LEIDEN UNIVERSITY 2015

RESEARCH IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Research paperDoes a higher level of civil society participation positively

influence the functioning of democratic institutions?

Dion Dumont3-6-2015

1. Introduction

Through the ages several political systems have been used to

rule countries. Some were successful where others are branded,

during or afterwards, unethical or unfair. From the early ages

there was however one political system that was about fairness

and civil participation and, when employed ethically, delivered

a system that was designed by the people to serve the people.

In early Greek culture this system was called demokratia, which

we now know as democracy. Democracy means that the people of a

state or nation have a say in government rules and ruling,

either directly (citizens directly decide on rules and

regulations) or representative (through voting for

representatives). Public participation thus is a key aspect for

the functioning of a democracy.

One of the main characteristics of a (dominant western)

democratic society is the use of democratic institutions. These

are the building blocks that make sure that democracy is

reached.

Democracy is not ‘an end in itself [but] a mere method that could be discussed

rationally like a steam engine or a disinfectant’ … [being an] ‘institutional

arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power

to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’ (Schumpeter

1965)

Schumpeter’s view now accounts for what we know in the dominant

western world as ‘good governance’ (World Bank 1992), where

political stability is assured, rulers are held accountable,

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the market is regulated and the collective goods that citizens

desire are delivered.

Being that democratic institutions are the building blocks with

which democracy is reached, and one of the key aspects of a

democracy is civil participation, the question is raised

whether a higher level of civil society participation enhances

the functioning of democratic institutions. For this research

paper therefore, the following research question is drafted:

Does a higher level of civil society participation positively

influence the functioning of democratic institutions?

The research will try to find an answer to this question on a

global level, which, to my knowing, has not yet been done in

existing literature.

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2. Literature review

In a research published by Graham Smith (2009) an analytical

framework is constructed to show how citizen participation can

enhance democratic institutions and thereby democracy. In this

study he states that institutions are not merely the structures

with which democracy is reached, but it is also the medium

through which democratic agency is expressed. The design of the

institution is integral to the way a democratic agency

develops. Smith gives four conditions, all based on civil

society participation, to which a democratic institution needs

to adhere in order for it to work efficiently, effectively and

democratic.

The first condition that needs to be addressed is inclusiveness,

the ability for everyone to participate in a democratic

institution. He states that “If uneven participation is a persistent concern

across various modes of political participation, then inclusiveness is clearly a

significant good of democratic institutions” (Smith 2009: 20).

During the establishment of the Russian Federation, attempts

have been made to transform the country into a more democratic

state to hold up and compete with the western liberal

democracies in the ongoing globalization of market and

government with corresponding civil and political liberties.

Several Russian leaders tried, and partly succeeded in,

implementing democratic institutions to transition to a more

western democratic state. However, the fact that the Russian

citizen is often viewed as passive, politically apathetic and

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incapable of formulating his or her interest (Wilson 2012: 153)

lead to a lack of inclusiveness in Russian democratic

institutions. A possible cause for this is the heavy transition

from Soviet Union to Russian Federation. Distrust in the

government, which stems from Soviet times, is still evident and

might explain the lack of interest in active participation. It

is argued that distrust in government is both the cause and

consequence of corruption (Morris and Klesner 2010: 1260), and

corrupt institutions are neither democratic nor representative.

The second condition in Smith’s framework is popular control (2009:

22). What is meant by this is that responsiveness by a

government to citizen participation through elections, public

deliberation, petitioning or pressure is a high value. These

forms of participation can only be democratic if all the

citizens that are affected by the decisions of a government

have an opportunity to influence those decisions proportionate

to their stake in the outcome of these decisions (Warren, 2009:

1). Smith argues that this ability for the people to have a say

in government decisions through democratic institutions is

often lacking. This in turn can decrease motivation to actively

participate in democratic institutions and thus their

functioning. Furthermore, Warren (2009) states that if these

values are not met within a democratic institution we speak of

a democratic deficit. Although negatively, this shows that a

relation should be existent between citizen participation and

the functioning of democratic institutions.

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Not only Russia has problems representing the people’s voice.

It is stated that the many democratic institutions that the

European Union has find it difficult to actually represent the

voice of the people either because there is no voting, or voter

turnout is not high enough because of little interest. Through

an analysis of the European Union’s policies, treaties and ways

of electing their representatives, as well as citizens’

interest in EU politics, it is concluded that this democratic

deficit exists within the EU (Vesnic-Alujevic and Nacarino,

2012). The result of such a deficit is that a gap arises

between citizens and government and that government very much

becomes a matter for experts, who at best try to keep the

public trust, and at worst govern as disconnected entities

(Warren 2009: 4).

Smith’s third condition is considered judgement (2009: 24). This

means that for democratic institutions to function properly, it

is necessary for public participants to make thoughtful and

reflective judgements. This fact is evident and mentioned in a

research conducted in India in 2001 by Bryld. The research

states that in India decentralization had been implemented in

an attempt to bring more power to the lower sections of society

by increasing participation of these people within

institutions. Although a bold attempt, the research concludes

that it has had little effect in bringing actual power to these

people and thus enhancing the institutions they were supposed

to be a part of. A lack of education and illiteracy has

resulted in people not being able to actively participate

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within the institutions (Bryld 2001: 169) resulting in an

undemocratic representation. What is needed according to Bryld

is education and awareness of context. Informal power

structures in (Indian) culture that prevent people from active

participation need to be considered when trying to implement

decentralization. What may be said about this is that due to a

lack of education and thus considered judgement, inclusiveness

declines.

Although the potential of decentralization has been seen, with

the neglect of context the weak are left without actual

influence (Bryld 2001: 170). Warren (2009: 24) agrees with

Bryld, although he states that even though institutional

contexts vary, institutions face some social and cultural

developments that are comparable.

Another research into considered judgement is that of Weinstock

(2005). He conducted a study within juror cases in the United

States and confirmed his hypothesis that “beyond knowledge of

democratic values and the nature and function of governmental institutions, effective

participation in democratic society lies in the ability to reason” (Weinstock 2005:

74). He stresses the need for integrating civil society

participation lessons within education to help citizens in

making good and educated decisions within democratic

institutions such as American courts, hereby acknowledging the

fact that the American juror system, a democratic institution,

needs active and conscious civil society participation in order

to function to its best potential.

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The last condition in Smiths framework is transparency (2009:

25). The ability of citizens to judge the activities of

institutions is crucial to democratic systems and builds trust

and confidence in the political process (Warren 1999).

Furthermore, it holds politicians and other officials

accountable for their actions. When trust in the political

process is evident, civil society conscience and the

willingness to participate is able to increase and in turn

enhance functioning of democratic institutions.

The framework mentioned in this literature review allows to

generate useful comparative data on the level to which civil

society participation is used to increase the realisation and

functioning of democratic institutions (Smith 2009: 194).

Following this literature review of the existing scholarship on

this topic, a hypothesis will be formulated which will be the

subject of a statistical analysis in the next sections.

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3. Hypothesis

It seems that the current stack of knowledge on the relation

between civil society participation and functioning of

democratic institutions is mainly focused on the lack of

citizen participation and thus causing institutions to function

less appropriate. Although the research is mostly focused on

the lack of civil society participation and the effect this has

on democratic institutions, this also means that a relation

between the two is likely to be existent. When citizen

participation is low, so is the functioning of democratic

institutions. This makes it very likely that when citizen

participation is high, so is the functioning of the democratic

institutions.

Given the theory addressed in this review and the numerous

conclusions by researchers that active and fair civil society

participation and high attendance of the four conditions in

Smith’s framework causes better functioning institutions (and

also the other way around), the following hypothesis is

drafted:

I expect in this research that the performance of democratic institutions depends on

the level of civil society participation, where higher participation causes better

functioning democratic institutions and lower civil society participation causes less

functioning democratic institutions.

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4. Methodological explanation

The method used in this research is cross-sectional with a

quantitative analyses, focussing on all the countries in the

world and the relation between civil society participation and

performance of democratic institutions within these countries.

This means that sampling has not occurred and the focus group

is essentially the whole world. However, while all the

countries are mentioned in the variables, the information for

some countries could not be provided resulting in 67 countries

being empty. 127 countries with information remain and shall be

examined in this research. Both variables are ordinal meaning

they are categorized in order in numbers ranging from 1 to 10,

each number meaning a phase or score of the variable

corresponding to the 127 countries to which they apply, where 1

is lowest and 10 is highest. The meaning of the scores can be

found in graph 4. Being that both the variables are ordinal a

Spearman’s Rho correlation is sought and a contingency table of

the findings will be presented and explained. The data for the

variables is gathered from Bertelsmann Stiftung, Transformation

Index1. This is the first cross-sectional comparative index for

this subject that uses data that is gathered by the

organisation itself. They used several indicators to measure

the extent to which they apply to the countries investigated

and give scores according to these indicators to measure the

variables. To assure consistency they have checked the

countries’ individual scores to that of their (inter)regional

atmosphere.

1 http://www.bti-project.org/index

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5. Univariate analysis

As mentioned in the previous paragraphs the aim of this

research is to find if civil society participation is related

to the performance of democratic institutions. In order to do

so, in this paragraph each of these two variables will be

analysed separately in a univariate analysis. The way in which

this autonomous analysis of the variables is conducted is

dependent on the type of variable. In this case both variables

are ordinal.

Because the variables are both ordinal this means that, to find

the measure of central tendency, we need to calculate the

median. The median is a number which, when all the information

of the variable is ranked from lowest to highest according to

their score for the 127 countries, is in the middle. Because

there are 127 valid entries in the variables we have, the

median will be the 64th number. As shown in graph 1 below, the

median for both variables is 5, meaning that for both variables

50% of the data is above or equal to and 50% of the data is

below or equal to the score 5, the meaning of which can be

found in graph 4. Furthermore it shows that the N of valid

cases is 127. To show dispersion the range is measured. This is

the difference between the maximum and minimum value given,

which for both variables is 9, meaning that for both variables

the lowest and highest score has been given to at least one of

the countries. As a second method of showing the measure of

central tendency the mode is given. This shows the score mostly

applied to the countries for both the variables.

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In graph 2 and 3 shown above the frequency of the scores as

well as the median and the mode are visually presented. The

median is explained by the colour which is at 50% of the pie

chart, which for both the charts is yellow and thus 5. The mode

is the biggest piece, the yellow resembling 5 for civil society

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Graph 2 - Pie chart for civil society participation

Graph 3 - Pie chart for performance of democraticinstitutions

Statistics

Civil society

participation

Performance of

democratic

institutions

N Valid 127 127

Missing 67 67Median 5,00 5,00Mode 5 2Range 9 9

Graph 1 -Measures of central tendency and dispersion

participation and the green resembling 2 for performance of

democratic institutions. The meaning of the scores given to the

countries are in the graph below.

Graph 4 - Scores for variables

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6. Bivariate analysis

Now that the univariate analysis is completed we will go on to

analyse both the variables in relationship to each other. It is

important to notice once more that we are looking for a

relation and not causation between the two variables.

In order to find a relation a contingency table is presented in

graph 5. What it shows is that, like the hypothesis states,

there seems to be a relationship between the two variables

where as one gets higher, so does the other one. There are some

outliers in this contingency table as a perfect correlation is

not expected. However, some statistics stand out and one of

those is that although some countries seem to have civil

society participation within the limits of the medium range,

the performance of their democratic institutions is very low

and thus does not adhere to the hypothesis given earlier. Due

to lack of time and resources an explanation for this cannot be

given within this paper.

Civil society participation * Performance of democratic

institutions Cross tabulationCount

Performance of democratic institutions

Total1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Civil society

1 5 1 6

2 3 6 9

3 3 13 1 1 1 1 20

4 1 14 1 1 1 4 1 23

5 5 4 2 8 4 2 25

6 1 6 9 4 2 22

7 3 1 3 1 8

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participa

tion

8 1 4 2 2 9

9 1 1 2 4

10 1 1

Total 12 39 2 6 5 20 17 12 8 6 127 Graph 5 - Contingency table

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In order to find a more exact relation between civil society

participation and the performance of democratic institutions a

correlation test is to be performed between the two variables.

The method used to calculate this correlation is Spearman’s

Rho, which is necessary being that both variables are ordinal.

In graph 6 below this correlation is conducted and what we can

draw from the graph is that the correlation coefficient between

the two variables is very strong at 0.869. What this confirms

is that, as stated in the hypothesis, when one variable rises

(civil society participation), the other one rises accordingly

(performance of democratic institutions) up to a certain point.

Furthermore the graph shows that the relationship between these

two variables is significant, which means it is applicable to a

bigger outside group and the correlation is not random (sample

error). This is however difficult because the sample group is

essentially every researchable country in the world.

Spearman’s correlation

CorrelationsCivil

society

participa

tion

Performan

ce of

democrati

c

instituti

onsSpearman's

rho

Civil society

participation

Correlation

Coefficient

1,000 ,869**

Sig. (2-tailed) . ,000N 127 127

Performance of

democratic

Correlation

Coefficient

,869** 1,000

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institutions Sig. (2-tailed) ,000 .N 127 127

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).Graph 6 - Spearman's rho correlation

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7. Discussion

After conducting the analysis on both civil society

participation and performance of democratic institutions and

the relationship that they might share with each other, we can

now conclude that this relationship does indeed exist quite

strongly as proven by the bivariate analysis above. This means

that the null hypothesis is rejected and the hypothesis stated

earlier in this research is proven to be true to a certain,

though quite high, extend and thus confirmed. An explanation

for this might be found in the literature review where it is

stated that when Smith’s four conditions for civil society

participation, along with factors like education, are evident

within democratic institutions their functioning enhances. This

also means that when this doesn’t occur, functioning of

institutions lowers.

Internal validity of the research is low as we cannot research

cause due to lack of temporal order. What can be said for

external validity is that the sample group, about 65% of the

world’s population, is a very thorough one. But as Bryld

stated, the contexts of countries matter to a certain extent

which might make it hard to generalize the findings to the

remaining countries. To avoid an ecological fallacy it is

important to keep in mind that, when generalizing, what is true

for the population is not necessarily true for individual

countries. However, Warren noted that even though context

differs, there are problems that are comparable and thus

generalizable. Reliability of the research is questionable as

many countries develop in a rapid manner and thus change in 19

their political atmosphere. This means that when a retest is

done, the result might differ from earlier research. However,

this does not have to mean that the relationship becomes

weaker, it might only mean that some countries move up (or

down) the scale of both civil society participation and

functioning of democratic institutions hereby leaving the

relation intact.

These results contribute to the scholarship on this topic in

the sense that there have been numeral researches about this

topic on specific countries or regions but a study of this

relationship regarding all countries has, to my knowing, not

been conducted. This research adds to and compliments the pile

of knowledge about the relationship of the two variables on a

global level.

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8. Conclusion

After a brief introduction into the topic of this research, the

following research question is formulated:

Does a higher level of civil society participation positively influence the functioning

of democratic institutions?

This question has led to the conduction of a literature review

on the existing theories and research on this topic. In the

literature review a framework with four different conditions

(inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgement and

transparency) and several contexts have been described and

linked to each other and the research question. Complementing

the study of these cases are several resources stating the

fact, and desire, for civil society participation to occur

within democratic institutions and the influence this has on

their functioning. Furthermore, the literature review suggests

that a lack of civil society participation causes democratic

institutions to function less democratically. Deriving from the

literature review the following hypothesis is formulated:

I expect in this research that the performance of democratic institutions depends on

the level of civil society participation, where higher participation causes better

functioning democratic institutions and lower civil society participation causes less

functioning democratic institutions.

To prove this hypothesis both a univariate and bivariate

analyses of the variables has been conducted. The outcome of

this research was positive as a strong correlation (0.869) was

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found, which has led to the confirmation of the hypothesis.

Conclusion of this research therefor is that indeed higher

civil society participation positively influences the

performance of democratic institutions and a lower level of

civil society participation relates to a lower level of

functioning in democratic institutions within countries.

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9. Bibliography

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Through

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13. World Bank. (1992). Governance and development. Washington, DC:

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development,

Used on 03-05-2015

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