Non-electoral Political Participation, Mobilization and Political Opportunity Structure in Western Democracies

The contextual theory of political participation in non-electoral politics developed in this paper supposes that more open political opportunity structure of a respective state increases both, the individual non-electoral participation and mobilization into this participation, since the decentralized political institutions send a message that more access points to influence politics are available and expectations of success can be higher. Specifically, three dimensions of the state decentralization are expected to have this effect: territorial decentralization, horizontal decentralization implying separation of power among main state institutions, and the number of political parties. These expectations are tested against the data from the International Social Survey Programme 2004 in 22 Western democracies using multilevel modeling. Findings show support for this theory: the “core” state institutions – territorial and horizontal decentralization – indeed increase non-electoral participation and the effect of mobilization on this participation. On the contrary, the higher number of political parties does not work as open opportunity structure and contrary to the theory actually dampen both, non-electoral participation and the effect of mobilization on it.