Online/offline participation and lifestyle politics in Ghana, Peru and the Philippines

In the past five years, democratic backsliding and political instability in many middle income countries have begun to put previous success stories of political participation at jeopardy. In the Philippines, for example, democratic backsliding has occurred under the guise of legitimacy during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, hardly meeting any serious civil society opposition. In parallel, a global trend towards more online activism and lifestyle politics can be witnessed, especially on sustainability-related issues such as plastic waste or climate change. Online activism and lifestyle politics may function as a gateway or getaway for other forms of institutionalized participation (De Moor/Verhaegen 2020). The growing middle classes in middle income countries may play a key role in both trends, merging online and offline participation – and possibly connection it to the global lifestyle politics trend on sustainability. This contribution uncovers which modes of political participation are prevalent among the middle classes in Ghana, Peru and the Philippines, including new modes of online participation and lifestyle politics for sustainability. First, we are interested in the shape that online/offline participation takes in terms of socioeconomic group member characteristics. This will uncover whether clear groups of “slacktivists” only active in online participation exist or whether individuals make use of “participation repertoires” (Oser 2021), constituted of both online and offline participation. Second, we explore the role of political consumption and online activism for environmental reason as factors determining a gateway or getaway for political participation. Political consumption is largely being discussed under the umbrella of lifestyle politics. The line between lifestyle politics as blended form of everyday activism and a mode of political participation of its own right is empirically not clearly drawn yet. Our main contribution to these debates is the provision of much needed empirical data and analysis. To analyse middle class participation behaviour, we draw on household surveys conducted with approx. 900 middle class households in each of the capital cities - Accra (Ghana), Lima (Peru) and Manila (Philippines) - in December 2018. We run a latent class analysis (LCA) for each country sample with a range of offline and online participation questions. Subsequently, we run regressions with sociodemographic factors, previous overseas work experience and political consumption as proxies for lifestyle politics to predict class membership. Three of the five identified classes are consistent across the three countries: a disengaged class, an allround activist class and an online activist class. In Peru and the Philippines, a distinct class of helping hands exists, engaged in civic participation; in Ghana, a class of partial activist exists.