Abstract

This article explores the effects of volunteering in nonprofit organizations on direct forms of public participation, such as attending public meetings, signing petitions, and protesting. The paper hypothesizes and tests that through volunteering in nonprofits, individuals may become engaged and democratic citizens, which in turn increases the likelihood of their participation in administrative and political processes. I propose that the extant testing of this relationship suffers from an endogeneity problem, which I counter with the instrumental variable technique. The results of the analyses suggest that individuals’ volunteering in nonprofits increases participation in public meetings, but does not affect their likelihood of protesting and petition signing. The findings from the study have implications for how we think about democratic public administration, nonprofit organizations, and public participation.

摘要

本文探讨了非营利组织中的志愿活动对公众参与的直接形式的影响，例如参加公开会议，签署请愿书和抗议。本文假设并测试了通过自愿参与非营利组织，个人可能会成为订婚和民主公民，从而反过来增加了他们参与行政和政治程序的可能性。我建议对这种关系的现有测试存在一个内生性问题，我用工具变量技术来应对。分析结果表明，个人在非营利组织中的志愿活动增加了公众会议的参与度，但并不影响其抗议和请愿签字的可能性。