Towards a Self-determination Theory of Political Motivation: Political Motivation´s Origin in Socialization

No democracy is sustainable without the active participation of its citizens. Yet, narrowly defined self-interest alone is not enough to overcome the problem of free-riding in providing the public good of democratic governance (Olson 1971). I propose to explain political behavior as driven by either intrinsic motivation which means doing an activity for its inherently satisfying internal conditions or by extrinsic factors in the individual´s environment that were integrated into the individuals self to varying degrees. Following Deci and Ryan´s self-determination theory of human motivation (Deci and Ryan 1985; 2002; 2012), political motivation is understood as a multi-dimensional construct on a continuum of how autonomous an action is perceived by the acting individual. This proposal will focus on norms and their role in shaping an individual´s extrinsic motivation toward political participation. For long political scientists have pointed to the motivating role of social norms in overcoming the problem of collective action. Norms were shown to be predictive of a person´s proclivity to cast a ballot (Blais 2000) and to explain changing patterns of political participation in western democracies (Putnam 2000, Dalton 2008). Despite its extensive use and its capability to explain various phenomena of political behavior, the concept of social norms is diffuse and the mechanisms whereby social norms influence individual behavior as well as the origins of individual differences of the norm-behavior relationship are unclear. This proposal investigates how norms towards the political domain surrounding a citizen translate into different kinds of motivation towards political behavior. It is argued that during socialization significant others´ values may result in integration, but only in concert with the feeling of relatedness and the presence of autonomy- and competency-supporting conditions. Following the multi-dimensional conception of motivation, this combination of factors facilitating or thwarting internalization leads to different types of political motivation. Thereby, political motivation can be either external, introjected and partly integrated, identified or intrinsic. These different types of motivation in turn determine not only the frequency but also the quality of a citizen´s political behavior These pathways of socialization are tested with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Study.