How Context Matters?

Mobilization, Political Opportunity Structures, and Nonelectoral Political

Participation in Old and New Democracies

Kateřine Vráblíková

Problem: Scholars have long argued that political participation is determined by institutional context.
Within the voter turnout literature, the impact of various institutional structures has been
demonstrated in numerous studies. Curiously, a similar context-driven research agenda exploring the
correlates of nonelectoral participation has not received the same attention.

Goal of the article: Using a multilevel modeling approach, this study tests a competition versus
consensus conception of how decentralized institutions determine NEP.

Conclusion: States with more competitive veto points operating through systems of horizontal and
territorial decentralization increase individual NEP. In addition, it interacts with social mobilization
networks to promote greater citizen activism: Institutional context counts only when citizens are
mobilized.

In fact, the number of political parties’ variable has a negative direct and indirect influence on NEP.

Hypotheses:

H1: The relationship between territorial decentralization and individual-level NEP will be
positive.

H2: The relationship between horizontal decentralization and individual-level NEP will be
positive.

H3: The relationship between number of parliamentary parties and individual-level NEP will
be positive.

Research: testing a political opportunity structure model of citizen activism across 24 old and new
democracies using International Social Survey Programme 2004: Citizenship data.

In contrast to the classical comparative institutions and social movement literatures, this study has
argued that it is not institutional decentralization per se that increases NEP. Only one type of
institutional decentralization leading to a higher number of veto players and thus a more open POS
motivates increased NEP.

In testing this theory, this study has shown that citizens’ engagement in nonelectoral activities is
greater in more territorially and horizontally decentralized countries. In contrast, decentralization
based on power sharing and joint responsibility does not increase nonelectoral citizen activism. The
same results were revealed for the mobilizing effect of group membership and political discussion: it
increases with more open political opportunities. In other words, social networks mobilize more
citizens to undertake NEP in countries with higher numbers of veto players.

Political opportunity structure after decentralization, which means that social movements can step
into it.