Schools for democracy? The relationship between nonprofit volunteering and direct public participation

Abstract

This article explores the effects of volunteering in nonprofit organizations on direct forms of public participation, such as attending public meetings, signing petitions, and protesting. The paper hypothesizes and tests that through volunteering in nonprofits, individuals may become engaged and democratic citizens, which in turn increases the likelihood of their participation in administrative and political processes. I propose that the extant testing of this relationship suffers from an endogeneity problem, which I counter with the instrumental variable technique. The results of the analyses suggest that individuals’ volunteering in nonprofits increases participation in public meetings, but does not affect their likelihood of protesting and petition signing. The findings from the study have implications for how we think about democratic public administration, nonprofit organizations, and public participation.

Acknowledgments

I thank Seung-Ho An, Robert Bifulco, Abhisekh Ghosh Moulick, Kenneth J. Meier, Tina Nabatchi, Brian Ohl, Laurie E. Paarlberg, and David Popp for their helpful suggestions and comments on earlier drafts. I also thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

1 Different forms of direct public participation, including public meetings, protests, and petitions, do have different characteristics. Among many others are: (1) Public meetings are organized by government organizations, while protests and petitions are organized by civic organizations and/or individual civic leaders. (2) Public meetings are more frequently held, especially at the local level, whereas protests and petitions are rarer, focusing on issues with high level of salience. (3) Public meetings enable attendees to directly interact with public officials, while protests and petitions do not usually involve interactions with government officials. I briefly discuss this matter as it relates to the analysis results in the discussion section. Further distinguishing forms of public participation is beyond the scope of this paper. For more explanations on different public participation forms, see Nabatchi and Amsler (2014); Nabatchi and Leighninger (2015); Rowe and Frewer (2000).

2 For detailed qualitative case evidences on how nonprofit organizational practices transform individuals into politically active citizens, see Dodge and Ospina (2016).

3 For more explanations on the instrumental variable estimation, see Angrist, Imbens, and Rubin (1996). Also refer to Wooldridge (2016, Chapter 15).

4 To check the representativeness of the sample, I have compared characteristics of this final sample, first with the full sample from the SCCB Survey, and second with a nationwide sample from the 2006 General Social Survey conducted by National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The comparison criteria include gender, race, education level, political party identification, employment status, and household income. The results suggest that the sample used in this study does not substantially differ from the full sample from the SCCB Survey and the General Social Survey, and that it is broadly representative of the US adult population.