Civil society – Politically engaged or member-serving? A governance perspective
| Author | Nicole Bolleyer |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14651165211000439 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Civil society – Politically
engaged or member-
serving? A governance
perspective
Nicole Bolleyer
Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science, LMU,
Munich, Germany
Abstract
Which types of civil society organizations are politicized as indicated by regular political
engagement and why? If they are, how wide-ranging are their political action reper-
toires? This article proposes an ‘organizational governance perspective’ on civil society
organizations’ political engagement by arguing that organizations resembling traditional
‘voluntary associations’ are less likely to be politicized and to employ a broad political
action repertoire than those resembling highly professionalized ‘voluntary agencies’.
Applying event count regressions to new data from four recent population surveys
widely substantiates the proposed perspective, thereby challenging prominent argu-
ments about the detrimental effects of professionalization and state dependency on
organizations’ ability to contribute to democratic representation.
Keywords
Civil society organizations, organizational governance, political engagement,
politicization, professionalization
Introduction
Although individualization increasingly weakens group affiliations in European
democracies (e.g., van Deth and Maloney, 2012), membership-based civil society
Corresponding author:
Nicole Bolleyer, Geschwister Scholl Institute of Political Science, LMU, Oettingenstraße 67, 80538 Munich,
Germany.
Email: nicole.bolleyer@gsi.lmu.de
European Union Politics
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DOI: 10.1177/14651165211000439
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2021, Vol. 22(3) 495–520
organizations (CSOs) still play a crucial role in contemporary democracy by mobi-
lizing, aggregating and channelling collective interests into the democratic process
(e.g., Beyers et al., 2008; Gr€
omping and Halpin, 2019; Saurugger, 2012). That said,
‘civil society’ and ‘political society’ remain distinct phenomena, even if we define
‘political engagement’ broadly – transcending classical lobbying including aware-
ness raising or educational activities, protest, the provision of expertise or the
financial support of central political actors (e.g., Berry and Wilcox, 2009; Beyers
et al., 2008; Chaves et al., 2004; Cinalli and Giugni, 2014). CSOs can be inwards-
or service-oriented. Consequently, the extent to which CSOs or – to use a different
terminology – the ‘third sector’ functions as ‘an essential democratic infrastructure’
and, more specifically, as a ‘transmission belt’ for the representation of societal
interests (Albareda, 2018: 1219; Enjolras and Sivesind, 2018: 96; Salisbury, 1984:
64–65) is fundamentally affected by answers to the following questions: Which
types of CSOs are politicized as indicated by regular political engagement and
why? If they are, how wide-ranging are their political action repertoires?
To answer these questions, I propose an ‘organizational governance perspective’
(Cornforth, 2012: 1121) building on on-going debates around membership associ-
ations’ increasing replacement by professionally run and state funded CSOs, a
trend fundamentally shaping civil society’s ability to contribute to democracy
(Skocpol, 2003: 204, 265; see also Maloney, 2012; Saurugger, 2012). Taking the
diversity of organizational forms adopted by CSOs as its starting point (e.g.,
Halpin, 2014), this perspective rests on two central arguments.
First, hypotheses on CSOs’ political engagement patterns can be derived start-
ing out from the distinction between ‘voluntary association’ versus ‘voluntary
agency’ (Billis, 1991). These two ‘governance templates’ that have long co-
existed (though not necessarily under these labels) in the literatures on CSOs,
interest groups as well as non-profits (e.g., Billis, 2010; Bosso, 2003; Knoke,
1990; Lipsky and Smith, 1989; Schmitter and Streeck, 1999) are not ‘counter
images’ in an empirical sense whose characteristics are mutually exclusive; neither
do each template’s central characteristics necessarily cluster. Nevertheless, as ana-
lytical tools they allow us to formulate contrasting expectations about how the
organizational features associated with each template feed into CSOs’ patterns of
political engagement. Echoing the fundamental distinction between a democratic
governance logic to which members are central and a bureaucratic logic with
professionals at its core (e.g., Jordan and Maloney, 2007; Knoke, 1990; Lipsky
and Smith, 1989; Lu and Park, 2018), the templates differ in whose interest and by
whom a CSO is run, i.e., who ensures the overall direction, control and account-
ability of the organization (Cornforth, 2012: 1121), which shapes organizations’
core activities including political ones. Linking this distinction to Olson’s ‘by-
product’ theory (1965) and the tension between a ‘logic of membership’ and ‘of
influence’ within groups (Schmitter and Streeck, 1999), CSOs resembling member-
oriented ‘voluntary associations’ are expected to be less politically active than
those resembling staff-driven ‘voluntary agencies’.
496 European Union Politics 22(3)
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