Group Investments in Political Activity – The Trade-Off between Collective and Selective Incentive Provision

Research has highlighted that ‘civil society’ and ‘political society’ should not be equated as voluntary membership organizations might be inwards-oriented and not engage in political activities, not even if the latter are defined broadly, transcending lobbying and covering activities such as citizen education or the shaping of implementation processes. This paper theorizes and empirically examines the conditions under which civil society organizations engage in political activity. We propose a theoretical framework on group investments in political activities considering the nature of political activities as collective, non-exclusive incentive from which also non-members profit (making them by definition less effective to sustain member support than selective incentives). On that basis, we formulate hypotheses that are tested using new data from four recently completed population surveys conducted in the UK, Norway, Germany and Switzerland designed to cover the range of voluntary membership organizations in an inclusive fashion, irrespective of their purpose. Our findings suggest that intra-organizational factors shaping different balances between collective and selective incentive provision within civil society organizations are important determinants for whether the latter are regularly politically active or not.