-Pintado and Watts 2008 ; Young 2009 ). It may well be that the conditional cooperator believes his or her actions to be motivated by a desire to please, or to avoid social disapproval, or to gain the trust of a friend, or even to efficiently gather information in an uncertain world, but such possible motivations are all reducible to a conditional mathe – matical function. Regardless of the motivational story that might be told, the widespread use of conditional decision making has been demon- strated many times in both the real world and in researchers’ artificially constructed lab situations and social dilemmas. 3 Experimental outcomes may seem less anomalous after accounting for what Podolny (2001 ) terms the prismatic aspect of social networks: how social interaction, in particu- lar asymmetries in power and influence in social relationships, shape individual decision making. Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 7 With conditional choice as a foundation, the social theory of turn- out will remain silent on the immediate, conscious reasons people invoke to explain why they get out of bed on Election Day and plan a trip to the polls. A motivational story is probably a common expectation for a theory purporting to explain why people vote, but my focus is not on the inner mental states associated with voting, but rather on the mecha- nisms linking political mobilization and social structure to observed vari- ation in turnout rates. I will not attempt to document “social pressure” to vote, or any other such carrier of interpersonal influence. In fact, I would expect that most conditional voters do not experience their decision as one motivated by social pressure, nor are they aware that their decision has been influenced by the choices of those around them. Rather, the level of explanation here focuses on the relationship between social structure and turnout rates. Perhaps this will be a sufficient introduction to the perspective of this book; satisfied readers may wish to move on to the development of con- ditional choice in Chapter 2, or even to the second half of the book, in which conditional choice is translated into specific predictions about voter turnout that are then tested empirically against the predictions of the extant view. For others, the remainder of this chapter presents com- peting views on voter turnout in more detail. the orthodox view: voters making decisions As citizens in a democracy, Americans are by definition entitled to a voice in the affairs of their country, most commonly in the form of voting in elections. Indeed, Americans are called to the ballot box more often than citizens of most, if not all, other democratic nations, casting ballots in Presidential elections, midterm Congressional races, assorted state and local elections, referenda and initiatives, as well as primaries for the same. The right to vote is regarded with reverence in American civic culture. The extension of voting rights to women and African Americans constituted a crucial goal for two of the largest, most significant social movements of twentieth-century America. Why then do half or more of all eligible citizens fail to cast a ballot in most elections? This question inspired some of the most innovative and enduring political science research of the early twentieth century (cf. Merriam and Gosnell 1924 ; Gosnell 1927 ), with a book title summing up the basic research question: Non-Voting . Voting was seen as normatively desirable; nonvoters were described in undesir – able and unfavorable terms. (As we will see in Chapter 3, nonvoting is Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 8 still given quite harsh treatment in the contemporary media.) The ques- tion at the time was: Why would anyone not do the right thing? Downs ( 1957 ) turned the conventional wisdom on its head, proposing that the turnout decision should be modeled as an economic decision, with individuals weighing the costs and benefits of voting before decid- ing whether to vote or abstain. In this view, an individual voter’s decision would consider the relative benefits of having one party (versus the other) in office ( B), multiplied by the probability of casting the deciding vote ( p), and subtracting out the costs of voting ( C) for the basic economic voting model: pB – C. Unfortunately, the probability of casting the deciding vote is quite small, and therefore abstention is always the choice of utility-maximizing citi- zens. Clearly, most citizens do not always abstain from voting, and thus the divergence between actual behavior and the predictions of the cost- benefit model became known as the paradox of voter turnout, sometimes jokingly described as “the paradox that ate rational choice.” Subsequent formal models have offered a number of solutions to the paradox. The most common solution, typically linked to Riker and Ordeshook ( 1968 ), involves including a D-term in the economic voting model: pB – C + D. The additional mathematical term ( D) can be used to signify any addi- tional benefits that an individual receives from the act of voting. These benefits might be linked to an internalized sense of civic duty (Riker and Ordeshook 1968 ), the expressive thrills of participation (Schuessler 2000 ), a sociotropic desire to support democracy or fellow partisans (Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan 2007 ), and so on. Regardless of the motiva- tional story, inclusion of a D-term reduces electoral participation to an unexplained taste, akin to a taste for chocolate (Tullock 1967 ; Morton 1991 ; Green and Shapiro 1994 ). If someone eats chocolate, we infer that they like it; if someone votes, we infer that they like it, intrinsically. Such modifications essentially reduce the economic voting model to a tautol- ogy that cannot be disproven: Voting is rational for people who vote and not rational for those who do not vote (Green and Shapiro 1994 ). Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 9 Most other formal attempts to solve the paradox of voter turnout also have been heavily criticized, either because they also produced high levels of abstention or relied on unrealistic assumptions. Early parti- san team models that increased the probability of casting decisive votes (Palfrey and Rosenthal 1985 ) produced knife-edge results: models that could not sustain high turnout following minor changes of assumptions (Morton 1991 ). Minimax regret decision making (Ferejohn and Fiorina 1974 ) turns out to sound much less plausible when extended just slightly beyond the narrow decision of whether to vote or not once at the poll- ing station. For example, scholars have argued that a potential voter using the minimax rule would not vote to avoid getting hit by a car en route to the polling place, or would only vote for themselves (Beck 1975 ; Stephens 1975 ; Tullock 1975 ; Aldrich 1993 ). Partisan mobilization mod- els (Uhlaner 1989 ; Morton 1991 ; Bendor et al. 2003 ) fail to make sense of turnout among the huge number of independent and undecided voters in the American electorate, and suffer from second-order collective action problems (Olson 1965 ; Oliver 1980 ) as well as a lack of evidence (Green and Shapiro 1994 ). Thus, it remains difficult to adequately model voter turnout starting with a Downsian logic of costs and benefits. The Rational Actor Takes a Survey Despite these debates within the formal literature on voter turnout, the basic paradigm of individual costs and benefits was quickly adopted to explain established patterns in the demographic correlates of participa- tion. A significant tradition of survey research into the causes of (non) voting was already well established (e.g., Merriam and Gosnell 1924 ; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944 ; Campbell 1954 ), and was rapidly expanding with the creation of the American National Election Study (see Campbell, Converse, Stokes, and Miller 1960 ). Multiple attempts were made to incorporate a rational calculus of voting directly into the existing survey research literature, rather than relying on a reinterpre- tation of demographic variables, but these attempts did not meet with great success. First, measurement of the three important elements of the utility model (costs, perceived difference between the candidates or benefits, and possible influence over the election outcome) proved difficult. Direct measures – for example, asking survey respondents how likely they were to cast the decisive vote – were usually found to be unrelated to individual-level Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 10 turnout (Ferejohn and Fiorina 1975 ). Although individual-level measure of civic duty, the D-term, was found to be associated with higher turnout (Campbell et al. 1960 ), this correlation stemmed from different patterns of survey responses among African Americans, and therefore faded after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (see Chapter 3). Instead of rejecting the cost-benefit logic as a plausible individual mechanism, however, the literature adapted the interpretations of previ- ously established correlates of turnout to fit better with the compelling new logic. Various measures of political interest, already linked to turn- out by Lazarsfeld et al. ( 1944 ), were recast as measuring the benefit term in the Downsian calculus of voting (Katosh and Traugott 1982 ). Sanders (1980 ) argued that rural location depressed turnout because rural resi- dents had to travel longer to get to polling places, thus increasing the costs of turnout. Income and education, long known to predict turnout, were linked to the calculus of voting through multiple pathways: impact- ing the costs of turnout, the benefits of electoral outcomes, and the ability to more cheaply acquire information needed to distinguish between the candidates (cf. Frey 1971 ; Tollison and Willett 1973 ; Niemi 1976 ). Indeed, the most prominent school of thought within survey-based research on voter turnout is still built on the cost-benefit logic, imagining that individual voters’ chances of voting increase or decrease in response to the personal costs and benefits of turnout, even though the cost-benefit logic has such difficulty making sense of anyone voting at all. Earlier mentions of nonrational considerations, including group consciousness (Verba and Nie 1972 ) and socialization and social identity (Campbell, Converse, Stokes, and Miller 1960 ), have been dropped from more recent work in the same tradition (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ). The variables originally identified by Merriam and Gosnell are still the pri- mary predictors of individual turnout, with a few additions. What has changed is that demographic characteristics are now described as proxies for civic resources (costs) and political interest (benefits). contextual explanations of voter turnout The social theory of voter turnout involves a different sort of explana- tion. Rather than asking what it is about individual voters that makes them more or less likely to vote, the social view emphasizes the explana- tory power of voters’ social and political contexts. As noted earlier, this book is not alone in emphasizing contextual rather than individual deter – minants of turnout. But, whereas the social theory belongs to the same Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 11 general family of explanation as these alternatives – and draws directly on some of them – this book explicitly pushes the limits of formal, contex- tual explanation further than previous research. The sections that follow review these various strands of research on turnout in more detail, and point out where the social theory picks up on their insights and where it departs from them. Institutions Beginning with the contextual factors least integral to the social theory of turnout, it is nonetheless important to acknowledge several institutional features that vary across elections and have been associated with varia- tion in aggregate turnout rates. These include (1) institutionally imposed barriers to voter turnout, such as registration requirements, and 2) elec- toral systems (i.e., proportional representation or first-past-the-post, uni- cameralism or bicameralism, other features of polities that affect how votes are translated into representation). We might also regard closeness of elections as something that might vary with electoral institutions (Cox 1999 ), although more commonly it is seen as varying from election to election as candidates and circumstances change. Empirical research on each of these factors has shown a relationship to turnout rates, often con- ceptualized in cost-benefit terms. Institutional Costs A wealth of evidence confirms that turnout rates vary at the aggregate level across institutional settings. In American elections, turnout is higher in states that allow absentee registration, have no closing date for reg- istration, and have registration offices regularly open during normal office hours and/or during the evenings and weekends (Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980 ; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993 ). Prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, poll taxes, literacy tests, and periodic re-registration requirements were all effectively used to depress turnout among Blacks in the South (Key 1949 ; Kelley, Ayres and Bowen 1967 ). A significant degree of cross-national variation in voter turnout is also associated with institu- tional costs. Turnout is higher in countries where voters are automatically registered, voting is compulsory, or election day is a weekend or holiday (Powell 1986 ; Jackman 1987 ; Lijphart 1997 ; Franklin 2004 ). All of the institutional features described earlier have been theoret- ically linked to individual turnout costs in the Downsian calculus of voting, with the removal of registration barriers or the introduction of Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 12 compulsory voting assumed to directly decrease the net costs of partici – pation for an individual. Additionally, many of the studies have incor – porated data from extremely large sample surveys, such as the Current Population Study series run by the U.S. Census Bureau, with a sample size of approximately 60,000. However, repeated attempts to show the impact of institutional costs on a more traditional election study with a smaller sample were largely unsuccessful (Campbell et al. 1960 ; Ashenfelter and Kelley 1975 ; Katosh and Traugott 1982 ). Therefore, although it is clear from the evidence that institutional “costs” can and do shift aggregate turnout at the margins, the impact of such costs has only been reliably established at the contextual – not individual – level. 4 As Blais ( 2006 ) points out, political science still lacks “a compelling microfoundation” for most cross-national findings on voter turnout. This pattern – a finding that institutional costs are related to marginal shifts in aggregate level behavior turnout but have almost no perceptible impact on individual-level behavior – fits nicely within the conditional- choice approach. Conditional decision-making models have already been shown to better fit empirical patterns of decision making in quite signif- icant and costly decisions: the shift in patterns of retirement following a change in the legal age of retirement (Axtell and Epstein 1999 ), and adoption of a new form of hybrid corn among farmers (Young 2009 ). I adopt a similar approach, arguing that institutionally imposed costs of decision making are better understood as shifting the distribution of decision rules (in particular the proportion of first movers), rather than as having a direct and consistent impact at the individual level. Electoral Institutions Evidence on whether other aspects of the institutional context, particu- larly the electoral system, affect voting turnout is inconsistent. Turnout is generally higher in countries with proportional representation (PR) vot- ing systems (Powell 1986 , Jackman 1987 , Franklin 2004 ), as PR systems are associated with competitive national election districts (Powell 1986 , Jackman 1987 ). Subsequent studies outside of Europe have largely failed to replicate the finding that PR systems encourage turnout (Blais 2006 , for a review), however, and turnout can be depressed where PR voting 4 Although no individual mechanism reliably links institutional costs to aggregate turnout, it is worth noting the low rate of agreement with the characterization of voting as a civic duty among African Americans prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, followed by an abrupt increase (up to the levels of white American respondents) afterward. Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 13 sustains large numbers of parties (Jackman 1987 ). Similarly, the division of power between various branches of the legislature may impact turnout (Jackman 1987 ), although once again subsequent findings on this insti- tutional feature are mixed (Blais 2006 ). Party mobilization is most often mentioned as the individual-level mechanism through which electoral institutions affect turnout, an issue to which we will return shortly. The probability of being decisive in an election, p in the calculus of vot- ing, was recognized as important in early empirical work (Gosnell 1930 ; Key 1949 ) and was later explicitly linked to aggregate turnout variation (Barzel and Silberberg 1973 ; Settle and Abrams 1976 ). However, other scholars who found a relationship between closer elections (measured as the margin of victory for the winning candidate) and increased turnout continued to describe the margin of victory as a contextual, not individ- ual, variable (Patterson and Caldeira 1983 ). As further confirmation of the contextual impact of electoral competition, Ashenfelter and Kelley (1975 ) found that subjective estimates of the closeness of the presiden- tial race did not have a significant impact on individual turnout in the 1960 and 1972 U.S. presidential elections. However, it appeared that the perceived closeness of the race explained almost all of the marginal shift in aggregate turnout levels between the two elections, with 60% of 1972 respondents, but only 10% of 1960 respondents, stating that they believed the election outcome would not be close. Mobilization and Strategic Politicians The empirical evidence on whether institutions consistently affect voter turnout may be mixed, but one message from the previous section is clear: When institutions impact political participation, they do so only at the contextual (or aggregate) level. Even though some of the empirical results may be consistent with the individual calculus of voting, there is no empirical support for the calculus of voting acting as the mechanism through which institutional and electoral context might (with the sole exception of institutional costs) affect voter turnout. Mobilization by strategic politicians (Morton 1991 Aldrich 1993 ; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993 ; Cox 1999 ) is the leading candidate to fill this void. Strategic politicians (and their supporters) have a strong incentive to invest in elections that they have a chance to win, and there- fore strategically invest both time and energy into mobilizing voters in close races. Available evidence confirms that campaign expenditures do affect turnout (Patterson and Caldeira 1983 ), and reduces the impact of Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 14 margin of victory to insignificance in properly specified models (Cox and Munger 1989 ). Political actors invest more in mobilization when elec- tions are expected to be close (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993 ; Aldrich 1993 ). The rise in candidate-centered elections decreased the incentives for parties to invest in mobilization, leading to a subsequent decline in turnout in the United States (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993 ). Cox ( 1997 ; 1999 ) extends the strategic politician’s perspective to the puzzling impact of electoral institutions in a sophisticated formal theory linking voters, political parties, and electoral institutions. Cox argues that electoral rules affect voter turnout only indirectly, via the likely margin of victory and resulting mobilization efforts of strategic political elites. Political parties with an explicit goal of winning elections (and staying in power) put more or less effort into mobilizing voters depending on how various aspects of the electoral system translate “effort-to-votes, votes-to- seats, and seats-to-portfolios” (Cox 1999 ). Although the strategic mobilization perspective makes sense of an impressive range of contextual-level political participation research, it does not focus on decisions of individual voters and thus does not speak directly to the individual-level survey research on turnout discussed earlier. The conventional wisdom holds that mobilization works by sub – sidizing the costs of participation (e.g., a bus to drive voters to the polls) or by offering additional incentives to vote (e.g., social events for union members), but strategic candidates invest far more money in various forms of advertising than they do in hiring buses to drive local resi – dents to the polls. Moreover, empirical support for the direct impact of mobilization on turnout is based largely on personal contact by political elites and activists. I now turn to consider this rapidly growing body of evidence. Mobilization and Canvassing Citizens who are asked to vote are more likely to do so (Gosnell 1927 ; Rosenstone and Hansen 1993 ; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995 ). Mobilization clearly influences turnout, but the individual-level mecha- nism is left largely unspecified in the current literature. Its impact does not fit readily with the dominant cost-benefit logic – why should a stranger knocking on my door and urging me to vote for a particular candidate (Gerber and Green 2000 ) change the cost-benefit calculus of my turn- out decision? Yet voters who are contacted by parties report not only higher rates of voting, but that they are more likely to urge others to Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 15 vote (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993 ) – an indirect mobilization effect also confirmed by recent field experiments (Nickerson 2008 ). I argue that political mobilization does not effect marginal changes in the payoffs of voting, but increases the salience of the election for those exposed to it. As argued by Rosenstone and Hansen ( 1993 ), cit- izen participation takes place in a political environment with multiple actors competing for attention from citizens. Therefore, it is necessary to specify how activities undertaken by the political elite – candidates, organizations, activists, the media – are translated into changes in indi- vidual turnout probability. I conceive of political activity influencing individual decision making in three distinct ways: (1) providing informa- tion about the opportunity to vote in certain low information settings, (2) temporarily increasing the likelihood that someone will vote as a result of face-to-face contact, and (3) most importantly, increasing the salience of politics and the upcoming election among friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers. It is the last of these three that underlies my claim that virtually all turnout is mobilized, either directly or indirectly, by campaigns and related activity. The entire political environment, the campaigns, per – sonal contacting, and other forms of candidate and political activity play a role in the individual turnout decision by encouraging political dis- cussion. Without a campaign, who would vote? Perhaps a few highly informed and highly motivated citizens; but most of us are, to one degree or another, drawn in by the discussion and activity that surrounds an election, whether scattered and highly localized as in a contested city council election or widespread and virtually inescapable as in a presiden- tial race. The theoretical approach of this book fits well with what is known about how canvassing, both face to face and via phone calls and other communication media, affect the probability that mobilized citizens will actually participate. Most strikingly, voters are more likely to vote when told that turnout in the previous election was high rather than low (Gerber and Rogers 2009 ), and when told about their neighbors’ prior voting history (Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008 ). The proposed conditional decision function is itself nonlinear (and likely to be so for most individuals), and evidence confirms that citizens with a moderate initial propensity to vote are most affected by mobilization (Niven 2004 ; Arceneaux and Nickerson 2009 ). If mobilization also affects the (subjective) framing of the upcom- ing election among potential voters, we would expect the quality of the Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 16 contact to affect the priming potential of the contact. Again, evidence is in line with this prediction, as volunteer college students making phone calls (Nickerson 2008 ) and local neighborhood residents knocking on doors (Sinclair, Michelson, and Bedolla 2007 ) are more effective at increasing turnout than professionals or volunteers from outside the neighborhood. Mobilization, in other words, is not a mechanical activity, but depends on the social interaction between those doing the mobilizing and poten- tial voters they wish to mobilize. It is likely that strongly embedded citi- zens who mobilize endogenously, like precinct captains in the Chicago machine or organizational leaders, or, increasingly, ministers in black churches, will be more effective at stimulating both the situational frames and high levels of discussion that promote increased turnout. Social Context and the Sociological Tradition This book complements existing research documenting the influence of social context on political behavior, including older work from the Columbia School (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1948; Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954 ) and more recent work by other research- ers inspired by the Columbia School tradition (Huckfeldt 1979 , 1980 ; Gimpel, Lay, and Schuknecht 2003 ; McClurg 2004 ; Zuckerman 2005 ; Campbell 2006 ; Klofstad 2007 ). Along with other scholars working inside the social context tradition, I assume that the decisions are not taken by isolated individuals, but individuals embedded in particular social contexts. The impact of social context cannot be reduced to indi- vidual experiences of “peer pressure” or conscious attempts to influence other people. Social context is often working in the background, through the “slow drip” of everyday life (Baybeck and McClurg 2005 ) that shapes social schemas, expectations of others, and understandings of the political world. Traditionally, the impact of social context has been treated as inter – changeable with a simple, linear flow of influence from one person to another. Thus, social context has been conceptualized (and formally expressed) as working at the individual level through alters, or friends, who (presumably consciously) shape the attitudes and behavior of the person whose ego-centered network is under consideration (called “ego”). The unavoidable stumbling block in this (somewhat reductionist) model of contextual effects on the individual is that people can change either their behavior or their friends (Heider 1944 ). Thus, observational studies Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 17 of social influence on political behavior are (perhaps unfairly 5) subject to the same basic criticism: How do we know whether the observed similar – ity between friends is a result of selection or influence (Achen and Shively 1995 )? However, the mathematical approach to social interaction taken in this book is more faithful to the broader understanding of social context that is present in the literature from Lazarsfeld through to the current day. Conditional choice provides a framework for thinking systemati- cally about the impact of social context without reducing it to direct social influence via dyadic relationships. In particular, social structure and social location – not dyadic interaction – step to the forefront as explanations in any situation involving conditional decision making. Thus, empirical tests of the social theory of turnout, and research within the conditional choice approach more generally, are not subject to the criticisms commonly made of research in the social context tradition. Whereas the underlying notion of conditional cooperation among friends remains indispensable to understanding turnout, it is the way in which these friendships fit into the larger structure of social interaction that offers the possibility of reinterpreting the effects of education and other empirical correlates of turnout. The key insight driving the social theory of voter turnout is that social networks are more than an accumu – lation of the characteristics of the individuals in them (Coleman, Katz, and Menzel 195 7; Blau 197 7; Cook and Whitmeyer 199 2). The actual shape of the network itself can have important implications for the spread of a behavior in a society. In terms of turnout, if Jane the college graduate has more friends who vote than Joe the high school graduate, this may not indicate that Jane’s friends are better able to understand politics, or have developed a stronger sense of civic duty, or possess more of some other characteristic or quality than Joe’s friends. Rather, the difference in turn – out rates may arise simply from the average size and shape of the larger set of personal networks in which these friendship groups are embedded. The importance of this insight cannot be overstated: Social network differences are not reducible to differences in the individuals in those networks. This sociological perspective on the link between education and turn- out bears a strong resemblance to the argument made by Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry ( 1996 ). They resolve the “education puzzle” by claiming 5 McClurg ( 2003 ) correctly points out the flip side of the issue: that any model of political participation that omits informal social interaction is undeniably misspecified. Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 18 that relative educational attainment, not years of education, is the impor – tant predictor of turnout probability. Relative education attainment is assumed, although never conclusively shown, to be a proxy for social net- work status. Their results do not contradict my claims, and I also argue that education is at best a proxy for something important about social networks. However, I go beyond the claims in that book in two ways. First, I provide a well-documented and empirically supported model of decision making that includes a mechanism for exactly how social net- work structure impacts individual decisions. Furthermore, I examine in depth their claim that social status is an indicator of access to political power and find that this is only true some of the time. I analyze a large community using both interviews with political candidates and individ- ual and aggregate data to show that political history and institutionally mediated social ties are more important than social status in determining who has social access to political power. overview of remaining chapters The remainder of the book will unfold in three distinct steps. First, the conditional choice framework and associated research strategy are intro- duced. The second step develops a decision model of conditional coop- eration in situations similar to voting turnout. The third section expands the decision model into a middle-range theory (Hedström 2005 ) of turn- out and tests several implications of the theory. Chapter 2 introduces conditional choice, a formal research frame- work for developing and testing positive propositions about the impact of social context on social outcomes. I present evidence that our decisions and actions are often conditional on the actions of others, even when we are not consciously influenced or even aware of those other actions. The chapter then moves to a mathematical model of conditional choice, in which any individual action can be expressed as a function of others’ actions, more precisely as a weighted function of several basic decision rules. From these basic decisions rules we can derive a limited number of formal mechanisms that the conditional choice framework can use account for social outcomes, including the “basic dynamics” of a decision situation that make a behavior easy or difficult to diffuse, and aspects of social network structures that further shape and direct this diffusion pro- cess. Although this may sound very mechanistic, subjective perceptions are a keystone of the conditional choice framework: People’s responses Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voting Together 19 to others’ behavior depend on what sort of situation they think they are in, or the social meaning of the situation. Chapter 3 uses a combination of existing evidence, newspaper articles and editorials, and survey data to establish that the shared social mean- ing of voting is consensually positive and widely shared throughout the citizenry. In other words, there is no socially acceptable justification for nonvoting, even among subgroups in the population. Substantively, vot- ing is understood as the core act defining democratic citizenship in a community of equals. Thus, voting is a social dilemma in which voting is uniformly understood as doing one’s fair share for the community, and American citizens are all equal in terms of citizenship status. Chapter 4 identifies and reviews experimental scenarios with a similar social meaning to voter turnout: low-cost social dilemmas among equals. Evidence on the conditional (and unconditional) behavior of subjects in experimental social dilemmas is used to estimate a descriptively accurate model of the distribution of conditional decision rules in situations sim- ilar to voting. Chapter 5 describes the general and more specific dynamics of the conditional cooperation model. Turnout is produced when the actions of “first movers,” who are willing to cooperate unconditionally, encourage conditional cooperation among others. The expected level of cooperation (or turnout) responds to changes in two key parameters in the model: (1) the distribution of decision rules (based on empirical estimates from Chapter 4) and (2) the average size and density of personal networks within an individual’s social circle (estimated using survey data on per – sonal social networks.) The conditional cooperation model successfully produces a wide range of turnout levels within the parameter ranges set by external sources of data, and (as would be hoped) fails to do so out- side those parameters. Chapter 6 incorporates additional empirically based assumptions into the basic decision-making model to produce a complete, midrange social theory of voter turnout. Political mobilization, social location, institu- tional costs, and electoral salience are incorporated into the theory as working through mechanisms associated with either decision rule distri- butions or social structure. A relatively simple demonstration suggests that previously observed aggregate level variation in turnout is in line with predictions of the fully developed social theory. Chapter 7 compares the predictions of the social theory to those of the civic resources view in high-salience presidential elections. Drawing on a Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. Voter Turnout 20 relatively unique network component in the 1985 General Social Survey (GSS), I develop a suitable (although rather blunt) proxy for individual location in a larger social network structure. Although the proxy is not perfect, the test does provide support for the claim that social network structure and location provide a better explanation of individual varia- tion in reported voter turnout than a civic resources framework. Chapter 8 provides a more powerful crucial test of the two approaches, comparing the explanatory power of the two perspectives in low-salience elections. A combination of interviews, voter roll data, and geospatial analysis is used to describe the political and social geography of turnout in a large southern county across several elections. Social proximity to candidates is the single greatest driver of turnout in low-salience elec- tions, whereas socioeconomic status has no impact beyond increasing social access to political candidates. Chapter 9 concludes the book. I review the major findings, discuss the practical implications of the project for candidates and political activ- ists, and offer suggestions for future research. I offer thoughts on how to extend the analysis to the individual level, and the applicability of the conditional choice framework to a range of other political behaviors. Rolfe, M. (2012). Voter turnout : A social theory of political participation. Cambridge University Press. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:00. Copyright © 2012. Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.
Which form of political participation is the most effective and why? Include a news article from the last four weeks that illustrates this form of participation in action and how effective it is. Also
129 c h aPt e r 7  c onclusion CrE A tiv E p A rti Cip Ation in th E t w Ent y -F ir st C Entury A central goal of this book is to show that several different concepts of politi – cal participation exist. This variety is analogous to the variety of concepts of representation demonstrated by political philosopher Hanna Fenichel Pitkin and now accepted by the various branches of political science. A s with political representation, so it is with political participation. Indeed, political scientists normally recognize that there are different concepts of participation, but such recognition is stated unclearly and in the form of partial statements. For instance, it is conventional to contrast the idea of participation as being part of a debate about community issues with one expressing one’s interests within a system of political institutions. A nd it is also the conventional understanding that discus – sions of participation as civic engagement differ from discussions of participa – tion as voting and contributing to an interest group. However, others have not identified the five forms of participation as I have in this book. Political scientists are familiar with the four types of political participation identified as the forum, interests and institutions, civic engagement, and politi – cal movements. Therefore, it was not my priority in this book to write a chapter about each of the four with numerous citations to the literature, as Pitkin did in her work on representation. Such a task may fall to some other writer, who likely may have some partial objection to my list of five types of participation. Instead, I have emphasized the idea of creative participation as civic inno – vation, a fifth concept of political participation that has not been identified in McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 129 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 13 0 c h aPt e r 7 the literature. This springs from the observation that there are circumstances in which considerable numbers of scattered individuals lack an established in – stitutional mode to pursue public action to achieve some commonweal goal (a common good). At times such scattered individuals devise new modes of politi – cal participation. They engage in creative political participation for some civic innovation. This often involves new techniques, such as uses of the Internet. Indeed, the term “creative participation” might be an ordinary language usage for Internet political participation, such as uses of e-mail, Facebook, meet-ups, and so forth. However, in this book I normally use creative participation in the more restrictive sense of the fifth type of participation. The idea of creative political participation is tied to the paradoxes of par – ticipation. There are instances of political action in which joint action seems impossible, fruitless, or not sustainable, even though the goals of such joint ac – tion are vital to the community. By now social science is familiar with Mancur Olson Jr.’s logic of collective action in which the few defeat the many because the many lack incentives to mobilize and maintain organizations to achieve the public goods they seek. Political scientists are generally familiar with Garrett Hardin’s tragedy of the commons, formulated by Elinor Ostrom as the dilemma of common-pool resources, in which individuals have the incentive to rush to deplete them rather than to organize together to sustain the common pool. Often citizens are caught in the famous situation of the prisoner’s dilemma, in which problems of communication prevent joint action to achieve the commonweal. Instances of creative political participation cited in this book are means by which individuals overcome these paradoxes of political participation. Creative participation at the mass level includes contributions to environmen – tal lobbies in the United States, the recycling of household throwaways, tens of thousands of local protests by rural Chinese, cross-class activity by Wisconsin town dwellers against corruption in the 1890s, demonstrations in the capitals of countries undergoing “color revolutions,” the reaction against Shell Oil in the Brent Spar incident, Internet-coordinated protests against ExxonMobil as a reaction against corporate power, boycotts against Nestlé and various cloth – ing manufacturers contracting with Asian factories, and global social forums. Examples of creative participation by elites include participation in transnational advocacy networks, environmental lobbying at headquarters in Washington, D.C., and publicity campaigns against corruption by Transparency International. From the standpoint of political issue areas, environmental issues commonly provide contexts for creative participation. Environmental issues have been McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 130 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. conclusion 131 often characterized as issues appealing to numerous, scattered citizens, lacking established political institutions to provide means for public action. Accordingly, public-interest lobbies and transnational advocacy networks have been created to pursue the attainment of environmental public goods. A lmost by definition, political-corruption issues provide contexts for creative participation because, in this area, the established political institutions are the target for reform, if only the scattered reformers can create new modes of public participation. Political consumers sometimes act directly against a large business corporation or other producer in the economic market. At the national or transnational levels, con – sumer boycotts might initially seem to be hopeless, but effective publicity for a boycott can erode the economic worth of a brand name and accompanying corporate logo, thereby giving political consumers leverage. Established political institutions in one nation frequently appear ineffective in influencing the public policies of other countries. In this case, creative politi – cal participation leads to the formation of transnational advocacy networks that may act in the politics of the second country. The advocacy network may be mobilized into an interest group in the first country with the hope of lobbying its national parliament to take foreign policy actions against the second country, resulting in the so-called boomerang effect. But why then should creative participation be seen as one of a series of dif – ferent concepts of political participation? A first reason is the simple academic reason. Since there is such a series of different concepts, scholars should be aware of this while doing their work. But to move beyond this, the five con – cepts provide a context for each singular concept in conducting scholarship. A n important example is the relationship between the now preeminent civic- engagement concept and the creative-participation concept (see Chapter 1). The publications of leading civic-engagement scholars such as Robert Putnam and Theda Skocpol leave one confused as to their ideas about the role of public-interest lobbies, transnational advocacy networks, political consumer – ism, and other such modes of political participation. These do not involve civic engagement, but how do they fit in to the authors’ overall views about political participation? Putnam refers to individuals as contributors to, but not “mem – bers” of, such groups. Skocpol paints a negative picture of elite Washington lobbies, directed by professional organizers and lobbyists, without much tie to a membership (see Chapters 1 and 2). It would advance the discussion to recognize that public-interest lobbies play an important role in dealing with the paradoxes of participation, even while civic engagement enhances social McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 131 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 132 c h aPt e r 7 trust. The political reality of representation here is one of two different modes of participation. Creative participation enriches the discussion of politics by dealing with questions arising from the paradoxes of participation. In the forum, everyone is together and communicating. There is no such paradox. In the framework of interests and institutions, Olson’s logic of collective action leads to an observation that the few defeat the many, probably in most public-policy areas. But this does not happen so often, at least not so simply, and we need to turn to the creative participation of forming citizens lobbies to understand the reality of political representation. As noted, almost by definition, the theory of civic engagement excludes the paradoxes of participation because civic engagement is based on the idea of face-to-face interaction as leading to the formation of the social capital of trust. Political-movement participation is more similar to creative participation in that new forms of political and social action are created by movement partici – pants. However, political movements normally seek to redefine the identity of participants and to advance the welfare of some particular group, unlike creative participation in its search for the commonweal. Two or more forms of participation may be linked in a time sequence. During the years from 1970 to 1974, it was creative participation to form a Washington lobby to further environmental or clean-government legislation. Subsequently, however, such commonweal lobbying became institutionalized so that people with public-interest concerns would know automatically how to send in a check. Creative participation gave way to a form of interests-and-institutions partici – pation. Or protests against contamination of local water supplies might bring together scattered citizens within the local community, who might then con – tinue to associate in a face-to-face manner, developing social trust—hence the social capital of civic engagement. Or the causal processes can go from political movements toward creative participation. For instance, the political movement of environmentalism can influence scattered citizens to engage in recycling, a form of creative participation. Or the previous educational efforts of the en – vironmental movement might make northern Europeans sensitive to the idea of a multinational corporation’s polluting the North Sea, leading to political consumerist protest against oil companies. In the case of environmentalism, it seems that political-movement and creative participation overlap because environmentalism is a commonweal movement, unlike many other political movements. Some activists may be basically move – ment oriented regarding the environment, in A lberto Melucci’s (1996) sense McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 132 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. conclusion 133 of a political movement as embodying “critical codes” in relation to existing institutions. Environmentalists advocating major changes in political and legal institutions thus advocate a critical code and engage in political-movement par – ticipation. This would differ from those engaging in creative participation, such as advocating recycling, or the political consumerism of buying local food for the sake of the environment. Observers of environmental activism would find the two forms of participation coexisting, while a particular individual might move from one to another as, for instance, creative political participation may be radicalized into movement militancy. Balanced Participation Balanced participation is a very important idea for the understanding of political participation in a democracy. I find that there are five different types of participa – tion; others might argue for a different number. But the exact number may not matter that much. It is important for democratic government that none of the five types of participation be seen in isolation from the others. For democracy it is important that none of the types be exaggerated beyond a due proportion. Democracy is not all political discussion in the forum. Nor is it all the expression of interests to be represented in a system of institutions. Nor is democracy just civic engagement, trust, and the formation of social capital or just the development and expression of social and political identity in move- ments. Nor is it just creative participation as scattered individuals create new modes of public action. Democracy requires each of these five forms of political participation. Further, democracy is enhanced when the different types of political participa – tion are balanced. The concepts of the political forum and expressing interests through institutions were briefly separated until, following the initiation of the discussion known as the theory of “deliberative democracy,” political scientists saw that these two modes needed to be related and joined (Fishkin 1992). It is not democracy if interests are expressed but never discussed; nor is it wise to theorize about democracy as if everyone lived today in city-states resembling ancient Athens. The two concepts of the forum and institutional representation of interests must be seen in some mode of balance. Similarly one should not separate the political participation concepts of civic engagement and expression of interests in institutions. As the best treatments of civic engagement recognize, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 133 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 13 4 c h aPt e r 7 face-to-face interaction at the level of neighborhoods and communities usually does build trust and social capital, which is a foundation for the act of voting and for the mobilization and maintenance of interest groups. Again the two concepts of participation must be seen as acting in balance for the appropriate enhancement of democracy. Balanced participation is important for democracy as we view the relation- ship of creative participation to the other concepts. The creative participation of the first stages of expressing an environmental concern will give way to the institutional stage of the Washington lobby, entailing bureaucracy, professional management, and “politics as usual”(Bosso 2005). On the other hand, the Washington lobby should continue to act in balance with forms of creative par – ticipation as partial insurance against neglecting its public interests for the sake of organizational interests. The civic-engagement perspective must be balanced with the recognition of the very strong demands of the logic of collective ac – tion. Scattered individuals desiring some commonweal goal must in some sense get together to start to develop social trust among themselves, and finding the means to get together is a form of creative participation. First there must be creative participation, then civic engagement, then institutional expression of some commonweal goal (interest). A very important participatory balance is that required to enhance democracy in the implementation of public policy. One must not forget that after a law has been debated, possibly supported by a political movement and by groups dependent on social capital, and after legislation has been enacted through the processes of representation of interests in institutions, the law and its public policy must be implemented and effectively implemented over a succeeding period of perhaps a decade. As a great amount of research indicates, public attention and debate, as well as the political movement supporting many laws, wane after enactment. Accordingly, and as specified by Olson’s emphasis on the few defeat – ing the many by the organization of political oligopolies to reinterpret a public policy according to their own agendas, the intentions of the original legislators may be undermined by the well-organized influence of a group acting for its own interests. This is a well-known problem of policy implementation that can often be countered by creative participation, as when Chinese rural dwellers rush to protest local corruption or Progressive Midwesterners created new forms of public action against the corruption of local utility contracting. In the field of A merican national environmental policy and regulation, creative participation has led to the formation of effective watchdog lobbies to prevent regulation from McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 134 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. conclusion 135 being redefined and limited in the interests of those to be regulated. While face- to-face participation in local civic-engagement processes is an important form of political participation, such local engagement cannot produce the type of political participation necessary to monitor and influence environmental implementation policy, often highly technical in nature. Political participation must be balanced to enable effective and fair implementation of environmental laws. This is not to say that creative participation is always a good thing or that it always enhances democracy. Many readers would conclude that the Dixie Chicks boycott in support of President George W. Bush did not enhance the commonweal by, in this case, arguing that the office of U.S. president must be respected by not criticizing its current holder outside U.S. borders. Some anti-immigration advocates may join vigilante groups out of a sincere belief that immigration policy must be fairly implemented in the face of the efforts of economic special interests who hire immigrants at low wages, thereby undermining laws designed to express a commonweal interests such as control of the borders, public health, and public safety. Creative Participation and Worldwide Social Change As we move deeper into the twenty-first century, we will likely see more of creative participation as a response to worldwide social change. Despite its overuse, the term “globalization” is still useful in directing attention to the increasing fre – quency and necessity of using a worldwide frame of reference for political action. Issues have become more and more planetary, going beyond the framework of the nation-state. This is especially true of environmental issues, which almost by definition eventually surpass the local and wind up with a planetary frame of refer – ence, as our final environment is, of course, the planet Earth as a whole. Creative political participation is particularly oriented to the paradoxes of political action in the situation of common-pool resources and the need for political participation to cooperate to preserve such commonweal resources. Issues such as global warming, the preservation of ocean environments including fish and fisheries, the relation – ship of local forests to the overall planetary environment, and the use of limited natural resources, such as petroleum, fresh water, or various minerals, have become global. In terms of global issues, political action naturally transcends state bound – aries, calling for the formation of transnational advocacy networks as a creative participatory response of scattered individuals concerned with the commonweal McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 135 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 136 c h aPt e r 7 of the planet. Or within the boundaries of democratic or even semiauthoritarian states, creative participation occurs as citizens use new technologies to forge envi – ronmental associations and lobbies to influence their own governments. Creative participation is not only manifested in global political action but also forms a part of local political action. In itself, the creative participation of 700 million Chinese rural villagers is public action by 12 percent of the planet’s population. As noted, rural Chinese act in tens of thousands of recorded protests per year against corrupt local officials manipulating land sales, desecrating the environment, directly or indirectly stealing public funds, and manipulating lo – cal village elections. This is not exactly social-movement participation because the protestors accept the status quo of political authority in China and seek to apply the status quo of legality to their local village. One might go beyond this 12 percent of humanity and look for similar local creative participation in other places. Such examples can be found in rural and small-town protests against corruption against the backdrop of modern manufacturing and infrastructure development. As another example, small farmers in India have acted to block the construction of a major automobile factory, whose owners have a kind of eminent domain authority to preempt ownership of farmland. We may tend to sympathize with the economics of modernization, but creative participation includes local resistance to changes in land control imposed by authorities seeking economic development (Sengupta 2008). Creative participation is manifested locally in environmental actions. Such action is not limited to uncoordinated, environmentally oriented decisions by individuals, such as the decision to recycle. Both in rural China and in Woburn, Massachusetts, local residents have formed new mechanisms of public action to combat environmental degradation, including unsafe pollution, in their neighborhoods. The so-called negative externalities (effects) of manufacturing enterprises and infrastructural construction projects occur daily in thousands of places around the world. We can thus expect numerous examples of creative participation by people seeking to restore the commonweal good of an uncor – rupted environment in their localities. Locally oriented creative participation for the environment may be one of the more striking political phenomena of the t went y-fi rst centur y. In the capital square phenomenon, creative participation melds the local and the national—as when creative participation in a “color” revolution is automati – cally coordinated and expressed in the geographical layout of a capital city. I witnessed a more local form of protest in 2008 in Oaxaca, Mexico, where a score McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 136 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. conclusion 137 of leftist and indigenous groups protested the state governor by establishing a multiyear encampment of about 1,000 people in the central square. Many strands of creative participation can be woven into public action during the policy-implementation stage of the governing process. Pollyannaish civics teachers and law yers fixed on categories may suppose that politics ends with leg – islative decisions, but those concerned with the effects of public policy—citizens, businesspersons, interest-group employees, lobbyists—know that the passage of a law is not the end of the process. Laws can be partially, or even wholly, reversed during the policy-implementation process. Special interests can continually press for change when they are no longer opposed by reformist morning glories (open in the morning but closed in the afternoon) in the image of Boss G. W. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. Local-level creative participation against environmental deg – radation is often a protest against the lack of implementation of environmental laws, whether in Szechuan or Massachusetts. A major goal of the formation of environmental lobbies in the United States is to see to the continued enforce – ment of environmental laws and regulations, which may not be enforced by politicians who avoid interference in the marketplace, simply favor increased corporate profits, or are courting those who make campaign contributions. I would now characterize the formation of environmental lobbies as an instance of balanced participation, with the original act of organization entailing creative participation; as such lobbies become established, they become another instance of the institutionalization of interests, although the interests represented are purportedly for the common good rather than special interests. Certainly the formation of analogous groups in countries other than the United States will likely become a common form of political participation, and like such groups in the United States, environmental groups elsewhere will be – come institutionalized and participate in the policy process in their own arenas, even in authoritarian systems such as that of China. We do have evidence that the formation of transnational environmental advocacy networks, a somewhat different phenomenon from public-interest groups, has burgeoned during the last generation (Keck and Sikkink 1998, ch. 1). New Technologies The new technologies of the Internet and cell phones are becoming very much a part of creative participation. This is not to say that the use of new technologies McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 137 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 13 8 c h aPt e r 7 is limited to creative participation: Blogging is a new type of forum participation; Internet fund-raising is having a major impact on A merican electoral finances; civic-engagement groups such as parent-teacher associations can coordinate activities by establishing Facebook networks. However, creative participation by definition involves the creation of new modes of political participation by previously scattered individuals who lack established institutions to pursue commonweal goals. The Internet, by its very nature, is a technology that brings together scattered individuals, that is, those who lack the face-to-face interaction of civic engagement or activity within established institutions. For the most part, we can regard scattering as referring to geographically separated individuals who do not see one another and, for the most part, do not even know about each other (although they assume unknown others share their common-good goals). However, a scattering need not refer only to individuals. Thus, a scattering may at once include geographically separate individuals, interactive social networks, and even organized groups. Creative participation occurs as individuals and perhaps representatives of social networks and organized groups somehow communicate, possibly then meeting, to form a vehicle for political action. A striking case of the links between creative participation and Internet use occurred in the Iranian anticorruption protests concerning that country’s June 2009 election. A lmost every press account regarding the initial mass protests stressed the significance of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and various forms of Internet communication to inform supporters of Mir-Hossein Moussavi about the flow of events in various places and to include information about the time and place of ongoing mass demonstrations. Individuals outside of Iran joined the Iranian protest activity on the Internet; similarly, software developed by Falun Gong, the Chinese exercising religion, was given to the protestors to elude server shutdowns and other Internet-control measures (K ristof 2009). The U.S. State Department actually requested that Twitter delay a scheduled maintenance shutdown for the area including Iran (Landler and Stelter 2009). This book provides examples of creative participation preceding the wide – spread use of the Internet, but many of these participatory actions are likely to flourish even more in the present and future world of online ubiquity. In par – ticular, Internet-coordinated protest groups have formed in relation to certain multinational corporations, such as ExxonMobil and Shell Oil, and while often dormant and only marginally effective, they can serve as core communication units to spread information about protest as major new issues arise in relation to global warming, relations to indigenous people, environmental scandals, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 138 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. conclusion 139 and so forth. In the area of political consumerism, Internet communication can facilitate boycotting or preferential buying behavior, as individuals on e-mail networks and Facebook learn about the formulation of action through the In – ternet. Authoritarian governments such as those in Iran or China can fight back against the new technologies by the direct means of shutting down servers or blocking numerous websites. However, multinational corporations do not have these powers and, thus, may find themselves continually subject to influence exercised by Internet protestors. The anti–Dixie Chicks protest developed out of new technology. It origi – nated with Internet networks of country music fans spreading Natalie Maines’s statement that condemned President G. W. Bush. Within twenty-four hours, right-wing, patriotic Internet networks picked up this information and promul – gated the idea of boycotting the Chicks. The original report was a review in the traditional medium of a newspaper, but within a few days it had spread to hun- dreds of thousands of Internet users as interpreted within the frame of speaking disloyally about the president in a foreign country. It then affected the playlists of country music radio stations and subsequent CD sales, both older technolo – gies. This example reminds us that new technologies in creative participation can be used by citizens with traditional views about political authority, as well as by “cool” technologists rebelling against tradition. It is important to realize that Internet technology does not simply create new local networks and bring them into politics to act by themselves. A key technological step in present and future politics is whether locally created In – ternet networks will manage to federalize themselves throughout the nation- state. For instance, in tens of thousands of Chinese rural villages, local protest networks can form on the Internet to communicate about local corruption in a single village of perhaps 1,000 people. This would not be highly threatening to the Communist regime, especially if almost all of these local Internet networks spread information about laws of the national regime and urged all parties to follow them. However, to the extent that hundreds or even thousands of local protest networks link with one another, the potential for sudden criticism of the regime’s overall national policies becomes apparent. A similar situation could occur in Iran if local Facebook groups and Twitter users moved toward federal – izing into a nationwide network, informing one another of regime blunders and resulting local protests. New frameworks of political interpretation and calls for public action can then circulate if there is a national communications flow among hundreds of local networks. However, authoritarian national governments will McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 139 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 14 0 c h aPt e r 7 strive to prevent such nationwide linkages among local networks, resulting in a contest of communications strategies as authorities try to block Internet usage while reformers work up new modes of evading the blockades, normally with the assistance of foreign computer experts. Widely dispersed new types of visual technology are having a significant im – pact upon politics, including creative participation. By now we are familiar with images recorded by portable video cameras later circulating on television and, more recently, on YouTube. The video recording of three Los A ngeles police officers beating Rodney K ing in 1991 precipitated a huge political controversy, and even a major riot, and may be remembered as a landmark event illustrating the political impact of new video technology. Surreptitious videos taken by ani- mal rights activists in breeding factories and slaughterhouses were later shown to millions of people. With the emergence of YouTube, it became possible for Iranian protestors to circulate videos of demonstrators being beaten in Teheran in almost real time. In 2010, the full impact of YouTube technology on politics has yet to become apparent. Internet technology obviously has a significant potential for enhancing the organization of international advocacy networks as forms of creative participa – tion. However, I am not in a position to make definitive statements, and we must await the systematic collection of data about the use of new technologies in transnational organizing. Yet I can point to specific types of examples. We need to take more seriously the Falun Gong (exercise religion) move – ment in China and its activities after being forced into oppositional politics by the persecution of the Beijing regime, perhaps out of fear of a recreation of the huge, religion-based, nineteenth-century Taiping rebellion. To my surprise, it seems that Falun Gong adherents are world leaders in the technology of hiding the source of Internet messages, apparently relying on a global Internet network based in China and the United States. This same group gave Internet-security advice to the Iranian protestors in June 2009. Unpublished research by University of Illinois, Chicago, graduate student Herman Maiba indicated that transnational committees of Internet coordina – tors played a key role in organizing at least some of the international protests between 1999 and 2005 against international organizations and governments alleged to be forcing neoliberal policies on Third World nations (e.g., world trade undermining indigenous economies). While now apparently in decline, such demonstrations with international support in Seattle, Genoa, Barcelona, and elsewhere attained worldwide attention. A s noted, new Internet technolog y McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 140 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. conclusion 141 seems to be a necessary condition for the organization of watchdog groups, each focused on the activities of a single multinational corporation. A visit to the Greenpeace and A mnesty International websites indicates the usefulness of the Internet in communicating a transnational advocacy network’s activities to its international constituency and at least serving as a means for increasing contributions. A mnesty International has its own network on Face – book and posts its own blog; I take its activities to be typical of many groups expressing themselves on the Internet. Similarly, parallel groups in different countries, such as those in Britain and the United States protesting the use of baby formula and promoting breast feeding, can read one another’s websites for new ideas while raising one another’s morale and demonstrating that their cause is truly global. Straightforward uses of the simple cell phone should not be neglected in a discussion of new technologies and creative participation. Reports indicate that the cell phone was important in organizing the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine (McFaul 2005, 12), which focused on mass demonstrations in the gov – ernment square in K iev. Cell phones are clearly useful in organizing and directing demonstrations, cancelling out the advantage of police use of shortwave radio, which demonstrators have used less frequently during the last generation. In the United States, at least, protest demonstrations have often been coordinated by a leadership group using electrically enhanced megaphones, or microphones and amps, which may not be effective tools for coordinating very large dem – onstrations, for giving route directions during marches, or for communicating sudden changes in activity by police or counterdemonstrators. Demonstrations can usually be broken down into subnetworks of participating groups or simply into networks of friends and neighbors demonstrating together (Danaher and Burbach 2000; Rucht, Teune and Yang 2007). It improves the coherence and morale of a demonstration if such subgroups can readily form and communicate with one another, which is much more feasible in a world in which everyone possesses a cell phone. The technological revolution of the Internet should not mask our obser va – tion of the introduction of technologies into creative participation and social movements in earlier times, even though with the Internet, references to such earlier technologies now seems mundane. For instance, the Brent Spar protest as described in Grant Jordan’s book largely occurred as the result of television news broadcasts of images of Greenpeace protestors being attacked with fire hoses. Television images of dogs attacking peaceful protestors on the bridge in Selma, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 141 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 142 c h aPt e r 7 A labama, did much to enhance the Dr. Martin Luther K ing Jr.’s civil rights movement. Television images of the Santa Barbara oil spill and the E x x o n Va l d e z tanker disaster in A laska strengthened the environmental movement. Such visual images have a greater effect on audiences than sound portrayals on radio. The introduction of early computer coordination and labeling from potential contributor lists greatly aided mass-mailing techniques in organizing public- i nterest groups in the early 1970s. The introduction of long-distance telephone s er vice, and its enhancement and much lower cost after 1960, is another technology that aided creative participation and other forms of political activity (McFarland 1976, 21–22; McFarland 1984, 31–32). Both technological and political change surely stretch way back into history; consider the numerous effects of the invention of the print – ing press. The Internet surely is revolutionary and will produce major changes in political organization. Many will occur in elections, lobbying, civic engagement, and other familiar forms of political activity, but Internet-induced change will play a special role in creative participation due to the medium’s merging of scattered individuals and networks to take coherent public action. Twenty-First Century Practices and Behavior The earthshaking social trends of the times sometimes generate creative participa – tion. Meeting the challenges of planetary environmental degradation calls forth transnational advocacy networks. Preservation of common-pool resources, such as the riches and purity of the oceans, also elicits citizen participation. The new need for national and planetary energy policy affects citizens concerned with cost, conservation, and ecological responsibility. Political corruption has always been with us, but new and challenging modes of special-interest privateering develop with the increasing complexity of technology and government regulation. Capitalist corporations grow larger and more complex, transcending national borders and creating irritation, frustration, and an ethical sense of responsibility for workers and consumers across the globe. Such issues of social change and political policy exist not only at the level of planetwide action but also at the levels of national, local, and even individual action, such as household recycling. Creative participation around the world is likely to flourish as citizens act to meet such challenges. This form of participation thus deserves study and discussion—not dismissal as lacking in civic engagement or sometimes leading only to action by educated activists skilled in technology. Yet, I do not expect McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 142 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. conclusion 143 creative participation to replace civic engagement or standard participation in institutions such as elections or interest groups. Research and discussion will show how creative participation is linked to the other four forms of participation in a balanced manner. Let us be more specific about the practices and behavior that will flourish in the twenty-first century due to the planetwide challenges and other issues just cited. First, throughout the world in nations allowing latitude for citizens to pet it ion government, public-interest groups will become more numerous. This will occur through a parallel mechanism to events in the United States around 1970: Scattered citizens desiring public action to achieve some commonweal goal will work with resource mobilizers to form an organization to influence elites. Governments have become larger, more complex, and more embedded with technology. Policy implementation remains a centerpiece of governance in every country. Because of the logic of collective action, ordinary citizens have dif ficulty influencing the policy-implementation process. Such frustrated citizens are likely to form public-interest groups to organize and maintain citizen interests during the policy-implementation process. In addition to citizen action on domestic policies and their implementation, transnational advocacy networks will expand and become more numerous as citizens worldwide seek modes by which they can personally act to protest and influence public policies within nations other than their own. A n increase in trans – national advocacy groups actually has been apparent since 1985, while since 1995 use of the Internet has made them much easier to mobilize and maintain. One interesting possibility is that there could be an increase in transnational action to combat corruption, as the world discovers that corrupt governments in their local policies undermine worldwide action on environmental issues, such as reducing carbon emissions. A planetwide civil society is developing from transnational citizens groups and their advocacy networks, a significant phenomenon but one that we should not overplay as some kind of trend toward world federalism. Protests, uprisings, and creative participation in rural China occur within a demographic of 700 million people, 12 percent of the population of the planet, a population greater than that of Latin A merica. As such Chinese rural protest deserves major attention from the standpoint of political participation and public action. In this case, perhaps public policies from the Chinese center will substan – tially decrease the number of protests by the year 2030. New modes of public participation will probably develop in China to express in more institutionalized fashion the civic aims of Chinese rural residents. McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 143 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 14 4 c h aPt e r 7 As the Chinese example illustrates, creative participation may be local and need not be aimed directly at global issues. Accordingly, throughout the world, creative participation exists on an individual level in the daily practices of citi – zens, many of whom might be seen as average, “everyday” people. In particular, creative participation is manifested in individual household efforts at recycling. Such “everyday-makers” in the millions come to restrain energy usage and their consumption of consumer items in the interest of conser ving common-pool resources, such as water and forests. Creative participation will continue to find expression in behavior and prac – tice as political consumerism. Of particular interest is transnational political consumerism in an era of continuing economic globalism and the multinational corporation, such as Nestlé or ExxonMobil. Entities of international capitalism will increasingly affect people’s lives, and they will occasionally protest directly to the offending corporation or organization. In other cases, numerous scat – tered citizens will conclude that they should assume responsibility for the ethical treatment of foreign workers and foreign environmental conditions by their own corporations. At times, protest to existing transnational organizations or one’s domestic government will seem unsatisfactory—as unlikely to have an effective result—leading to political consumerism. The frequency of consumerist action will likely increase because of the pos – sibilities of coordinating through Internet technology the desire for public action by scattered citizens. This is especially true in the case of transnational political consumerism. Of course, political consumerism need not be transnational but may be directed at a domestic corporation or other economic actors, including media celebrities. In any case, the corporate logo has become an increasingly im – portant form of symbolic expression and presents an inviting target for consumer protest, stimulating increased support for political consumerist activity. Indeed, coordinated through the Internet, apparently long-lasting protest networks have mobilized and directed themselves against specific corporations, such as Walmart, ExxonMobil, and Nestlé. A Neo-Progressive Era? I speculate here that A merican politics is moving into a new era, a neo-Progressive era, and that creative participation will be a part of this. We may observe politics becoming more oriented toward public-interest protest and regulating business, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 144 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. conclusion 145 in a fashion similar to the changes in A merican politics following the end of the Gilded Age and beginning around the time of Teddy Roosevelt’s accession to the presidency. This period, often dated 1901 to 1914 and usually described as an era of progressive reform in A merican politics, is symbolized by the domestic actions of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. This was a time when the untrammeled power of monopolistic corporations and urban political machines met with successful challenges by Progressive reformers, who tended to hail from the rising strata of the new professionals of the middle class (Wiebe 1967), though sometimes Progressive coalitions were community wide, as noted by David Thelen (see Chapter 3 above). The politics of the Progressive era re – volved around the pursuit of the “public interest” against the “special interests” as represented by corporate monopolies and urban patronage machines. Robert Putnam, the chief theorist of civic engagement, actually calls for a return to Progressive politics in the last chapter of Bowling Alone. In fact, this may actually happen, with creative participation forming part of such a new political era. We note that a neo-Progressive era is not so similar to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal—a coalition of local political-party groups, unions, and liberals—working to stabilize the economy, redistribute income, and provide the basis for a limited welfare state. Nor is neo-progressivism so similar to the identity, antiwar, and lifestyle movements of the 1960s. There is an overlap, however, in the environmental movement, which got a new start around 1968. A neo-Progressive political era would likely incorporate the goals of environ- mentalism and conservation of common-pool resources, opposition to political and corporate corruption, and concern for the implementation of public policies to render them more than symbolic. The earlier Progressives were particularly concerned with the implementation of public policies; however, overly impressed with the new scientific professionalism, they overemphasized the possibilities for effective implementation by apolitical, independent regulatory commissions (Bernstein 1955). Like Teddy Roosevelt, neo-Progressives will be more ready to regulate business. Like Woodrow Wilson, they will be concerned with democ – racy and human rights in foreign nations. The neo-Progressives will constantly affirm that they represent the public interest and are the true opponents of the special interests. They have this affirmation in common with Progressives and creative par – ticipationists. A ll see themselves as opposing political and economic corruption, as representing the consumer against the excesses of corporate profit taking, and as protecting the environment and common-pool resources against the McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 145 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 14 6 c h aPt e r 7 shortsighted actions of the special interests. The original Progressives looked to scientific regulator y agencies to shepherd the implementation of public policy; the new creative participationists look to the more political actions of public- interest lobbies wielding countervailing power to special-interest iron triangles. The Progressives, neo-Progressives, and creative participationists tend to be led by technically sophisticated, middle-class professionals (Wiebe 1967; Skocpol 2004). Creative participation may be a factor characteristic of a neo-Progressive political era, while neo-Progressive norms and ideals will induce further creative participation. This does not mean that creative participation will be a dominant political characteristic of a new political era. However, creative participation may become a more important political phenomenon than it is now. The politics of interests and institutions will continue to carry more weight than creative participation, which lends itself to eventual institutionalization into continu – ing public-interest lobbies. Creative participation may partially replace civic engagement as the widespread use of Internet coordination replaces face-to-face interaction in neighborhoods. Thus, creative participation and its use of the Internet will become a more important political characteristic in protests against environmental pollution, depletion of common-pool resources, political corruption, inept corporate poli – cies, and the desire to be politically active across national borders. To a great degree, creative participation is now bound up with the use and development of Internet technolog y. The phrase “creative participation” has a positive ring in its reference to the efforts of scattered citizens to create new forms of public action when established forms seem not to provide a means to pursue commonweal goals. For the sake of balance, I note that some observers will object to the actions and goals of some such participatory activists, as some would object to casting idealistic opponents of immigration into a positive light. On the whole, those engaging in creative participation strive to deal with paradoxes of human cooperation that might place severe limits on democracy. Those active in creative participation normally assume personal responsibility for improving society and the welfare of others, not just themselves. As such creative participation is a form of ethical conduct that serves as a basis for ethi – cal citizenship. McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 146 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:37:25. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Which form of political participation is the most effective and why? Include a news article from the last four weeks that illustrates this form of participation in action and how effective it is. Also
1 c h aPt e r 1  c re ative P artici Pation and c ivic innovation During these times, individual citizens find political participation increasingly paradoxical. Traditionally both citizens and political observers have thought of political participation in terms of such concepts as the Greek agora (“forum”) in which the citizens of the polis met together to discuss and take action regarding political issues affecting the community. Or in the West they may have thought of political participation as taking action in pursuit of interests, which were then registered and aggregated by established institutions of political representation, the political participation of Robert A. Dahl’s Who Governs? (1961). Yet, often the individual citizen finds him- or herself in the situation of one of the group of hunters in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1984) metaphor of the stag hunt. Rousseau posited just two hunters, but I will expand this to a group of hunters. The group of hunters seeks to stalk and surround a stag, to shoot it, and to divide up the prize venison. However, along the way the hunters constantly surprise numerous fat rabbits, an easy kill. The hunters must cooperate to pursue and surround the fleet stag, which they are not certain to accomplish. On the other hand, at any time, any one of the hunters can readily kill a rabbit and return home with meat for a nice meal, although not as desired as a slab of venison. As Rousseau notes, the hunters are caught in a paradox of participation. Each may himself be willing to reject a rabbit for the uncertain prospect of venison, but the individual hunter cannot be sure that all of the other hunters think the same way. If a single hunter shoots a rabbit, the stag, forewarned, will rush away at high speed, as will the other rabbits, except for the victim. Accordingly, the incentive for an individual McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 1 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 2 c h a Pt e r 1 hunter is to shoot a rabbit immediately before some other does and drives away all the other rabbits, let alone the stag. The individual thus settles for the sure acquisition of a smaller self-interest rather than cooperating with all the other individuals to obtain a much greater common good, stalking and surrounding the stag. A nd better to shoot a rabbit, before someone else does, thereby leav – ing the first individual with nothing at all—no rabbit, no stag. The individual is caught in a paradoxical system of participation in group action. Rousseau’s stag-hunt metaphor brilliantly foreshadows one of the central preoccupations of A merican social science during the last half century—the concern for dilemmas in gaining human cooperation, particularly in situations of imperfect communication. Cooperation dilemmas are frequently referred to as “prisoners’ dilemmas” after a game-theory model parallel to Rousseau’s stag hunt (A xelrod 2006). Two prisoners are held but separated, so they cannot communi – cate with each other. The jailors pressure each to confess and separately inform each prisoner of his situation. If both refuse to confess, both are set free. If both prisoners separately confess, each will get a moderate sentence. If one prisoner confesses, but the other refuses, the confessor will receive a light sentence, but the refuser will get a severe sentence. In this situation, one expects Rousseau’s outcome: In order to avoid the worst (no rabbit, no stag), each prisoner will confess (get a rabbit) and will not cooperate for the best outcome (the stag). This is largely because each prisoner will expect the other prisoner to go for the rabbit; therefore, each prisoner will go for the rabbit rather than risk getting nothing at all (a severe sentence). A nd they cannot cooperate to get the best outcome. During the last half century, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and political scientists have built thousands of experiments and behavior models around the paradox of the prisoners’ dilemma. The late political economist Mancur Olson Jr. applied the idea of coopera – tion dilemmas to political behavior in The Logic of Collective Action (1965) . Olson began with the basic economic concept of public goods, that is, goods that are jointly supplied and not appropriated by some agent (if one person in an area has the good, then all people have it). The basic example of a public good is clean air: If clean air is supplied to one person in an area, then all people in that area must have it. Olson’s key observation is that many public policies of government provide public goods: national defense, safety from crime, systems of public health, a common monetary system, and so forth. Then Olson applied another key observation to interest-group behavior. If an interest group seeks a public good, or merely even a collective benefit, for everyone within the group, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 2 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 3 why should the individual contribute to the public action by the group if the individual will get the collective benefit regardless whether he participates ? Still another Olsonian observation was that this problem is most likely to crop up if the group comprises numerous individuals (say more than one hundred). It will then seem to the individual that his contribution to public action makes little difference, and if the public action succeeds, the individual will get the collective benefit any way. Of course it then follows that in such large group situations, it is not rational for any individual to contribute to the public action; hence, the public action will not occur, resulting in the lack of provision of some widely valued collective benefit. On the other hand, if just a few agencies, such as individuals or corporations, take interest in some public action, the few agents (say ten or fewer) are each likely to make their contribution because each contribution makes a difference, and each agent expects the few other agents to realize this; thus, all make the contribution to the public action, thereby providing the benefit to the small group. Then, however, the bottom line is that if we consider political participation to be the aggregation of interests by representative institutions, the few will defeat the many because this logic of collective action holds that the few will engage in public action while the many will not participate in public action. Or in everyday language, the special interest will defeat the public interest. Let us examine the situation of individuals caught within these paradoxical systems of action without communication: the stag hunt, the prisoner’s dilemma, the logic of collective action. In such dysfunctional systems, individuals may prefer to cooperate, but they cannot cooperate without being able to communicate. In chasing the stag, the hunters are scattered through the forest. The prisoners are purposely held in separate cells. In the logic of collective action, the costs involved for one individual to communicate with hundreds or even thousands or millions are ordinarily too prohibitive for the individual to act. I refer to individuals caught in these dilemmas of cooperation without communication as “scattered.” A second aspect of the situation of the scattered individuals caught in these paradoxical systems of action is that they are frequently seeking to cooperate to attain a common good. The hunters seek to cooperate to surround and kill the stag. The isolated prisoners seek to be set free. The scattered individuals in Olson’s logic of collective action seek to gain a “collective benefit” or “public good.” In such situations, systems blocking communication frustrate individuals’ desire to cooperate to attain a common or public good. True, Olson’s collective-action paradox also applies to systems of organizing more than one hundred units that McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 3 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 4 c h a Pt e r 1 may be seeking a particular interest, as when hundreds of small businesses (say bakeries) seek to form a trade association to lobby for a given benefit. But Olson’s paradox applies most poignantly to democratic theory in situations in which the diffused interests of millions of scattered citizens cannot be organized, as in the case of millions damaged by pollution or suffering a monopolistic price increase. I refer to such individuals as seeking commonweal goals, in respect to the language of seventeenth-century A merican colonists and to avoid the greater moralistic shading of phases like “the common good” or “the public interest.” A third characteristic of these paradoxes blocking common action is that no established political institutions exist to coordinate cooperation among the scat – tered individuals seeking the commonweal. One could imagine in the stag-hunt example that there might be institutional coordination, as when all the hunters are soldiers under the command of a leader, to forewarn them against shoot – ing a rabbit. One could imagine that the prisoners, rather than being criminals rejecting the laws, could again be soldiers, each expecting the other to follow previous instructions given in training (e.g., do not confess). The perhaps mil – lions of scattered individuals caught in Olson’s logic of collective action cannot form an interest group to lobby the legislature for their collective benefit. In fact, the political philosophy of liberalism argues that the activities of the state must solve the paradoxes of seeking the commonweal. Such philosophical liberals (in the European sense) are critical of the need for an expansive state but grant the need for the state to act to coordinate cooperation when paradoxes of action block private individuals from acting to attain the commonweal. Nineteenth- century classical economics and its successors therefore grant the need for the state to provide “public goods” when they cannot be attained through private cooperation (Olson 1965, 102). Christian, Muslim, A ristotelian, Marxist, and other theories of the state normally do accept the need for established political institutions to act to coordinate cooperation for the commonweal but regard paradoxes of participation as arguments secondary to other ethical foundations for the state. Creative Political Participation Sometimes scattered individuals seeking public action toward a commonweal goal but, lacking established political institutions to pursue that goal, must engage in creative political participation. The scattered individuals must then McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 4 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 5 create some new vehicle for cooperation to undo the system of scattering—the logic of collective action or the various barriers to communication causing di – lemmas of cooperation. Native A merican hunters coordinated the pursuit by communicating through animal cries; A merican military prisoners held by the North Vietnamese communicated through a system of tapping on cell walls; environmentalists and corruption opponents overcame the logic of collective action around 1970 by devising systems of entrepreneurial organization employ – ing direct-mail technology. Subsequently, through the 1970s and 1980s, direct- mail-based public-interest groups established themselves as a new institution for political participation among scattered citizens seeking commonweal goals (Bosso 2005; McFarland 1984). Other types of creative participation for commonweal goals include the formation of transnational advocacy networks, transcending the established boundaries of national organizations, and engaging in boycotts and other actions against current policies of major business corporations (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Micheletti 2003). Scholars need to pay additional attention to creative participation as civic innovation. This parallels the difference between Olson’s collective benefits and the traditional economics concept of public goods. As noted, a rather large group of scattered agents (individuals or businesses) will have difficulty mobilizing its collectivity into a lobby to pursue a common group interest or collective benefit. However, that benefit may be a special interest, such as organizing sugar grow – ers to get import quotas that increase the price of sugar. On the other hand, there are public goods or collective benefits that benefit almost everyone within some defined area. The most famous public good is clean air, one of many such environmental public goods. I use the phrase “civic innovation” to refer to creative participation to orga – nize new modes of cooperation to obtain a public good, a benefit for everyone within some civic boundary. From the standpoint of the planet as a whole, civic innovation includes initiating new forms of public action transcending national boundaries and seeking the commonweal of the entire planet. Some people at least part of the time regard civitas as pertaining to the entire world. The concept of political participation resembles that of representation as presented by political philosopher Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (1967) in a work that has met consensual acceptance by political scientists. Pitkin pointed out that there are several separable uses of “representation”; for instance, when George I of Hanover was imported to be the British monarch, one might say that he was not “descriptively representative” of the British because he was German and did McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 5 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 6 c h a Pt e r 1 not speak English. On the other hand, upon becoming the monarch, George I was “symbolically representative” of the British as the wearer of the crown and a descendant of William the Conqueror and the Tudor Henry V II. A fter dif – ferentiating several concepts of representation, Pitkin showed that they should not be confused with one another but might adhere together in some political situation. A similar observation can be made about the concept of political par – ticipation as illustrated below. Different Concepts of Political Participation I refer to the situations of the stag hunt, the prisoners’ dilemma, and the logic of collective actions as paradoxes of political participation because we have in mind other situations in which there are few such dilemmas for cooperation in public action. The first such traditional form of action and political idea is the political forum or the agora (the marketplace). The classical civilizations of Athens and Rome valued political participation by the entire citizenry (a restricted group) in the central forum or marketplace to discuss jointly political issues affecting the citizenry with the goal of establishing common action, coordinated by lead – ers representing the citizenry. This is the forum model of political participation (A rendt 1998; Pateman 1970). It has played a central role in the humanities since the Renaissance. In the United States, the forum model was joined by the similar town-meeting model in which the farmers and merchants of a New England township would meet together, discuss issues, and elect the board of selectmen. In both academic and everyday political heritage, we regard the political forum as an institution furthering political participation (Mansbridge 1983). A second model of political participation I term the interests-and-institutions (I&I) model. This form of political activity, and the modeling of it, is most f amiliar to the A merican citizen. This is the political participation referenced by classical liberal political theory. Citizens are seen as individuals who act in politics to express and further their own interests. The political system incorporates a set of institutions that register and aggregate the individual interests as they are expressed in action within the context of the aggregative institutions. There are four basic forms of political participation within the I&I model (Verba and Nie 1972; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995, added movement protest). The first is expression of interest in the institution of elections through voting. The sec- ond is expression of interest through campaigning for representatives in the McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 6 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 7 system of elections. The third is expression of individual interest through joining or contributing to an interest group and lobbying or petitioning government institutions on behalf of its individual interests. Olson, of course, said that such participation was ineffective in representing the interests of large groups. Finally, within the I&I model, the individual citizen may directly contact a governmental official to express an interest and get that official to act to consummate it. Unlike the forum model, the I&I model in its basic form does not concern itself with the value of widespread public discussion of issues. This I&I model is excellently expressed in Dahl’s 1961 classic Who Governs? A third form of social and political participation is civic engagement (Putnam 2000). This concept emphasizes the importance of face-to-face social interac – tion in building the trust necessary for humans to cooperate in social institu – tions. The extent of trust is referred to as “social capital,” a well-iterated term in recent social science. Individuals are viewed as engaged in social and civic interaction and thereby contributing to the social capital necessary to maintain the group structure of society. A lexis de Tocqueville, a classic author familiar to undergraduate political science and sociology majors for the last two genera – tions, famously put forth this perspective in the 1830s. Robert Putnam (2000), author of the famous “bowling alone” analogy and criticism of social trends in A merica, recently sharpened and refined Tocqueville’s social theory. In the widely known analogy, Putnam stated that in the 1950s, A merican bowlers participated in a face-to-face manner in community wide bowling leagues; by the 1990s such leagues had largely disappeared, leaving bowlers to participate only in small groups of immediate family and friends. In general, Putnam chronicled the decline of neighborhood interactive groups, replaced by solitary activities such as watching television at home or longer and longer commutes to work. Putnam expressed concern for the effects of such trends on the quality of social interaction, particularly on the quality of social trust and of democracy built upon it. Civic engagement in Putnam’s sense refers to face-to-face participation in social groups in general, including lodges, sports associations, political-party gatherings, parent-teacher associations, and so forth. Political participation in face-to-face groups is thus one type of the general social-participation concept, but it is a particularly important type of social participation within the work of civic-engagement theorists. A fourth type of political and social participation is participation within social movements. The political sociology of social movements has advanced greatly since the 1970s, even though there is no agreement on the precise definition of McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 7 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 8 c h a Pt e r 1 “social movement” (McAdam 1999). A central tendency in delineating social movements is the use of noninstitutional tactics in the pursuit of movement goals. Such tactics might include nonviolent demonstrations, strikes, threats or the use of violence, consciousness-raising groups, disruption of transportation and com – merce, and so forth. In the United States, social movements often simultaneously employ institutional tactics, such as litigation and lobbying of legislative bodies. Social movements are usually contrasted to other forms of collective behavior, ephemeral in nature, such as crowd behavior or social fashions and fads (Orum 2001, 225–226). Adherents to a social movement are defined as advocating a major change in social institutions, often accompanied by a redefinition of per – sonal and group identity for the movement adherents. Creative participation by definition springs from the lack of established politi – cal institutions; social-movement behavior by definition employs noninstitutional tactics and may itself create new institutions in opposition to the established institutions. In the creation of institutions, the two forms of participation overlap. While it is not explicitly accepted in the writings of all social-movement scholars, most seem to accede to A lberto Melucci’s (1996) concept of a social movement as behavior based on “critical codes,” thus fundamentally critical of one or more social institutions. As indicated below, creative participation may include political behavior that consciously defends the status quo of legitimate institutions, some of which are seen as having been hijacked by special-interest coalitions. In such cases, creative participation is supportive, rather than critical, of existing institutions. A n example is environmental lobbies working to enforce existing environmental legislation passed by Congress. Political movements may be seen as proceeding from the organization of coop – eration among scattered participants, as occurs in creative participation. However, most political movements constitute a statement of redefinition of group and personal identity. This is not the case with creative participation, which focuses instead on cooperating in pursuit of commonweal goals. However, some political movements, such as environmentalism, pursue more than the interests of a single group and, as such, their activities overlap with the concept of creative participa – tion. In local instances, we might be reluctant to speak of political-movement par – ticipation, as when, for instance, dozens of local governments in the Los A ngeles basin cooperate to maintain the water in an aquifer (Ostrom 1990, ch. 4). In this chapter, I refer to political , not social, movements, as a few social movements are not especially political, such as the A merican Protestant evangelism of the 1930s and 1940s, which eschewed political activity (Wilcox 1992, 7–8). McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 8 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 9 Thus, I regard creative participation as a fifth form of participation supple – menting the previous discussions of the forum, I&I, civic engagement, and social movements. My sense is that creative participation is not as frequent a phenomenon as the others, excepting the forum. However, it may be that with globalization phenomena, creative participation is becoming more frequent, as individuals come to care more about the environmental and human rights poli – cies of countries other than that of their own residence. Creative participation also derives significance in that it is rooted in universal dilemmas of human co – operation, as symbolized by the stag hunt, the prisoners’ dilemma, and Olson’s logic of collective action. One virtue of delineating separate forms of political participation is the avoid – ance of needless scholarly controversy. As an analogy to Pitkin’s work, there is no point to arguing that “true” representation is that of the principle and his agent, or the symbolic representation of the monarch or the president, or the descrip – tive representation of the organizational board that must contain 50 percent women. Similarly, there is no point to arguing that “true” participation is one or the other of the five forms just described. Dahl did regard I&I as participa – tion in Who Governs? and was met with famous criticism from Carole Pateman (1970), who argued that political participation also includes discussion of issues presented to a group. By now most scholars recognize both as different types of participation, which some hope to bring together in a theory of “deliberative democracy” (Fishkin 1992). Since 1995, there has been enormous interest in the theory of civic engagement, and now the issue is whether civic-engagement writers might downgrade and refuse to discuss creative participation that does not include face-to-face interaction. Civic-engagement theorists should not eliminate public-interest lobbies, transnational advocacy networks, and consumer boycotts from the realm of significant public action. Table 1.1 contrasts the five types of political participation. As stated, creative participation sometimes appears in contexts in which scattered individuals, seek – ing commonweal goals, lack established political institutions to engage in public action toward these goals. Scattering refers to a lack of communication impeding cooperation or to Olson’s point about the difficulties of organizing a large number of individuals to form a lobby to attain a collective benefit or commonweal goal. Scattered individuals are not in engaged in face-to-face interaction. In the context of the forum model of participation, there is no scattering; citizens meet in a specific place. The citizens are concerned with commonweal goals and discussing issues affecting them jointly; the meeting is an established McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 9 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 10 c h a Pt e r 1 political institution. In the context of I&I, expressed in one form by Who Gov- erns? , scattering is medium; citizens do not meet face-to-face in voting, the most important participatory institution; they do meet face-to-face in campaign and interest-group meetings. Commonweal goals are low/medium, indicating that in strict liberal models (in the European sense) of I&I, individuals are seen to be pursuing their own interests. However, as applied in empirical political science, the I&I model includes citizens making sincere commonweal claims in advocat – ing policies, such as urban renewal in Who Governs? , seen to be good for the city as a whole (although not for those individuals who were removed). The model by definition treats political participation as a matter of citizens expressing individual interests within a system of political institutions that represents and aggregates. The civic-engagement model of participation by definition emphasizes face-to- face interaction. While engagement focuses on the development of commonality among individuals, this commonality usually entails a particular group acting in cooperation rather than for a community as a whole. Nevertheless, participation can sometimes be for a commonweal goal of a community (usually a locality). By definition, individuals are civically engaged in established institutions. The political-movement model of participation ordinarily sees individuals as scattered, then mobilized into a movement in which they cooperate toward a goal. Nor – mally political movements concern group identity, group rights in a society, and possibly economic position. However, a few political movements concern com – monweal goals, such as environmentalism. In this case, the political-movement model overlaps with the creative-participation model. By definition, political movements reject at least some established political institutions. The political forum, I&I, civic engagement, and political movements are all established, significant models (or perhaps categories) for political analysis. They are separate but frequently linked in political analysis. Civic engagement provides Table 1.1 Types of Political Participation I nterests & C ivic Soc ial C reative F orum I nstitutions Engagement M ovements P articipation Scattered people L ow M edium L ow L ow H igh Commonweal goals H igh L ow/medium M edium L ow H igh Established institutions H igh H igh H igh L ow/medium L ow McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 10 1/17/13 9:12 AMMcFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 11 a basis for the forum and for some of the institutions in pluralist mechanisms. Especially in the United States, some political-movement participants organize lobbying groups that become institutionalized. Similarly, creative participation is sometimes linked to political behaviors reflecting the other models. In particular, new modes of expressing commonweal goals may become institutionalized as lobbies or even political parties (green parties). As noted, creative participation is sometimes closely linked to, or overlaps with, political-movement participa – tion, especially in the case of environmentally concerned individuals acting in new ways to further commonweal goals. To explore further the meaning of creative participation and civic innovation, in the remainder of this chapter we look at five important arenas of action for this type of political participation: diffused interests and the logic of collective action, implementation of public policies, opposition to political corruption, political consumerism, and transnational advocacy networks. These areas caught my at – tention as exhibiting creative participation while I conducted previous writing and research. In this book I aim simply to persuade the reader that something like creative participation exists in politics. I do not have the intention of scien – tifically delineating the “universe” of creative participation. Diffused Interests and the Logic of Collective Action The logic of collective action means that public policies are public goods—if one citizen receives a benefit, such as an improvement in the environment, then all citizens also benefit by the very nature of the public good. However, individu – als are modeled as self-interested, mostly in respect to material goods, although sometimes in regard to solidary (friendship) benefits. It follows that self-interested individuals do not contribute to political efforts to gain a public policy that pro – duces a public good because they will receive the same good even if they do not contribute. This is the famous concept of the free rider. A small group of agents, corporations, professional associations, or entrepreneurs, however, will find it in their particular interest to fund a lobby since the benefits to each outweigh the costs. Accordingly, special-interest lobbies will organize, but public-interest lobbies will not due to the costs of cooperation. The result is a serious limitation upon the possibilities of democratic government (Olson 1965). Of course, I have assumed that some citizens, some of the time, exhibit civic virtue and desire to act, not out of self-interest but out of a desire to attain the McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 11 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 12 c h a Pt e r 1 commonweal for the entire citizenry in some area of public action. This is a way of explaining why so many lobbies exist despite the logic of collective action. Nevertheless, most social scientists would agree that self-interest is nonetheless an extremely widespread motivation and that consequently joint public action in the pursuit of public goods is frequently very difficult. Hence, minority interests tend to rule, and democratic governance is limited. A major theoretical argument and empirical finding in public-policy studies is that the costs of organizing collective action by the many lead to control by the few particularistic coalitions of interest groups, legislators, and enforcement agencies controlling a public-policy area in which they have a stake. In the vernacular, this is known as the power of “iron triangles” or “special-interest” rule. Many political scientists have argued that this produces a major limitation on democratic governance, as noted in such famous works as E. E. Schattsch – neider ’s The Semisovereign People (1960), Grant McConnell’s Private Power and American Democracy (1966), and Theodore Lowi’s The End of Liberalism (1979). The solutions each proposed to enhance democratic government in the United States are familiar: national political parties with clear and differing issue platforms able to implement these platforms in Congress (Schattschneider); the New Deal image of a strong president and Supreme Court, backed by a national political party, advocating the interests of the popular majority (McConnell); a Congress enacting legislation giving clear administrative direction with a Supreme Court insisting that Congress not delegate decisions to administra – tors controlled by interest groups (Lowi). However, recent events indicate that such political institutional changes may work more to the interests of business than those of a general public. A fter the Gingrich election of 1994 up to the 2006 elections, the national Republican Party had a distinctively pro-business agenda and, by attaining majorities in both houses of Congress or by executive orders, was able to enact much of that agenda, which was increasingly backed by the Supreme Court and other federal courts. Environmental, consumer, and government reform interests were set back in the institutional logic of stronger political parties, a centralized executive branch under the president, and decisive enactments by federal courts. However, civic innovation has been powerful in the arenas of the collective- action paradox. Described by both Putnam and Skocpol as not a manifestation of civic engagement (Putnam 2000, 152–161; Skocpol 2004), environmental, consumer, and good-government lobbies formed by direct-mail solicitation, later supplemented by e-mail, have resulted in the exercise of a significant degree of McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 12 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 13 countervailing power to special-interest coalitions. A considerable amount of research has demonstrated this (Walker 1991; Rothenberg 1992; Berry 1999; McFarland 2004; Bosso 2005). The new public-interest lobbies are not participa – tory to any great extent—one normally expects only 3 to 5 percent of contributors to do anything more than write a check. Such groups also often do not have local chapters, or if they do, they embody only a small fraction of contributors. Such public-interest lobbies are based on the idea of efficient representation through contributions to professional representatives, either lobbyists or public-relations professionals (Bosso 2005). But it is not in the nature of ordinary language to argue that contributions to political representatives are not participation—this is merely a form of participa – tion different from face-to-face social engagement, public discussion of common issues, or self-interested action through existing institutions. Instead, innovative participants have created public-interest lobbies to deal with the political situa – tion of a widespread concern to rectif y social injustice in some area, when such a concern is shared by many citizens scattered about with no immediate institu – tional recourse. The logic of collective action points to a significant limitation upon democratic governance, but participation in civic innovation has helped to counter the marked imbalances in the process of interest mobilization. Policy theorist Hugh Heclo noted that influential elites in separate issue areas form “issue networks,” separable by particular policy areas. The issue network is the observable communications network of those actively attempting to influence policy in some area, although some academics and journalists limit themselves to framing issues and analyzing policy alternatives. A n issue network comprises individuals from all sorts of interest groups, including public-interest groups, concerned with policy in an area, as well as politicians, legislative staff, executive branch officials, state and local government personnel, academic researchers, journalists, celebrities, and individual active concerned citizens. Issue-area par – ticipants communicate through public-relations statements, legislative hearings, periodicals, media reports, specialized media regarding the particular issue area, and telephone and e-mail communications among themselves. Issues regarding common policy for the entire citizenry are often discussed, not as in the forum model but sequentially among varying clusters of issue-network participants. Issue-area participants will sometimes meet face-to-face at professional confer – ences regarding their particular issue (Heclo 1978). Participation in issue networks is a form of creative participation, or a type of participation close to that. Issue networks embody scattered participants McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 13 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 14 c h a Pt e r 1 who generally communicate through media, now particularly electronic media, especially e-mail. Participation in issue networks is normally not face-to-face, although subgroups of individuals within the network do have annual conven – tions. Many participants within an issue network seek to advance their own interests, and this is not creative participation. For instance, within the issue network concerning regulation of air pollution, electric utilities will seek to slow or redefine regulations to maintain business profits. On the other hand, many participants within the issue network seek the commonweal, such as scientists, environmental advocates, and public health professionals participating within the air-pollution-regulation network. This is a type of creative participation, as normally such individuals engage not in face-to-face discussion but in com – munication through electronic media. It is stretching the idea of “institution” to refer to an issue network as one, since an issue network does not have stable borders or constant participation by the same individuals who may come and go, as their participatory motives change over periods of several years. Issue-network participation is an elite phenomenon, although participants may in some sense represent constituencies, such as an interest group. Heclo originally stated the issue-network concept as providing a major check upon the unbridled power of issue-area oligopolies, which might be considered unchecked due to the logic of collective action. As the site of framing of public issues eventu – ally discussed by legislatures, issue networks have power over the agenda. They sometimes form the basis for the organization of ad hoc lobbying coalitions, some of which seek to represent widespread interests to counter oligopolistic coalitions. Such communication processes are not civic engagement in that they are restricted to a small number of people. On the other hand, the innovative creation of issue networks, along with the organization of public-interest lobbies, has proven a significant limitation to the concept of the few necessarily defeating the many in the control of policy issues. Implementation Policies As a study, policy implementation gets less than its share of intellectual respect. What happens after a bill becomes a law? Does anything much happen at all? As used in the A merican political science profession, “policy implementation” refers to much of public administration but, by convention, focuses on administrative action while relegating the social science study of organizations, bureaucracy, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 14 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 15 and government personnel to examination under other categories. Even so, policy-implementation studies are important to understanding what in fact ac – tually happens in public action beyond the realm of law-setting discourse. The term first came into broad use in political science to refer to studies of why the domestic policies of the Lyndon Johnson administration largely failed to achieve their intended effects. Within political science, policy-implementation studies for the first time received major attention between 1970 and 1985; thereafter they received less attention as researchers concluded that the main variables in implementation behavior are understood (Pressman and Wildavsky 1973; Mazmanian and Sabatier 1989). Students of political participation seldom refer to policy implementation as a realm for public action. But, to reiterate its significance, implementation is not just a study of what went wrong in the administration of Great Society programs. Implementation concerns also apply to the policies of Republican administrations as illustrated by two examples. The Ronald Reagan adminis – tration’s immigration bill of 1986 had a major impact in legalizing perhaps 2.7 million illegal immigrants—a policy effectively implemented. But the bill had virtually no impact in its attempt to control illegal immigration through the regulation of hiring by private employers. Due to the complexity of undertaking such regulation and the political resistance by employers, such hiring regulation was conducted only at a token level. In effect, half of this major bill was repealed during the implementation process. A second example is the G. W. Bush regime’s “No Child Left Behind” education policy, which has undergone great difficulty during the implementation process; it remains to be seen whether this major legislation will have significant impact upon the conduct of public education. Actually, during the 1960s political elites understood there was an issue about poverty programs being effectively implemented to aid the poor, as opposed to being redefined by government welfare bureaucracies (Piven and Cloward 1977). Accordingly, clauses stipulating “maximum feasible participation” were inserted into federal urban community–development measures, but the result – ing participation in policy implementation was widely regarded as ineffective (Moynihan 1969; Lowi 1979). Implementation participation may be in the category of civic-innovative participation if there is widespread but scattered concern that implementation is unjust in not following the original legislative intent. No established institutions may exist to facilitate the protest of such concerns about injustice. Consequently, innovative participation may involve issue networks, advocacy coalitions, and McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 15 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 16 c h a Pt e r 1 public-interest lobbies. Many participant communicators in a policy network may be concerned about unjust policy implementation. They might only contact legislators or executive officials, a standard type of participation (Verba, Schloz – man, and Brady 1995). But they might also form communications links among themselves to form an issue or advocacy coalition. A n issue coalition is defined as a relatively short-lived (say two years or less) political coalition to influence change in some policy area, including to enforce policy implementation as in – tended by the original legislation. The concept of advocacy coalition (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993) refers to a wide coalition among political elites, lasting for a substantial length of time (say ten years). The efforts of such a coalition are likely to include political and legal efforts to implement legislation as the coali- tion prefers; for example, a clean-air coalition might monitor the policies of the Environmental Protection Agency. Most participants in an advocacy coalition also participate in an issue network, which acts as a communication network for recruitment to advocacy coalitions. Of course, a general issue network may include within itself both pro and anti advocacy coalitions regarding a specific issue. Public-interest lobbies, examples of civic innovation, often spend much of their time monitoring policy implementation and seeking to shape it via litigation and getting critical messages to the media. Environmental issues provide many such examples. Common Cause will monitor policies of the Federal Elections Commission regarding campaign-finance legislation. Implementation policy in general overlaps with collective-action issues, although it obviously does not encompass all such issues. As expressed in issue networks, advocacy coalitions, and public-interest groups, implementation politics is another arena for innova – tive participation. Political Corruption A third domain for civic-innovative participation is action against political cor – ruption. Corruption has been defined generally as “the misuse of public power for private gain” by R asma Karklins, a leading scholar of the subject, who notes, “When talking about corruption, people often think only of bribery, but it ex – ists in many other forms, such as extortion, profiteering from procurement, and institutional capture. These often involve the accessory acts of fraud, dereliction of duty, and the violation of multiple laws. Corrupt privatization or procure – ment deals tend to include collusion or blackmail and the corruption of others, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 16 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 17 including legislators or journalists” (2005, 5, 19). Political corruption is a major factor impeding democratic governance and economic development, particularly in the Third World and formerly Communist nation-states. Whether in contemporary China, Russia, or Nigeria or in the Los A ngeles water and power district of the film Chinatown , individuals opposing corruption are often scattered, experience a concern about civic injustice more than one for personal self-interest, and face a lack of established political institutions to express their desire for justice, especially as the corrupted individuals themselves quite possibly control the established political institutions. This, then, is the situation of civic innovation. The major issue about political corruption is systemic corruption—the situ – ation in which everyone converts the public into the private, expects everyone else to take bribes for government service and contracts, and so forth (Karklins 2005). Honest citizens, stuck in such a system and wishing to change it, are subject to the cooperation dilemma of the logic of collective action. Such honest citizens may be isolated and alone. Where are the other honest citizens, each may wonder. Here, any form of action is civic-innovative participation, even the decision to follow the law within a system of action in which lawbreaking is the norm. Other forms of participation do not apply: There is no public forum of debate because the public forum is broken into parts that are then controlled by individuals. Established mechanisms of interests/institutions are themselves the source of injustice. Civic engagement when the system is corrupt is engagement in corruption; individuals learn to trust one another to be lawbreakers in com – mon. Today, this systemic corruption is a common problem in post-Communist societies. I do not imply that forming something like a public-interest lobby is the only means to fight corruption. Karklins states, “The three cornerstones of corrup – tion containment are creating institutional checks and balances, assuring that the mechanisms of accountability actually work, and mobilizing the citizenry to participate in enhancing the public good” (2005, 163). Elections can bring to power a new government with anticorruption goals; this has been demonstrated in Turkey and Palestine, where secular governments, widely viewed as corrupt, were replaced in elections by Islamic leaders, seen to be more honest. On the other hand, fighting corruption sometimes involves the innovative participation of forming a public-interest group and enhancing it with an advocacy coalition, as Karklins reports happened once in Latvia: “In spring 2002 Transparency International–Latvia led a grassroots campaign against a suspect effort to privatize McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 17 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 18 c h a Pt e r 1 a youth sports and recreation facility. . . . T he breakthrough came when TI–Latvia garnered the support of fifty-eight other nongovernmental groups and thousands of individuals who signed appeals” (2005, 159). Views of corruption obviously vary with social norms, as in the famous state- ment attributed to an Irish A merican Tammany politician: “I seen my opportuni – ties and I took ’em” (R iordan 1963, 3). In the United States, Common Cause and other such groups oppose practices for which the term “corruption” seems a bit strong: private interests legally pouring money into political campaigns, legislators being paid for additional work by nongovernmental sources, closed meetings by government officials, and so forth. However, such practices do have the potential to become the vehicles for corrupt practices. Political corruption produces a disintegration of democratic governance. In systems of corruption, honest citizens must engage in civic-innovative participation. Transnational Political Activism Individuals may be scattered, without established institutions to engage in ac – tion regarding perceived injustices within foreign countries. Before processes of innovative participation are initiated, the citizens’ government may have no interest at all in some foreign injustice, or at first transnational advocacy networks may not be organized to facilitate public action (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Public policy making can be described as a matter of the politics of attention and what gets priority attention from governments (Jones and Baumgartner 2005); at first a government may have no concern about such questions as human rights violations in Darfur or the shrinking of the Brazilian rain forest. To reiterate, here I am concerned with participation in matters regarding events in foreign countries, not the institutionalized participation occurring as citizens attempt to influence the foreign policy of their own governments. A lthough one suspects that the processes of globalization increase the concern of individuals for events in foreign countries, we must note that transnational participation is not a new phenomenon. A n international abolitionist movement existed in regard to slavery every where, including the British Empire; especially before World War I, socialists proclaimed their international identification with, and concern for, the working class in all modern countries; in 1936 to 1939 leftists without regard to their own governments’ policies participated in McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 18 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 19 Republican resistance to Franco in the Spanish Civil War. In the last generation, however, the number of transnational political organizations has increased. So – ciologist Jackie G. Smith counted an increase in nongovernmental international social-change organizations from 183 in 1973 to 631 in 1993, with an amazing increase in international environmental organizations from 10 in 1973 to 90 in 1993 (Keck and Sikkink 1998, 11). The overall trend has continued since 1993, subsequently enhanced by the availability of cheap e-mail communication for international coordination. Apparently most of this activity parallels that of domestic A merican public-interest lobbies; the transnational groups frequently consist of multinational staffs who appeal to a transnational constituency, of – ten using the Internet, for financial contributions and various other types of support, such as signing petitions or contacting domestic legislators. This is not civic engagement, debating issues in a forum, or, at least initially, activism within established political institutions. Nevertheless, creative participation in transnational advocacy networks can be linked to the other forms of participation in some significant instances. In recent years, the most famous instance was the impact of transnational advocacy networks upon domestic political organiza – tions concerning apartheid in South A frica before 1989. National legislatures in the United States, United K ingdom, and France, among others, took up the antiapartheid cause by supporting boycotts of South A frican products. Creative participation in this case had a major effect on institutional foreign policy (K lotz 1995). A nother form of creative participation in the international arena is the organization of “social forums,” international meetings of thousands of antiglo – balization activists, complete with panels and speakers for the presentation and discussion of international issues. Such forums, however, are partially organized through the artifices of innovative participation, particularly the coordination of the meetings by ad hoc committees using the Internet. It is hard to link civic engagement to transnational advocacy networks, but the social forums do pro- vide a limited means for what might be termed “transnational engagement,” the building of trust among citizens of various countries (della Porta 2007, 60 – 61, 171–172, 223 –224) . Participants in transnational advocacy networks often work together, but they also separately try to influence their own civic process to get various foreign ministries, agencies of the United Nations, or other international organizations to influence some third country to stop some practice seen as unjust, perhaps in the human rights or environmental areas. Scholars Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998, 12–13) have termed this the boomerang effect, as political action McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 19 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 2 0 c h a Pt e r 1 moves in a first direction, to one’s own government, then moves in a second direction, from that government to another government whose policies are the actual object of concern. Participation in such international “boomerang politics” is apparently different from participation in discussion, mobilization of interests, or civic engagement related to domestic public policy making. Transnational advocacy networks are a form of civic-innovative participation, even when they are immediately oriented to correction of unjust treatment of some group, such as women or sweatshop workers, in a foreign country as op – posed to unjust civil rights violations or unjust depredations upon everyone’s environment. In transnational situations, citizens of one country see as unjust the lack of established institutions to protest injustice in another country (Young 2006). The international framework of bounded nations itself seems unjust. In this situation, civic innovators have created new advocacy networks to influence their own and other governments. Some observers might prefer to classif y most transnational activism as a form of social-movement activity, but this would be a specific subtype of social move – ment, those not accepting preexisting national boundaries as the arenas framing the issues of protest. Political Consumerism Consumer purchasing decisions can be another form of innovative participation. Some consumers, at least some of the time, in addition to economic criteria use political criteria in buying goods and services. The universe of such decisions can be termed “political consumerism” (M icheletti 2003; M icheletti, Follesdal, and Stolle 2004). Here I focus more especially on situations in which scattered con – sumers, also acting as citizens, are concerned with some injustice to all citizens, or at least about some interests other than their own; they do not, however, act to express this concern through established political institutions but adapt their behavior in consumer purchasing. Such economic behavior is also political and may be a form of innovative participation. Consumer boycotts of British tea and other goods preceded the A merican Revolution. Mahatma Gandhi’s boycott of British salt and textiles was a high point in twentieth-century political history. The U.S. civil rights movement featured scores of local boycotts by blacks against segregated businesses; this was political consumerism, as well as arguably both a social movement and civic innovation, McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 20 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 21 in the sense that it improved the quality of democracy for the entire community as segregation laws were no longer enforced. One might hypothesize that with the increasing globalization of commerce and the possibilities of the Internet as an organizational communication device, political consumerism as innovative participation will become more widespread throughout the world. Political consumerism as civic-innovative participation can be a solitary act, a citizen’s refusal to buy a product that he believes is manufactured by an unjust producer. If in some case such beliefs become widespread, there is the possibility of organizing a boycott, sometimes a practice of labor unions in contemporary A merica. On the other hand, some consumers may react positively and buy from a producer or merchandiser seen to favor a just cause, for instance, those who shop at Trader Joe’s for fair-trade coffee. A n important tactic of political con – sumerism is product labeling, for instance, in indicating a union-made product, which can be defined as an indicator of just versus exploitative wages. Recently the fair-trade label on coffee has been treated as a symbol of just treatment of Third World coffee growers and the stewardship of the tropical environment. Other labels are a facet of political consumerism but may be seen as an indicator of self-interest, such as the consumption of organic foods for one’s health or avoiding high-calorie foods (Micheletti 2003, 149–154; Vogel 2005, 51–56; Holzer 2007; Wilkinson 2007). Political consumerism often overlaps with transnational participation. The Nestlé boycott, for instance, was a consumerist action taken against a Swiss mul – tinational corporation for the sake of the health of babies in the Third World. Recent actions have included boycotts of Nike and other shoe manufactures for paying low wages in Third World manufacturing and of Starbucks for not featuring fair-trade coffee. If an international boycott is an instrument of the foreign policy of nation-states, such as the A merican government’s boycott of mainland China before 1972 or the 1950s A rab League boycott of companies doing business with Israel, it is not a category of individual participation. Boycotts, buying campaigns, and labeling to express political goals are not examples of forum participation, mobilization of interest through established institutions (at least not at first), or civic engagement, as consumer decisions are conducted individually. However, political consumerism, as creative participation, is linked to these other forms of participation in that consumerism may increase civic engagement to a small degree (participating in boycott groups if such ex – ist), and widespread consumerist sentiments may be organized and reinforced by labor unions and political parties. McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 21 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. 2 2 c h a Pt e r 1 Political consumerism can be a form of expressing a view of the good society. A consumer might refuse to shop at Walmart and prefer to shop at small stores because he or she believes in a society of Jeffersonian commerce. The shopper- citizen knows that his or her individual shopping decisions have little effect but nonetheless derives satisfaction from taking independent action to express a social opinion, even at some cost to economic self-interest. Conclusion One aspect of the human condition entails the paradoxes of participation. In a number of political situations, individuals are isolated from one another, and the structure of the situation prevents cooperative action to achieve a common benefit. Such paradoxical situations occur when numerous scattered individuals seek a commonweal goal, but no established political institution provides a means for joint action to achieve it. Political action in common can occur in this situation if individuals engage in creative participation and civic innovation by inventing new modes of public action. Creative participation is one of a set of five types of participation, none of which should be regarded as “true” participation. Creative participation may occur in combination with one of the other four types. The nature of creative participation can be explored in the contexts of representing the diffused interests in Olson’s logic of collective action, in public action regarding policy implementation, in action to combat governmental corruption, in politi – cal consumerism, and in transnational advocacy. Social scientists and political philosophers have commented less about creative participation than they have about other forms of participation. I do not maintain, however, that civic innovation is always progressive and ma – joritarian. For instance, according to a colleague interviewing anti-immigration protestors, some see illegal immigration as unjust, lacking action from established institutions, and go about establishing their own border patrols and websites. A lthough not always morally unblemished, civic innovation deser ves attention simply for the reason that it is innovative. New modes of action are of interest to scholars and the general public. In addition, I suspect that public-interest lob – bies, Internet-based communication and participation, transnational advocacy networks, and political consumerism are expanding their influence on politics. A final conclusion is that scholars and public participants should investigate the balances among types of participation. The five types often bear some i mportant McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 22 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. creative ParticiPation and civic innovation 23 relationship to one another. Civic engagement can provide the basis for civic concerns, beyond self-interest, to enhance political consumerism, which in turn, in some cases, might enhance civic engagement. Consumerism might sometimes lead to the creation of new public-interest lobbies, which, while not increasing civic engagement, would become established institutions to lobby government. Consumerism can provide new items for discussion of joint action on public policy, although unfortunately this is likely to be limited to elites participating in issue networks. Viewing the links among civic innovation and other forms of participation will enhance the understanding of the processes of public policy. McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 23 1/17/13 9:12 AM McFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. McFarland, Boycotts and Dixie Chicks.indb 24 1/17/13 9:12 AM Page Intentionally Left BlankMcFarland, A. S. (2010). Boycotts and dixie chicks : Creative political participation at home and abroad. Taylor & Francis Group. Created from apus on 2022-03-08 18:36:54. Copyright © 2010. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Which form of political participation is the most effective and why? Include a news article from the last four weeks that illustrates this form of participation in action and how effective it is. Also
University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary’s Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2019-06 Protest and Democracy University of Calgary Press Arce, M., & Rice, R. (Eds.). (2019). Protest and democracy. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/110581 book https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca PROTEST AND DEMOCRACY Edited by Moisés Arce and Roberta Rice ISBN 978-1-77385-046-7 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. It is an electronic version of a book that can be purchased in physical form through any bookseller or on-line retailer, or from our distributors. Please support this open access publication by requesting that your university purchase a print copy of this book, or by purchasing a copy yourself. 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Political protests sprang up throughout 2011 in the most unlikely places. The Arab Spring protests against authoritarian rule began in Tunisia and quickly spread to Egypt and much of the Middle East. Anti-auster – ity protests broke out in Greece, Spain, and Portugal. In Chile, students demanded the end of for-proft education. And in the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement brought attention to income inequality. The most unlikely individuals sparked or led these massive protest cam – paigns, including Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit vendor; Khaled Said, an Egyptian computer programmer; and Camila Vallejo, a Chilean student organizer. The composite protester turned out to be a “graduated and precarious youth” (Estanque, Costa, and Soeiro 2013, 38). The protest actions of the so-called desperate generation revealed, in different ways, a crisis of legitimacy on the part of political actors—or a failure of polit – ical representation—inasmuch as they gave voice to widespread dissatis – faction with the state of the economy (Castañeda 2012; Hardt and Negri 2011; Mason 2013). In all cases, the protesters sidelined political parties, bypassed the mainstream media, and rejected formal organizations and traditional leadership structures. They relied instead on the Internet and local assemblies in public squares for collective debate and decision-mak – ing in an open-ended search for new democratic forms (Castells 2012). 2 What impact, if any, did the new global protest cycle have on politics and policies in their respective countries? Addressing this question is the central task of our volume. The objective is to advance our understanding of the consequences of societal mobilization for politics and society. The volume brings together emerging scholars and senior researchers in the feld of contentious politics in both the Global North and Global South to analyze the new wave of protests relating to democratic reform in North Africa and the Middle East, the political ramifcations of the economic crisis in North America, and the long-term political adjustment of Latin America after the transition toward market-oriented economic policies. There has never been a more auspicious time for studying the relation – ship between protest and democracy. The so-called third wave of democ – racy that swept the Global South beginning in the mid-1970s has brought about the most democratic period in history (Hagopian and Mainwaring 2005; Huntington 1991). While much analytical attention has been paid to the role of protests in democratic transitions, more work is needed on protest dynamics in the era of free markets and democracy. In keeping with Goodwin and Jasper’s defnition, this volume uses the term “political or social protest” to refer to “the act of challenging, resisting, or mak – ing demands upon authorities, powerholders, and/or cultural beliefs and practices by some individual or group” (2003, 3). The term “protest or so – cial movement” refers to organized and sustained challenges. We defne political change as “those effects of movement activities that alter in some way the movements’ political environment” (Bosi, Giugni, and Uba 2016, 4). The political consequences of social movements include policy, institu – tional, and even regime change. The global protest cycle of 2011 offered us a rare glimpse into the articulation of new issues, ideas, and desires that may have a profound impact on future political contests worldwide. They may also be the harbinger of things to come. This introductory chapter establishes the stance of the volume. It be – gins by delving into the literature on the causes and consequences of the new global protest cycle. We examine the relationship between global – ization and protest activity and fnd that by analyzing grievances, both material and ideational, and by putting them into context, we gain new insights into what might be driving contemporary protest events as well as their goals, objectives, and potential outcomes. The second section of Moisés Arce and Roberta Rice 3 the chapter addresses the prominent debates in the social science litera- ture concerning the rise of protests in the context of widespread democ – ratization and economic liberalization throughout the world. One set of arguments explores the effects of these protests on democracy, examining whether protest undermines or enhances the quality and stability of dem – ocracy. Another set of arguments studies the impact of domestic political institutions on protest, analyzing how the variation of parties and party systems in democracies channels or absorbs social unrest. Generally, these arguments emphasize the broader political environment or context in which protests unfold, thus highlighting the salience of political condi – tions as central to the rise of mobilizations. In the fnal section, we seek to advance the literature on the political outcomes of social movements by proposing a new analytical framework, one that calls for more attention to protesters’ grievances, their global linkages, and the responsiveness or “permeability” of domestic political institutions to movement demands. We conclude with an outline of the plan for the rest of the book. Understanding the New Global Protest Cycle Globalization can be understood as the increasing integration of national economies worldwide by means of foreign direct investment, trade lib – eralization, and other market-oriented economic reforms. The dominant response to the international debt crisis of the 1980s in the Global South has been a profound shift in development thinking, away from state-led, inward-oriented models of growth toward an emphasis on the market, the private sector, and trade (Nelson 1990; Willis 2005). The prevailing policy approach has generated intense disagreements within scholar – ly circles over whether or not it is improving or exacerbating economic well-being. Most economists agree that market reforms have increased average income levels over time (Bhagwati 2004; Lora and Panizza 2003; Walton 2004). However, critics counter that such reforms have resulted in minimal economic gains at best, and exaggerated social inequalities and poverty at worst (Berry 2003; Huber and Solt 2004; Wade 2004). The dual transition to free markets and democracy that has occurred through – out much of the developing world begs the questions: What effect has 1 | ffe Political Consequences of Protest 4 economic globalization had on protest activity? How does regime type affect this relationship?The literature on political protest in the current democratic era is divided over whether or not economic conditions politicize or demobilize protesters. 1 Scholars operating within the demobilization (or depoliticiz – ation) school of thought suggest that there has been a substantial decline in the capacity of social actors to organize and mobilize politically as a result of the problems of collective action posed by free market contexts (Agüero and Stark 1998; Kurtz 2004; Oxhorn 2009; Roberts 1998). Market reforms are argued to undermine traditional, class-based collective action and identity through a reduction in trade-union membership and the greater informalization of the workforce, thereby weakening its obvious opponents, particularly the labor movement. According to this perspec – tive, pervasive social atomization, political apathy, and the hollowing out of democracy have become the global norm. By contrast, and following contributions from the literature on so – cial movements—in particular, political process theory (e.g., Tarrow 1998; Tilly and Tarrow 2006)—scholars within the repoliticization school sug – gest that a new global tide of protest is challenging elitist rule and strength – ening democracy in the process (e.g., Arce and Bellinger 2007; Bellinger and Arce 2011; Arce and Kim 2011). To these observers, social protests appear to be occurring with greater frequency and intensity. As Simmons explains in chapter 2 of this volume, political process theory emphasizes the salience of political conditions as central to explaining the emergence and development of protest movements. Likewise, the repoliticization per – spective emphasizes the importance of national-level political conditions as central to explaining anti-market mobilizations. Specifcally, these con – ditions capture the formal dimensions of political opportunities (McAd – am 1996), which allow one to examine the variation of protest activity across geography and time (e.g., McAdam 1982; Tarrow 1989). The focus on political conditions, which originates from political process theory in general, and the formal dimensions of political oppor – tunities in particular, downplays the role of economic conditions, such as inequality generated by economic liberalization, which existing literature portrays as the common source for mobilization (e.g., Kohl and Farthing 2006). To be clear, both the depoliticization and repoliticization schools Moisés Arce and Roberta Rice 5 of thought agree that these economic conditions impose severe material hardships on popular sectors, such as lower wages, employment insecurity, higher prices, cuts in social programs, and regressive land reform, among other examples. The question, then, is: What role do these economic con- ditions, which could also be interpreted as grievances or threats, play in mobilizing social actors? Following the depoliticization perspective, these grievances or economic-based threats all but demobilize social actors. And the presence of political conditions as put forth by democracy is not expected to revitalize protest activity. Other authors, in contrast, argue that these grievances or threats were pivotal for the mobilization of social actors. In Silva’s analysis, for instance, episodes of anti-neoliberal contention were “Polanyian back – lashes to the construction of contemporary market society” (2009, 266). And neoliberal reforms “generated the motivation —the grievances—for mobilization” (Silva 2009, 43; italics in original). Following Tilly (1978), Almeida (2007) also emphasizes the salience of negative inducements or unfavorable conditions as threats that are likely to facilitate various forms of “defensive” collective action. Harvey (2003) would characterize the claims of civil-society groups in opposition to economic liberalization as “protests against dispossession.” To some degree, these works mirror what political scientist James C. Davies called the “J-curve of rising and declin – ing satisfactions” (Davies 1962; 1969). Davies’s theory suggests that protest will break out when conditions suddenly worsen and aggrieved groups seek someone to blame for the disturbing course of events (see Simmons, chapter 2 in this volume). The transition to a market economy implied an erosion of social citizenship rights (e.g., access to basic social services and publicly subsidized benefts), and thus made things worse for popu – lar sectors of civil society (Almeida 2007). Similarly, the expansion of the natural resource extractive economy, as a consequence of the deepening of economic liberalization policies, entailed a greater need for water and land, and consequently it affected both urban and rural populations. Ac – cordingly, conflicts over the extraction of natural resources have increased in Latin America in recent years (Arce 2014). However, following political process theory (e.g., Tarrow 1998), and emphasizing the formal dimensions of political opportunities (McAd – am 1996), the repoliticization perspective argues that an approach based 1 | ffe Political Consequences of Protest 6 solely on grievances—such as those generated by globalization—does not explain collective action very well. In brief, grievances are abundant, and we do not always see social movements rise to challenge them (Tarrow 1998). For this reason, as Simmons explains in chapter 2, McAdam, Mc- Carthy, and Zald (1988) spoke of the “constancy of discontent.” Instead, political opportunities have been argued to explain protest activity based on four factors external to the movement, beginning with institutional access to the state and including the presence of elite allies and divides as well as declining state repression (McAdam 1996), which play a key role in shaping incentives for protest activity. Recent research by Goodwin and Jasper (2012), however, casts considerable doubt on the explanatory power of political opportunities for the emergence of contention. The authors found that political opportunities are more likely to shape protest activity in nondemocratic than democratic societies. According to Goodwin, “the widespread assumption among scholars that political opportunities are necessary for the emergence of contention is clearly mistaken” (2012, 294; italics in original). In short, the time is ripe to rethink the formal dimen – sions of political opportunities to better understand contemporary protest movements. Democracy and Protest Given the global scope of the chapters presented in this volume, it is worth restating the context in which protests are unfolding throughout the world. For instance, in some regions of the world, as in the Middle East (e.g., Kingston, chapter 6), protests are central to the spread of democracy. In other regions, as in Latin America (e.g., Donoso and Somma, chapter 7), protests are unfolding where democracy has already taken root, and are not necessarily seen as a direct challenge to democratic rule. The social science literature advances different arguments about the pros and cons of mobilizations, depending on whether a transition to democracy has or has not taken place. While the chapters in this volume address both scenarios, greater attention is paid to the dynamics of protest after democratic tran – sitions and in the context of widespread economic liberalization. In this section—and to better understand the signifcance of protest in the cur – rent era of democracy and free markets—we examine three interrelated Moisés Arce and Roberta Rice 7 questions: Does protest endanger or advance democracy? How do political institutions shape protest? And fnally: Why do some individuals protest, while others do not?With regard to the frst question, the existing social science literature portrays protest movements as both threats to and as promoters of dem – ocracy. The “disaffected radicalism” thesis, for instance, is based on the assumption that protesters reject conventional channels of representative democracy. Widespread political protests are viewed from this perspective as constituting a danger to the legitimacy and stability of the political sys – tem (Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki 1975; Gurr 1970; Muller 1979). It has also been suggested that strong and sustained social mobilization, such as the protest episodes that toppled successive national governments in Argentina (2001, 2002), Bolivia (2003, 2005), and Ecuador (1997, 2000, 2005), contribute to institutional weakening by altering political systems through unconstitutional means (Mainwaring, Bejarano, and Pizarro Leongómez 2006). These intense mobilizations, however, did not result in an outright regime breakdown, but rather in changes to democratic regimes (Hochstetler 2006). In sharp contrast to the view of social protests as a threat, the “nor – malization” thesis suggests that protest movements can complement or reinforce conventional political participation by offering a measure of direct representation for those who perceive mainstream politics to be unresponsive to citizen concerns (Johnston 2011; Meyer 2007; Norris 2002). From this perspective, protest movements foster greater democrat – ic openness and responsiveness. They make decision-making processes more democratic and hold governments to account through their mobil – izational campaigns. The concept of the “movement society” reinforces the notion that social protest has become a standard feature of democratic politics (Meyer and Tarrow 1998). In the same way that social movements cannot be fully comprehended without an examination of their political context, public policy and the inner workings of government cannot be fully understood without examining social movement pressure tactics (Goldstone 2003). Turning to the second question—the way in which political institu – tions shape protest—the relationship between partisan and protest pol – itics has been a matter of serious debate, and the existing social science 1 | ffe Political Consequences of Protest 8 literature also advances a couple of different perspectives. On the one hand, the literature on democratic transitions assumes that democratiza- tion and partisan politics lead to civil-society demobilization as the strug – gles of social movements are subsumed within or displaced by formal pol – itical institutions, such as parties and legislative chambers (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Oxhorn 1994). According to O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986), societal mobilization increases at the early stages of the democra – tization process, and then decreases as the political dynamic shifts toward electoral contestation and political parties rise to the forefront of social struggles. On the other hand, social movement scholars have suggested that democratization creates new opportunities and incentives for protest – ers as state tolerance of dissent and the availability of potential allies gen – erate institutional conditions that are relatively open to collective action (McAdam 1982; Tarrow 1989). For this group of scholars, the presence of democracy, in particular, enhances the opportunity for mobilization. And democratic settings guarantee such opportunities better than non – democratic regimes (Tilly and Tarrow 2006). While it is intuitively clear that democracies should be prone to mo – bilization, existing research has also shown that there is substantial varia – tion in the level of protest activity across democracies (Kitschelt 1986) and over time (Arce 2010). On this subject, a number of studies have point – ed to party systems, and the quality of representation embedded within them, as crucial intervening variables that condition democracy’s effects on protest (Arce 2010; Mainwaring, Bejarano, and Pizarro Leongómez 2006; Rice 2012). Where party systems are strong and institutionalized, they tend to invite assimilative strategies—that is, protest movements at – tempt to work through the established political institutions as the latter offer multiple points of access to shape policies (Kitschelt 1986). These assimilative strategies ultimately put downward pressure on the scale and intensity of mobilizations. In contrast, where party systems are weak and poorly developed, parties do not serve as effective transmission belts to connect citizens with the state, and thus parties fail to channel or aggre – gate the demands of the popular sector. Weak or inchoate party systems create a “representation gap” that encourages disruptive, confrontational strategies. In such systems, mass political participation has a tendency to Moisés Arce and Roberta Rice 9 become radicalized and to overwhelm the weak institutions of the state (Huntington 1968).Thus far, we have reviewed some of the general arguments concerning the effects of protests on democracy. Whereas the “disaffected radicalism” thesis portrays protests as a danger to democracy, the “normalization” thesis views protests as a social force that advances it. Moreover, we have examined the interaction between partisan and protest politics. General – ly, some scholars expect partisan politics to outbid protest politics, par – ticularly after democratic transitions. Other scholars, in contrast, suggest that protest politics prevail under democratic settings even when partisan politics becomes routinized. The fnal question we examine in this sec – tion seeks to explain why some individuals are more likely than others to protest. Previous scholarship had suggested that protesters were radicals or extremists suffering from some form of social alienation (Kornhauser 1959; Gurr 1970; Smelser 1962), or that protest was a weapon of the poor and downtrodden (Piven and Cloward 1979). Contemporary studies based on individual-level survey research carried out mainly in the advanced in – dustrialized democracies reveal the opposite to be the case. For example, Norris, Walgrave, and Van Aelst’s study of Belgian protesters found that, “people who demonstrate are also signifcantly more likely to be civic join – ers, party members, and labor organization members, not less” (2005, 201). In a similar vein, Schussman and Soule (2005) found that among Amer – icans, being registered to vote had a positive and signifcant effect on one’s likelihood of participating in protest activities. Outside advanced indus – trialized democracies, and confrming the balancing between traditional forms of political participation and protest, survey research in Argentina and Bolivia has also shown that “individuals who protest are generally more interested in politics and likely to engage in community-level ac – tivities” (Moseley and Moreno 2010, 5). Because these protesters are act – ively engaged in political life, these studies support the notion that social protest has become another legitimate expression of political demands in democratic states. Beyond individual-level survey research examining the traits and pol – itical attitudes of protesters, several chapters in this volume provide rich examples of popular actors and organizations engaged in mobilizations 1 | ffe Political Consequences of Protest 10 across several regions (see Ayres and Macdonald, chapter 3, and Goert- zl, chapter 8). In the current era, in fact, protest movements have joined together numerous groups from civil society, including Indigenous peoples, women’s organizations, students, human rights groups, landless small farmers, informal and unemployed workers, as well as the tradition – al labor unions. These movements have also displayed a broad repertoire of contentious activity, such as attacks on government buildings and pol – iticians’ houses, national and provincial roadblocks, the banging of pots and pans, the establishment of camps in civic squares, and urban riots. These changes involving actors and types of protest actions are examples of the shifting nature of anti-government mobilizations in the context of widespread economic liberalization (Arce 2008; Arce and Bellinger 2007; Bellinger and Arce 2011; Rice 2012). Social media has also enabled mo – bilizations to spread very quickly (see Larson, chapter 4), and possibly contribute to the formation of coalitions that cut across classes, the urban and rural divide, and environmental and nationalistic discourses. Having discussed the individual socioeconomic and attitudinal characteristics as – sociated with protest behavior, we now turn to our framework of analysis. A New Framework of Analysis Social protest plays an important role in democracies. Understanding the political consequences of such protest is the main goal of this volume. In the social movement literature, protest is considered mainly as a depend – ent variable in need of explanation. In contrast, we treat protest as an in – dependent variable by assessing how social protest is realigning politics around the globe. Much of the literature on this emerging topic suggests that the political effects of social movements are contingent and condi – tioned by political opportunity structures and limited largely to the agen – da-setting stage of the policy-making process (Amenta 2006; Bosi, Giugni, and Uba 2016; Cress and Snow 2000; Soule and Olzak 2004). In a review of the literature, Amenta et al. (2010) stated the importance of moving scholarship beyond a focus on the policy-agenda-setting stage to address movement influences on institutional processes. To do so would require a comparative research design. Specifcally, the authors suggest that, “without scholarship comparing across movements, the demonstrated Moisés Arce and Roberta Rice 11 influence of individual movements over specifc outcomes is dibcult to place in perspective. One way to do so is to compare a small number of historically similar movements with greatly different results in political influence” (Amenta et al. 2010, 302). The 2011 global protest cycle offers us the opportunity to assess a diverse array of protest movements occurring almost simultaneously across vastly different political contexts and with dramatically different results. Our volume advances three major claims that, if taken together, con – stitute a new framework for studying protest and democracy. We argue that protest movements are more likely to influence political and institu – tional change when: a) they are part of a global cycle of protest; b) the con – tent of the claims or grievances resonate with society; and c) the political system is responsive to the demands of protesters. We are currently witnessing a global uptick in protest activity, with some of the largest protests in world history (Ortiz et al. 2013). The similar timing, demands, and characteristics of these protest movements suggest that they are part of a global cycle of protest. Sidney Tarrow defnes a pro – test cycle as a phase of heightened conflict across the social system: with a rapid diffusion of collective action from more mobilized to less mobilized sectors; a rapid pace of innovation in the forms of contention; the creation of new or transformed collective action frames; a combination of organized and unorganized participation; and sequences of intensifed information flow and interaction between challengers and authorities. (1998, 142) It is clear from the social movement literature that protests ebb and flow. Yet, at certain times in history, protests seem to coalesce around a particu – lar set of ideals, which may make them more effective at inducing political and institutional change. For instance, the 1960s saw a dramatic surge in protest movements in the advanced industrial democracies, including the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay rights move – ment, and the environmental movement (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Kitsch – elt 1986; McAdam 1982; Tarrow 1998). Each, to varying degree, changed 1 | ffe Political Consequences of Protest 12 public policies and institutions in their respective countries. The political effects of contemporary protest movements may also be heightened by their inclusion in a global protest cycle. The extent to which the content of protesters’ claims or grievances resonates within the larger society in which they are embedded can also impact movement outcomes. Collective action frames are the mobilizing ideas and meanings that mediate between structure and agency (Snow and Benford 1992). While social movement theorists have come to view shared meanings and ideas as mechanisms or processes that legitimate and motivate collective action, less attention has been paid to the ways in which they might influence political and institutional change (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996). As our contributors will show, material and ideational grievances have been at the forefront of the new global protest cycle. Social media has enabled today’s protesters to transmit grievances to much larger audiences than in the past. If the content of these messages resonates with a signifcant portion of the public, this may not only draw out more protest participants, but potentially influence future political agendas and electoral contests, as many of the case studies in this volume demonstrate. Finally, the degree to which a political system is open or closed to pro – test demands may condition protest impacts. It is clear from the fndings of social movement studies that institutions matter to protest behavior. Institutions create incentives for social actors to behave in certain ways by structuring the rules of the game (March and Olsen 1989; Rothstein 1996). Open and responsive political systems that provide wide formal access to the state encourage citizens to seek change by way of existing institutional mechanisms. Strong and well-institutionalized party systems are argued to channel political demands and dampen political conflict (Mainwaring and Scully 1995). While patterns of collective action are conditioned to a certain extent by the quality of representation embedded in party systems, so, too, are the political and institutional consequences of those actions. In the course of absorbing and channeling discontent into the party system, the political system may become altered to better reflect the demands of protest movements. In the words of Jasper: “Nothing is more disastrous than trying to climb through a closed window” (2014, 24). The extent to which the new global protest cycle will impact domestic politics and Moisés Arce and Roberta Rice 13 policies depends on the permeability of political institutions to protest de- mands, as well as the willingness of protesters to engage with democratic institutions. In the course of developing our framework of analysis, a number of new insights into social movement dynamics were revealed. First, political opportunity structures (POS), a central concept in the social movement literature, may be more important to explaining movement outcomes than they are to explaining movement emergence. Second, social mo – bilization may be able to pry open or create a POS where none existed or were previously latent. Third, the presence of a POS may be necessary for social movements to produce meaningful institutional and political change. These fndings are especially pertinent at a time when the POS concept has come under increasing academic fre for its fuzziness, lack of dynamism, and limited causal importance in explaining social movement formation (Goodwin and Jasper 2012). The secondary task of our project, then, is to repurpose the POS concept to better understand the political consequences of social protest. Plan of the Book The volume is organized into four sections. Part I (chapter 2) is dedicated to the origins of social protest. It presents the theoretical debates in the lit – erature concerning the basic question of why people protest. Part II (chap – ters 3, 4, and 5) look at contemporary protest mechanisms and processes. These chapters advance the literature signifcantly by directly addressing key themes in the study of protest movements, including the transnational arena, social media, and civil society and other nongovernmental organ – izations. Part III (chapters 6, 7, and 8) addresses movement outcomes. The chapters present theoretically-informed case studies from the latest global protest cycle, including the Arab Spring, the Chilean Winter, and the Oc – cupy Wall Street protests. Part IV concludes the volume with a collective essay (chapter 9) that highlights the various chapters’ key themes, issues, and contributions in an effort to advance our understanding of the polit – ical consequences of social movements. In chapter 2, Erica Simmons explores competing theoretical explan – ations of and approaches to the emergence of social movements. She calls 1 | ffe Political Consequences of Protest 14 for renewed analy tical attention to grievances, both material and ideation- al, in social movement theorization. Simmons suggests that the content of the claims that people make can have an impact on movement emergence and dynamics. By analyzing the grievances that are at the core of a move – ment, and by putting them into context, we gain new insights not only into what might be driving contemporary protest events, but also why they succeed or fail to meet their objectives. In chapter 3, Jeffrey Ayres and Laura Macdonald focus on protest movements that cut across national borders to challenge economic global – ization. Based on an analysis of the Vermont food sovereignty movement, alongside the example of North American activists opposed to the Trans Pacifc Partnership, they argue that sustained and coordinated trans – national protest movements are rare. Instead, activists tend to borrow from messages, claims, and strategies developed elsewhere, which are then adapted to local realities. Rather than “going global,” activists engage in “scale-jumping” by making strategic use of transnational methods with – out abandoning local and national pursuits. In chapter 4, Jennifer M. Larson takes up the question of how social media influences protest events and outcomes. Based on her analysis of the uses of social media during the recent global protest cycle, Larson main – tains that its impact on contentious politics is contingent and contextual. While social media allows protesters to broadcast grievances in immedi – ate, emotionally charged, and provocative ways, it is unclear if such tech – nology plays a causal role in spurring protest actions and enabling pro – testers to achieve their desired goals. Nevertheless, governmental attempts to shut down or regulate the Internet suggest that there is a correlation between the use of social media and increased protest activity. In chapter 5, Carew E. Boulding analyzes the influence of nongovern – mental organizations (NGOs) on protest activity in emerging democra – cies. Throughout much of the Global South, NGOs are an important com – ponent of associational life. The expectation in the literature is that NGOs are schools for democratic citizenship. Using quantitative analysis, Bould – ing fnds that in the context of weak and unstable political institutions, NGOs tend to boost protest activity rather than electoral participation. Her fndings support the notion that effective democratic institutions tend Moisés Arce and Roberta Rice 15 to dampen social conflict. In the absence of strong, well-institutionalized political parties, NGOs facilitate protest activities. In chapter 6, Paul Kingston examines the Arab Spring protests in sup – port of democratic reform in the Middle East. He suggests that political opportunity structures can ebb and flow with protest waves. The Arab Spring protests occurred in the absence of a window of opportunity. Arbi – trary acts of state violence against predominantly nonviolent civil-society actions served as a catalyzing agent or trigger for widespread mobiliza – tion. These actions, in turn, managed to generate genuine opportunity structures. Stated differently, social actors were able to open windows of opportunity for themselves. Nevertheless, Kingston’s chapter highlights the fact that windows of opportunities are temporary and can quickly close, placing frm limits on the possibilities for change in some cases. In chapter 7, Sofa Donoso and Nicolás M. Somma analyze the Chilean Winter protests against the privatization of secondary and postsecondary education. The chapter details the push for education reform in Chile and the successful policy outcomes of this movement. The authors highlight how protest movements both shape and are shaped by institutional pol – itics. In so doing, they shed much-needed light on the interactive relation – ship between social movements, policy change, and political opportunity structures. Donoso and Somma argue that social movements are a vital element of routinized politics in contemporary democracies through the way in which they introduce new demands into the policy agenda and affect the political process. In chapter 8, Ted Goertzel analyzes the Occupy Wall Street movement as well as the Tea Party protests and their implications for US politics. He adopts a micro-level, grievance-based approach to explain the surge of protest activity in the country following the fnancial crisis of 2007–08. The chapter argues that dashed expectations following a period of eco – nomic advancement gave rise to two highly distinct yet effective protest movements. As Goertzel demonstrates, the incorporation of protest de – mands into the polity changed the political climate in the country. Where – as the conservative Tea Party movement managed to force the Republican Party further to the right, much of the agenda of the Occupy movement was co-opted by the second (2012) Obama campaign. This dynamic pro – duced a highly polarized political party system, the implications of which 1 | ffe Political Consequences of Protest 16 are still being felt. In short, in the course of absorbing and channeling discontent into the party system, the political system was altered to reflect emerging realities. The volume concludes with chapter 9, in which Moisés Arce, Roberta Rice, and Eduardo Silva examine what happens once a protest cycle has ended. In other words, we aim to assess how protest politics are realigning political systems around the world. We do so by elaborating on our origin – al framework of analysis on the basis of the fndings of our contributors. The chapter challenges students of contentious politics to take up the task of studying when and how protest movements promote the greater dem – ocratization of social and political life. 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