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Making Civil Society Work: Models of Democracy and Their Impact on Civic Engagement

This article evaluates the influence of different models of democracy on individual volunteering in associations and organizations. More precisely, we investigate the extent to which the degree of liberal and participatory conceptions of democracy respectively shapes the conditions under which voluntary engagement thrives. We apply multilevel analysis—a method that corresponds well to the central hypothesis of institutional approaches and is most suitable for modeling the relationship between the democratic context and individual volunteering. We show that both a representative conception of democracy, as well as strong direct democracy, leads to advantageous conditions for civic engagement. In contrast, if the two models of democracy are combined, the two different logics of the democratic process disturb one another, resulting in less voluntary engagement.