Political Consumerism: A Substitute for or Supplement to Conventional Political Participation?

Abstract

Political consumerism, i.e., the use of consumer power to influence politics, is often described as an alternative to conventional political participation. It is assumed to appeal most of all to those who are less politically active, have less trust in the representative political system or have difficulty being heard through conventional political channels. In this paper, survey data are used to analyse political consumerism as an emerging form of political participation. It is argued that political consumerism is less alternative than often portrayed. Rather than being a ‘new’ or post-conventional kind of political participation, political consumerism should be seen as an extension to the conventional, or ‘old,’ participation repertoire.

Keywords:

• Political consumerism
• political participation
• boycott
• buycott
• consumer activism

Notes

In addition to Norway, the CID survey includes data from Switzerland, Russia, Portugal, Denmark, Germany (East and West), the Netherlands, Slovenia, Romania, Moldova, Spain, and Sweden. The surveys were carried out in the period between 1999 and 2002, and the data set consists of a total of 22,427 respondents.

A closely related activity is socially responsible investment, i.e., investing in businesses or mutual funds with favourable social profiles (Andersen & Tobiasen, 2004).

[euro] 1≈NOK 8.

This finding could have been a consequence of more women participating as political consumers, at the same time as women on average earn less than men. The relationship is, however, still not significant when we look at household income.

This is measured as party preference, i.e., the party the respondent voted for in the latest national election. This implies that only those who actually voted in this election are included here (N = 1756).

The left-leaning among political consumers is here found among those who have used boycott or buycott as a political means. A more right-wing kind of political consumerism can probably be found among people who travel from Norway to Sweden to buy cheaper groceries as a protest against the price and tax levels in Norway (Storstad, 2003), as well as among those who support various ‘Buy Norwegian’ campaigns.

Gender is a natural dichotomy. Age is measured as a continuous variable running from 18 to 84. Education is measured as a variable with 11 categories from primary school (7 years or less) to 5 years or more at university. Income is measured as a variable with 11 values from ‘less than 100,000’ to ‘more than 1 million’. Political interest is recoded as a dummy variable (very/fairly interested vs. not/absolutely not interested). Place of residence is measured as a 9-value variable from rural area to a big city with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Last, a left–right self-placement scale is included, with values from 0 (left) to 10 (right).

When analysing the CID data, we get mixed results when we look at trust. For most of the countries, the results are similar to those of Norway, with no or few significant differences between those who have participated as political consumers and those who have not. In Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, the tendency is that political consumers trust the institutions of representative democracy to a higher degree, while the tendency in East Germany and Spain is that political consumers express confidence in the different institutions to a lower degree. Anyhow, it is not reasonable, based on these data, to see political consumerism as a result of lower trust in institutions.

This ranking is nearly identical for all the countries included in the CID survey. In all the countries, voting is evaluated as the most effective form of participation. Moreover, working to gain attention from mass media, working in voluntary organizations and associations and working in a political party are in all countries evaluated as more effective than boycott as a means of political influence.

According to Friedman (1999, p. 218), boycotts became increasingly media-oriented throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and are sometimes even more oriented towards gaining media attention than towards influencing the actual sale of a specific product.