How Context Matters? Mobilization, Political Opportunity Structures and Non-Electoral Political Participation in Old and New Democracies

Scholars have long argued that political participation is determined by institutional context.Within the voter turnout literature the impact of various institutional structures has beendemonstrated in numerous studies. Curiously, a similar context driven research agendaexploring the correlates of non-electoral participation has not received the same attention.This study addresses this lacuna by testing a political opportunity structure model of citizenactivism across 24 old and new democracies using ISSP (2004) data. Employing a multilevelmodeling approach, this study tests a competition versus consensus conception of howdecentralized institutions determine non-electoral participation. This research demonstratesthat states with more competitive veto points operating through systems of horizontal andterritorial decentralization increases individual non-electoral participation. More specifically,it interacts with social mobilization networks to promote greater citizen activism: institutionalcontext counts only when citizens are mobilized.