Taking Stock: A Conceptual Framework for Measuring the Ways in Which CSOs Contribute to Democracy and Democratic Decision-Making

Panel 6: Interest Groups and Legitimacy: Assessing the Contribution of Different Forms of Interest Aggregation to Democratic Governance? Panel Chair: Professor Beate Kohler-Koch (Universität Mannheim) Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) play an important role in challenging inequality, particularly through their cultivation of democratic participation. Democratic participation is a means towards, and feature of, more equal societies, and CSOs can help ensure that participation is inclusive of voices that are excluded or marginalised. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for measuring the democratic contribution of CSOs. In order to develop my approach, I draw on two distinct, but related sets of literature; namely, participative democracy and civil society. Each field addresses the democratic contribution of these organisations, but taken together, these two sets of literature provide a rich account of the democratic contribution of CSOs. In this paper, I propose a theoretically informed conceptual model comprised of three overarching general democratic functions: strengthening of democratic institutions, enhancing deliberation and participation, and influencing democratic decision-making. I will suggest that 12 specific democratic roles can be categorised under these three functions. It is important to note that it is unlikely that any individual CSO will engage in all of these activities, or by extension, fulfil all of the roles described or even some of these roles all of the time. Rather, this framework offers a template against which to analyse the actual democratic contribution of CSOs by examining the activities they do engage in. I will illustrate the value of this model with reference to a case study of three national anti-poverty networks in Ireland from 2004 to 2011. I will make the case that, with adjustment, this model is replicable in other contexts and provides an empirical tool for tracking the democratic activity in individual organisations and groups of organisations.