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In Sizing Civil Society, Wording and Format Matter

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Abstract

For six decades the civil society and democracy thesis has generated great interest. How dependably can the relationship of associational membership to democracy be demonstrated empirically? Using a data set derived from 37 national surveys in eight countries, this article finds that the questions used commonly to measure civil society are unreliable or simply measure different things, thereby imperiling the assumed universal and robust relationship between civil society membership and democracy. By emphasizing problems related to question wording, this article intends to prompt the profession to improve and standardize measurement of membership in civil society organizations to determine whether this tantalizing hypothesis has the powerful predictive value ascribed to it by the field of comparative politics.

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Fig. 1

Source: Authors’ dataset derived from 37 national level surveys from the WVS, ABS and 2011 SAIS Survey

Fig. 2

Source: Authors’ dataset. *The data used in Fig. 2 refer to general identification rather than active membership in CSOs

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Notes

  1. The characteristics of the WVS, ABS, and 2011 SAIS Survey are highly comparable. The age and range of the populations surveyed are similar as are the survey design, parameters and timeline for data collection. Also, the surveys use questionnaires that follow a similar format, with questions on membership in civil society organizations around the same position in the questionnaires. The specifics of the various surveys may be accessed here: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp; http://www.asianbarometer.org/survey; Dore Giovanna Maria Dora, Jae H. Ku and Karl D. Jackson (Eds.). 2014. Incomplete Democracies in the Asia-Pacific: Evidence from Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. Palgrave Macmillan, Critical Studies in the Asia-Pacific Series. Appendix 1. The SAIS Surveys.

  2. See Annex 1 for raw data on associational membership in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Rome Building (Room 619), 1619 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, 20036, USA

    Karl D. Jackson

  2. Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Mergenthaler Hall (Room 240), 3400 N Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

    Giovanna Maria Dora Dore

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Correspondence to Giovanna Maria Dora Dore.

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Jackson, K.D., Dore, G.M.D. In Sizing Civil Society, Wording and Format Matter. Soc Indic Res 155, 983–994 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02623-9

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