Abstract

Abstract Selectively using Tocqueville, many social scientists suggest that civic participation increases democracy. We go beyond this neo-Tocquevillian model in three ways. First, to capture broader political and economic transformations, we consider different types of participation; results change if we analyze separate participation arenas. Some are declining, but a dramatic finding is the rise of arts and culture. Second, to assess impacts of participation, we study more dimensions of democratic politics, including distinct norms of citizenship and their associated political repertoires. Third, by analyzing global International Social Survey Programme and World Values Survey data, we identify dramatic subcultural differences: the Tocquevillian model is positive, negative, or zero in different subcultures and contexts that we explicate. Keywords Political culture . Civic participation . Citizenship . Voluntary organizations The world is changing, arguably more rapidly and profoundly in recent decades than since the Industrial Revolution. Manufacturing is in deep decline; the percent of manual laborers has fallen by over half in most industrial countries since the 1950s. This in turn has transformed the political party system, as unions decline and left parties seek new social bases. All sorts of new civic groups emerge with global NGOs, the Internet, blogs, and new media/engagement strategies. Yet most thinking and theorizing about society and politics lags. Most of our models of civic groups, participation, and democracy come from an industrial era where class politics and party conflict dominated analysis. And as we think more globally, and look at broader patterns to help reframe the North American/European experience, what is "established" grows less clear. Approximately at the same time as the post-industrial political transformation in the West, the post-1989 transition to democracy in Eastern Europe led analysts to ask a question most ignored in the West-what are the conditions for democracy to flourish? To answer this, political scientists rediscovered Alexis de Tocqueville. Chief among them was Robert D. Putnam, who in Bowling Alone enshrined Tocqueville as "patron saint" of the social capital approach to emphasize the civic Int J Polit Cult Soc DOI 10.1007/s10767-013-9170-7 F. C. da Silva (*) : T. N. Clark : S. Cabaço University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: fcs23@ics.ul.pt T. N. Clark e-mail: tnclark@uchicago.edu S. Cabaço e-mail: slfcab@essex.ac.uk virtues of participation in voluntary social organizations Yet, if we break out participation into its components, we find dramatic differences from the "bowling alone" story. Voting and participation in general politics has declined in many countries since the 1980s, as has been widely reported. But barely noted is the rise of the arts and culture in these same years, even though some World Values Survey items suggest massive increases in arts and culture participation in various countries. 1 This is all the more surprising given its ubiquitous character. From mayors' agendas for urban renewal to the general population's practices, the arts have become a major area of political interest, economic investment, and self-realization in most developed countries. This global rise of arts and culture has been largely ignored until now for two main reasons. On one hand, most studies on the arts are case studies whose authors have not sought to explore the broader and the political implications of arts participation. 2 On the other hand, leading quantitative studies of arts and culture participation tend to focus on the traditional arts (live theater, symphony concerts, visiting museums) and omit such new activities as playing in a small band and many digital arts (graphic design, video, web and interactive design, animation). Still, there is by no means consensus here: rather many if not most writings on the arts suggest a decline rather than growth in recent decades. The main resolution of this conflict is to focus on what types of art and culture. The more established "high" art like classical music concerts, opera, and museum attendance show stability or decline in many countries. This has led to a sense of crisis in many arts organizations, like the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts which commissioned multiple studies. Many showed the classic decline of the "benchmark" high arts, but Novak- 1 Data from World Values Survey of national samples of citizens in each country. Question: A066. "Please look carefully at the following of voluntary organizations and activities and say…which if any do you belong to? Education, Arts, Music or Cultural Activities." In Canada, a study on citizens' preferences regarding federal spending points in the same direction, by finding that one of the few items that show significant change between 1994 and 2010 is support for "arts and culture," which climbed from 15 to 30 %. See http://www.queensu.ca/cora/_files/fc2010report.pdf 2 Most studies on the arts are case studies whose authors have not sought to explore the broader and the political implications of arts participation: see, e.g. Silva et al. This article discusses the political implications of what we call "the rise of culture." The rise of arts and culture, far from being an anomaly, is part and parcel of a much broader and deeper set of changes in an emerging form of politics lived by many, especially younger persons. It is a strategic research site where our litmus test results flag much broader and deeper changes, if we look. Culture can be about politics as well as personal identity. It can be part of one's job, but is more likely part of consumption-in a world where political candidates in their campaigns and actions stress consumption issues increasingly. Arts and culture may have some direct economic implications, but is more generally about meaning and value. For some in a secular but idea and image-driven world, music and books and their related activities replace the church and god and the functions of religion in earlier eras. For young persons breaking with their families and religious and work backgrounds, a charismatic singer like Madonna or Bruce Springsteen is more than entertainment. A reading group discussing Nietzsche, Marx, or Baudrillard can transform its members' thinking. While sympathetic towards the hermeneutically inspired "cultural turn" in American sociology, we seek to complement it with cross-national surveybased data, as this is the only way to capture broad, global sociopolitical changes. Analysts have sought to capture these profound sociopolitical changes with labels like postindustrial society, the knowledge economy, the third way, neo-liberalism, the creative class or economy, the consumer society, post-modernism, and more. What these have in common is stressing that the rules of many past models no long seem to work or demand qualification. How do any others specifically link to the growing salience of culture and the arts in the past few decades (see Our past work documented elements of this structural socioeconomic change as the rise of the "new political culture" (henceforth NPC). This original blend of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism was first identified in the 1970s urban America. What drives the shift toward the NPC? Seven general elements have been suggested to help understand the emergence of the NPC: (1) the classic left-right dimension has been transformed; immigration, women, and many new issues no longer map onto one single dimension; (2) social and fiscal/economic issues are explicitly distinguished, work no longer drives all; (3) social and cultural issues like identity, gender, morality, and lifestyle have risen in salience relative to fiscal/economic issues; (4) market individualism and social individualism grow: people seek to mark themselves as distinct from their surroundings; (5) the post-war national welfare state loses ground to federalist and regionalist solutions; parties, unions, and established churches are often replaced by new, smaller organizations that may join into social movements; (6) instead of rich vs. poor, or capitalisms vs. socialism, there is a rise of issue politics-of the arts, the environment, or gender equality-which may spark active citizen participation on one such issue, but each issue may be unrelated to the others; and (7) these NPC views are more pervasive among younger, more educated and affluent individuals, and societies. Citizens changed first in these respects, and leaders and analysts widely ignored these deep changes; many still do. But no longer do clientelism and class politics dominate politics as they did a few decades back. They are challenged by all manner of "reformers," some of whom relate to this new political culture. Many local and national political leaders came to adopt a NPC agenda in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, like Bill Clinton or Tony Blair or Antanas Mockus. In the 1990s, with the acceleration of economic globalization and the digital revolution (encompassing technological innovations such as the Internet, mobile phones, and personal computers), the shift from production to consumption started to capture the attention of social scientists. Two research questions, in particular, have been pursued. First, Culture on the Rise how and why is the growing prevalence of NPC associated with the replacement of class politics by issue politics? Second, how and why is the development of the NPC associated with the rise of consumption politics and the importance of amenities (for instance, in driving local development)? Behind these questions is the hypothesis that the rejection of hierarchy and welfare paternalism are in favor of horizontal, issue-politics increase as societies become more post-materialist, NPC. The article is organized as follows. We start by describing the analytical model, where we explain the main assumptions and research hypotheses behind this study. This includes a justification of our conceptual choices ("Research Design and Data Collection"). Next, we present our research design. Here, we discuss the main methodological issues we faced in conducting data analyses ("Findings"). We then present our findings ("Conclusion"). Specifically, we discuss the impact of our seven "contextual variables" in the relationship between cultural membership and democratic politics: these include three political cultures (class politics, clientelism, the new political culture) and four cultural traditions (Eastern religions, Orthodox Christianism, Catholicism, and Protestantism). Finally, we conclude the article by pointing out some of the most important implications of the current rise of culture, both for the purposes of policy making and for the social scientific research of politics. Analytical Model As noted above, the simpler patterns that have been widely used (like the decline in voting or bowling alone) do not hold consistently if we break out participation into separate issue areas, age groups, and countries. To make sense of these apparent disparities demands a subtler analytical model. If we look closely, we find that arts and culture are powerfully tied to other aspects of democratic life. But specifics vary by political cultures that follow disparate rules of the game. To clarify these patterns, we have extended past modeling about democratic politics to investigate impacts of culture, as follows. We include the core independent and dependent variables used by past analysts of citizen participation, but with two critical additions. First, we break out cultural participation from other content types of social participation-religious, community, and professional voluntary organizations-and compare its impacts to those of these other types. Second, we explore how these effects shift across political cultures. These two changes generate dramatic differences from most past work. The central path we explore is how cultural participation, here defined as membership in organizations by type as surveyed in the World Values Surveys (more below), impacts democratic politics. In turn, our conception of democratic politics includes political practices (protest, vote), norms of citizenship (citizens' beliefs about what makes one a "good citizen"), and attitudes (social and political trust). We hypothesize that the impact of cultural membership on each of these components of democratic politics will not be homogeneous; rather, it will vary by context. We analyze the impact of cultural membership on democratic politics in several ways. First, we consider direct effects of the standard socioeconomic variables (sex, age, education, income, and left-right self-positioning). Second, we compare the impact of cultural membership with the impact of other types of voluntary organizations, religious, professional, and community. Next, we analyze how these patterns shift across contexts, political cultures, and traditions (shown at the bottom of Silva et al. Dependent Variables Let us begin by explaining our conception of democratic politics. 4 Much civil society research has developed under the influence of Putnam's well-known jeremiad: civic participation is said to be in decline since the 1960s, with serious implications for the health of democracy. We suggest that this decline covers only part of what has happened in the last half a century. Another part of the change is a structural differentiation of political participation patterns accompanying the generational shift, societal value change, and socioeconomic modernization in dozens of countries around the world since the 1960s. Political repertoires of younger cohorts are larger than those of their predecessors (e.g., Tilly 2006, pp. 30-59). Our stress on expanded democratic repertoires joins the structural differentiation to overcome a narrow and conservative understanding that informed part of the communitarian revival of Tocqueville in the 1990s. For example, even Welzel, Inglehart, and Deutsch's recent discussion of elitechallenging repertoires shows a bias towards protest activities. Strikes, which enjoy constitutional protection in virtually all consolidated democracies, are excluded from their model under the grounds of their alleged "violent" nature To make our conception of democratic politics more empirically realistic and theoretically sound, we consider three broad categories of democratic political participation. First, we include voting and political campaigning, 5 the traditional mechanisms of political participation in representative democracies whose symbolic and non-instrumental functions have become recently re-appreciated. Second, we explore the work of Putnam, Kenneth Newton, Francis Fukuyama, and others in considering citizens' attitudes of trust in each other (social or interpersonal trust) and in the government and other institutions (political trust). 6 Third, we analyze elite-challenging modes of political mobilization. 7 This last category includes nonconventional political actions such as participation in demonstrations, signing petitions, writing political commentary in blogs, or boycotting certain products for ethical reasons. Together with voting and trust, protest is one of the three dimensions of democratic politics our model seeks to explain. If we no longer consider the New England, town meeting model of civic participation as the sole yardstick of democratic politics, but we include all three types just listed, we find no general decline in political participation. While some forms of political action become less popular (e.g., voting in certain countries), others are growing, and still others have emerged in recent years (e.g., political blogs or online petitions) (Dalton 2007). Whereas we try to overcome the conservative bias of the Putnam-Tocqueville model by enlarging what counts as democratic participation to include protest activities along with trust and voting, we try to avoid its parochialism by enlarging the scope of norms of citizenship with which it operates. Norms of citizenship encompass the values and representations individuals have of their relation with democratic authorities qua citizens. What are the civic virtues that one should exhibit to be considered an exemplary citizen? The existing literature, both in political theory 4 We thus restrict our analysis to democratic countries. Our list of 42 democratic countries is based on the Polity Score. Details of the indicators that constitute the index and the criteria for the classification of countries, according to the information, are available at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm. 5 "Representative democracy" is an index composed of the following variables: "voted in last election" and "political action: attend political meetings or rally" (source: International Social Survey Programme 2004). 6 "Social trust" is an index composed by the variables: most people can be trusted; do you think people try to take advantage of you ((1) "can't be too careful," (2) "most people can be trusted"). Trust in political institutions corresponds to the variable confidence in the government (1 "none at all" to 4 "a great deal") (source: World Values Survey 1999Survey -2004 see, e.g., Rothstein and Stolle 2008). 7 "Protest" is an index composed by the following variables: political action-sign petition; joining boycotts; attending lawful demonstrations; joining unofficial strikes; and occupying buildings and factories. They have three-point scale: 1, "would never do"; 2, "might do"; and 3, "have done" (source: World Values Survey 1999 Culture on the Rise and empirical political science, is often insensitive to the variety of normative understandings regarding citizenship. For example, neo-republicanism often suggests that there is one ideal set of civic virtues: in the civic republican tradition back to Cicero, Harrington, and Machiavelli, contemporary political theorists try to deduce the civic virtues that the citizens of contemporary nation-states should strive toward (e.g., Pettit 2000). In the empirical tradition, albeit less philosophically sophisticated than their fellow political theorists, political scientists are arguably more sensitive to the heterogeneous nature of the normative fabric of citizenship. Hence, empirically oriented political scientists such as Dalton 8 "engagement," 9 and "solidarity" 10 norms of citizenship. In addition, we use a second cleavage that has received some theoretical treatment in recent years Contextual and Independent Variables In what follows, we discuss the several contextual 12 and independent variables in our model of the impact of cultural membership in democratic politics, as well as the axioms behind each of them. The model's first axiom concerns socioeconomic development. Democratic politics is associated with higher levels of income and education and younger individuals. 13 To be able to 8 The "duty-based" norm is an index composed by the following WVS variables: give authorities information to help justice; future changes: greater respect for authority; national goals: maintaining order in nation; and also by ISSP 2004 variables: good citizen: always vote in elections, never try to evade taxes, always obey laws, and serve in the military. 9 The "engagement" norm is an index composed by the following WVS variables: politics important in life; reasons to help: in the interest of society; discuss political matters with friends and also by ISSP 2004 variables: good citizen: keep watch in government; active in associations; understand other opinions; choose products with ethical concerns; and help less privileged in the country/in the world. 10 The "solidarity" norm is an index composed by the following WVS variables: importance of eliminating big income inequalities; reasons for voluntary work: solidarity with poor and disadvantaged; and ISSP 2004 variables: rights in democracy: government respect minorities; access to adequate standard of living; and tolerance of disagreement. 11 In the case of the ethnic/civic norm axis (identity and civic norms), we only have information in the World Values Survey in one variable. In the absence of other options, we maintain it in our analysis in these circumstances. In the ISSP 2004, there was no information available on this normative dimension. The WVS variable is: how proud of nationality (civic norm: not very/not at all proud). 12 Both NPC and CP are statistical indexes composed by World Values Survey items (fourth wave, described below). The different political cultures are multidimensional phenomena so a single indicator cannot measure them adequately. The means of the NPC and CP indexes were calculated across all respondents. In the analysis, the filtering criterion was inclusion of the observations that scored above the average value. The results from the regression estimates were then compared to each dominant political culture. For clientelism, due to the lack of available survey data, the measure was the index provided by Worldwide Governance Indicators (in this case, all respondents received the corresponding national Silva et al. form an opinion and express it coherently, to show interest in affairs that transcend the immediate private sphere, and to make political claims in public are all instances of political conduct that presuppose an educated, motivated, and informed citizenry. The shift from class politics to the new political culture, or post-materialism in Ronald Inglehart's parlance (1977), was driven by the economic and social development of democratic countries in the second half of the twentieth century. As societies become more affluent and democratic regimes consolidate, materialist concerns with existential security are joined by other post-materialist ones such as quality of life, social tolerance, and self-expression. This new political culture provides a unique blend of social liberalism, tolerance, and anti-clientelism with fiscal conservatism. As a result, clientelism and hierarchical institutions are increasingly rejected: as the 2009 example of Japan's traditional political system breakdown illustrates, concerns with equality and transparency are gradually rising on political agendas around the world. Three of the model's contextual variables are thus political cultures associated with socioeconomic modernization processes: class politics (or materialism), 14 clientelism, 15 and the new political culture (or post-materialism). 16 The central element of our second axiom, cultural traditions, helps us understand the shaping influence of broad, civilization value systems on political behavior and beliefs. In line with the "multiple modernities" paradigm developed by Our third axiom refers to the political benefits of individual membership in voluntary associations. We focus on this particular mode of civic involvement (and not, say, in active participation, volunteering, or donation of money) for theoretical and methodological reasons. There are several explanations for the positive impact of cultural membership on democratic politics. One is suggested by practice theory. In Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu notes the virtuous relationship between types of newspaper reading and political engagement, as Mike Savage et al. in Culture, Class, Distinction aptly recall (Savage et al. 2009, pp. 95-96, 106). This was not, however, Bourdieu's primary interest. Rather, Bourdieu's main goal is to articulate a theory of social stratification based on aesthetic taste: "art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously 14 Class/party politics is an index composed by the WVS variables: work orientations: compared with leisure; materialism orientations; and society aimed: extensive welfare vs. low taxes. 15 Clientelism is measured by Worldwide Governance Indicators, which include control of corruption; rule of law; regulatory quality; government effectiveness; political stability and absence of violence; and voice and accountability. More information is available here: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/WBI/ EXTWBIGOVANTCOR/0,,menuPK:1740542~pagePK:64168427~piPK:64168435~theSitePK:1740530,00.html. 16 New political culture is an index composed by the WVS variables: being with people with different ideas; choose products with environmental concerns; and post-materialism four-item scale (maintain order; greater democracy; curb inflation; greater freedom of speech), in which items 1 and 3 express a materialist orientation, whereas 2 and 4 indicate post-materialist values. 17 In the case of cultural traditions (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox Christianity, and Eastern religions), each respondent is linked to each one of these four types depending on the dominant cultural tradition in his/her country. Culture on the Rise and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences" (Bourdieu 1979, p. 7). Bourdieu's elite-mass model of cultural taste has not gone unchallenged, however. First, as Laurent Fleury notes, by according to the experience of the working classes the kind of attention previously reserved to the culture of the highly literate and by taking an interest in design, advertizing, audiovisual products, the transmission and exploitation of knowledge, as well as recreational activities, leisure, and tourism, "cultural studies" played a part in promoting the ubiquity of the "cultural" Second, Bourdieu has been challenged by the work of Peterson and Simkus on "culture omnivores" (Peterson and Simkus 1992), which showed that people of higher social status were not averse to participation in activities associated with popular culture. Indeed, high status people were adding practices and cultural forms to their cultural repertoire at an accelerating rate: they were omnivores because they were developing a taste for everything. Research on cultural omnivores focuses on the individuals and their practices, while our past work has focused instead on their political culture (NPC). Despite the different analytical focuses, we are both tapping into the same rising pattern: cultural omnivores, who tend to adopt a NPC, "tend to be more politically engaged" (Chan 2013). Consistent with A different line of inquiry into the political effects of cultural consumption lies in the intersection between American pragmatism and Frankfurt school critical theory, namely Axel Honneth's attempt to reconnect Mead and Hegel in the form of a theory of recognition. François Matarasso, the author of the influential albeit methodologically controversial 1997 Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts (1997), has recently suggested that Axel Honneth's theory of recognition provides an explanation for his findings (2010, p. 5). To better appreciate the pragmatic origins of Honneth's proposal, consider Belfiore's and Bennett's The Social Impact of the Arts. An Intellectual History. From classic Greece and turn of the century American pragmatism, they review many theories that suggest the arts' positive impact in promoting "man's sense of well-being and his health, as well as his happiness" (Belfiore and Bennett 2008, p. 102). They cite contemporary studies that show a link between cultural participation and longevity. While these studies have not established a causal relation between cultural participation and the beneficial physiological processes associated with longevity, they suggest nonetheless that if democracy is not merely a form of government, but a "way of life, social and individual" (Dewey [1937] 2008, LW11, p. 217), then it depends on the widespread participation of a community in a dialogue over its ends, the quality of which would depend upon the quality of that community's democratic culture. To improve democratic culture, the pragmatist would explore ways to improve public deliberation and civic participation, which would include education and the arts. In short, cultural participation promotes the sort of active, creative training by "spectators" which democracy needs to flourish if it is conceived of as a way of life. A final possible explanation for the positive effects of cultural membership on democratic politics is that the political is itself aesthetic in nature. The idea that the political is aesthetic has Silva et al. been explored by authors such as Hannah Arendt in Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (1982), where she describes the human condition of action as the "political" that is both existential and aesthetic, and Jacques Rancière in Disagreement (2004). By contrast, echoing Nietzsche, Max Weber suggests that aesthetics is close to eroticism and largely follows subjective, deep dynamics relatively distinct from the economy and politics. Consider empirical studies on the relationship between cultural membership and political participation. Several authors suggest that the more intense forms of civic participation are more strongly correlated with political action Research Design and Data Collection Our analysis aimed to produce a rigorous quantitative documentation of the context-mediated impact of cultural membership in democratic politics. To test our model, we have used data from leading international surveys: the World Values Survey (WVS, 1999(WVS, -2004 and the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP 2004). The sample of our study is composed of cross-sectional observations for 42 democratic countries during the period 1999-2004. We test our model with ordinary least squares (OLS) and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) regressions. To capture intervening factors at the country level, we used the Gini index, education (gross enrollment ratio), and cultural trade as percentage of the GDP (see 19 18 In the case of WVS, the variables accounting for "voluntary organizations membership" are as follows: belong to community, religious, arts, and professional voluntary organizations: 1 "not mentioned," 2 "belong"; membership in religious and cultural voluntary organizations in the case of ISSP 2004. We compare cultural organizations with community, religious, and professional associations because these were the main types of social organizations chosen by Putnam to illustrate his claims in Bowling Alone (see Putnam 2000, pp. 48-92). 19 To account for the hierarchical nature of our data, we employed multilevel regression analysis using, for the national level, United Nations Development Programme data for the Gini index, education gross enrollment ratio, cultural trade as percentage of the GDP (see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm), and WVS data (membership in voluntary organizations and socio-demographic variables as controls) for the individual level. The statistical tests applied to the model used WVS data (1999-2004 wave). A slightly different model was implemented on voting as ISSP only has information regarding religious and arts groups (not on community and professional voluntary associations). Except for this difference, the same model was applied to voting. As Culture on the Rise Most arts participation studies are local case studies, small-N comparisons, or national level analysis 20 (usually conducted by national authorities, such as Ministries of Culture). In turn, civil society and participation research, as far as we know, has failed to systematically explore the impact of membership in cultural organizations in democratic politics. The present research, by contrast, uses cross-national survey data because this is the only way to reconnect these two lines of inquiry -membership in cultural voluntary organizations and democratic practices and values -on a global level. The collection of valid comparative data faced several challenges. The first concerned the availability of data: despite the growth in survey data collection in "non-western" countries in recent years, there is significantly more data for "western" societies. To measure change in arts and culture, the number of countries was reduced to those in the 1999-2004 WVS waves (and the ISSP 2004 wave for voting). 21 Other challenges include the potential impact of time and the identification of trends in the data; the operationalization of "thick" concepts as political cultures (e.g., the new political culture) and cultural traditions (e.g., Protestantism); and the more general reciprocity 22 and omitted-variable bias. In addition, there are diverse potential threats to the reliability of measurement (e.g., Jackman 2008). We also faced operationalization challenges of all secondary analyses: limitations in geographical scope, time period, and, more importantly, the wording of each survey item. A case in point is one of our key variables: membership in cultural or artistic voluntary organizations. The only available item in the WVS is question A066, which reads "Please look carefully at the following of voluntary organizations and activities and say…which if any do you belong to? [the list included] Education, Arts, Music or Cultural Activities." Aware of the potential measurement error due to the inclusion of educational organizations like PTAs in this item, we recomputed the results for parents and nonparents of school-age children. There were minimal differences. 23 Findings We test our model of the impact of cultural membership in democratic politics in two successive steps. First, we run multilevel regression analyses in order to estimate the impact of the individual and contextual levels in predicting participation, attitudes, and norms of citizenship in democratic countries around the world. The results corroborate 20 One other concern relates to the fact that in each country, the levels of culture membership are a relatively small part of the national sample. Our solution was not to conduct single country analyses, but to group countries by cultural type, which raised the Ns. 21 This is a particularly sensitive issue as we focus on a broad population of cases -democratic countries -in diverse political and/or cultural contexts. See, e.g., Silva et al. our expectations: for the general model, cultural membership is the best predictor of protest activities among voluntary organization membership, alongside the educational level attained (see The second dramatic finding from our empirical work is most simply illustrated in a set of nine small bar charts that contrast the impact of arts participation across contexts The Appendix shows details of the multilevel regression analysis, plotting standardized regression coefficients of arts participation, by context. We computed both OLS and multilevel estimates, which are generally similar. We often refer to the regressions of the impact of four types of social participation on each component of democratic politics (dependent variables), controlling the socioeconomic descriptors Three Types of Political Culture: Different Arts Impact We begin with the analysis of how political cultures mediate the impact of cultural membership in democratic practices and values. As noted above, political cultures are not associated with a particular set of countries. Rather, they transverse countries, regions, and cities. Individuals may well adhere to a certain kind of political culture despite (or, sometimes, because) they happen to live in a setting where other values are dominant. For this reason, we measure political cultures with survey items posed to individual citizens. 26 The basic question (null 24 In 26 Except in the case of clientelism. Culture on the Rise hypothesis) here is: to assess the political implications of my membership in a cultural organization, does it matter which sort of basic values regarding social and economic change I subscribe to? Our findings indicate impact Class Politics Consider the class politics context. This context is ideal-typically characterized by hierarchical institutions (the Church, political parties, and unions), materialist values (related to security and economic development), and a model of citizenship defined by the fulfillment of civic duties such as serving in the military and paying taxes and receiving classparty-driven state benefits. Our aim here is to discuss how and why belonging to a cultural organization influences political beliefs and conduct in this specific context. We build on recent work on class politics such as Evans (1999), Clark and Lipset If, in materialist class politics contexts, cultural membership seems to foster turnout, the same is not true of other aspects of democratic politics. One such dimension is trust, both in other persons and in the government: in both cases, the impact of arts participation is not significant. Similarly, class politics contexts seem to act as a sort of "buffer zone," which limits the impact of cultural membership on the norms of citizenship: under class politics, this impact is weaker than in most other contexts. By contrast, the impact of more hierarchical civic organizations such as the Church is strong in this context: it is a significant predictor of both the duty-based and of the identity norms of citizenship, as well as of social and political trust. Cultural membership in class politics contexts, dominated by hierarchical institutions and materialist concerns, seems to have somewhat mixed political consequences-if it fosters voting (and, to a lesser extent, protest), its impact in other dimensions of democratic life is negligible compared to other predictors. Silva et al. Clientelism Empirically often overlapping class politics, clientelism is a second political culture whose mediating influence between arts participation and democracy we wish to test. 27 Cultural membership here has markedly different political consequences than in NPC and class politics. Two results immediately distinguish clientelism. First, cultural membership is here associated with duty-based and identity models of citizenship. In the other cultural contexts, artistic voluntary participation tends to "prevent" one from equating citizenship with serving in the military or paying taxes, a duty-based understanding of the civic bond. However, in a clientelist political culture, this relation becomes positive-here if one is a member of, say, a book club, one is more likely to endorse duty-based norms of citizenship. Confirming the general legitimacy of duty in this political culture, the duty-based norm is affirmed by respondents higher in education, income, and membership in professional associations. In addition,thisistheonlycontextinwhichbelongingtoanartsassociationispositivelycorrelated withanidentitaryunderstandingofthepoliticalbond. 28 Thisflows,webelieve,fromthestrength of personalistic ties in a clientelist context, affirming its impact even as deeply as one's personal identity.Second,ifonebelongstoanartsorganizationinaclientelistcontext,itisnotmorebutless likelythatthecitizenwilltakepartinmanifestationsorotherprotestactivitiesandendorseanorm of citizenshipassociatedwith rightsclaiming 29 These two results combined are nothing short of remarkable. Attesting to the importance of context, these are clear examples of how the same social practice (belonging to a cultural organization) can entail profoundly different political implications. These findings powerfully reinforce our general point that the experience of belonging to a cultural organization acquires distinct political meanings in different contexts: of all political cultures discussed in this paper, clientelism is the only one in which the impact of cultural membership on protest activities, as well as on the engagement and the legal-civic norms of citizenship, is negative. This reverses in the next context. New Political Culture In a new political culture context, not only is the impact of cultural membership on protest activities positive, its impact is also the strongest among all political cultures Culture on the Rise this will probably translate into political terms as a predisposition to, say, sign petitions and to adopt a rights-claiming attitude. Interestingly, it will not foster as much trust in other persons as in the government. These findings not only corroborate past work suggesting that social and political trust are different attitudes explained by different variables (e.g., Coleman 1988; Newton 2001), but also reflect the nature of this specific political culture, i.e., a combination of socially liberal attitudes with fiscal conservatism that is particularly salient in large, cosmopolitan urban settings (e.g., Boshcken 2003). Four Cultural Traditions/Civilizations Our focus so far on political cultures could lead some to consider either that behind our model lies some sort of evolutionary framework, guiding the analyst from the class politics and clientelism of the past to the NPC of today's global cities and cosmopolitan democrats, or that we are solely concerned with the socioeconomic processes of societal change. Both inferences would be wrong. Although we do not deny the profound impact of socioeconomic change in individuals' attitudes and practices, we also attend to possible effects of "civilizations," broad sociocultural religious patterns. In addition, we do not equate modernization with westernization, i.e., the gradual diffusion of western values and institutional solutions across the globe. Our understanding of modernization processes, on the contrary, is that of a plurality of appropriations and reinventions of the original, western European modern project. These responses to modernity can be seen as expressions of different civilizations. This is why, in addition to political cultures associated with socioeconomic change, our model includes cultural-civilizational traditions. Their religious-cultural cores are not reducible to socioeconomic concerns 31 Our findings below thus concern the mediating role of some of major cultural traditions for the impact of arts membership on democratic politics Eastern Religions A major cultural tradition is formed by eastern religions, which include, among others, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. 32 In the countries where these cultural traditions are predominant (South Korea, Japan), or at least occupy a prominent position (India), the central finding is the individualist and engaged political repercussions of cultural membership. Korean reading club members, for instance, are more likely to engage in protest activities and endorse a model of citizenship that emphasizes engagement. And the more educated they are, the more likely this is to occur. 33 Furthermore, cultural membership seems to be part of an expanded scope of individuality at the expense of solidarity. First, cultural membership 31 Using religion as a prime historical indicator of traditional basic values and culture is classic in social science, from Max Weber's works on sociology of religion (1958, 1964) to Talcott Parsons (1951), to Henri Mendras (1971), and even Daniel Bell (1973. 32 Due to data availability, this last context is analyzed only for three countries (India, Japan, and South Korea). Future waves of the World Value Survey and similar cross-national surveys should try to enlarge the number of countries from this part of the world. 33 "More educated" refers here to the positive and statistically significant regression coefficient correspondent to the direct effect of the variable predicting the dependent variables (concerning the highest level of education attained by the respondent). Silva et al. in this context decreases one's solidarity towards the worst-off. Second, and more important, of all cultural traditions, this is the only one in which to belong to a chorus society or a theater group is unrelated to increased trust in other individuals. In these countries, the sources of social trust are elsewhere, namely in a left-wing ideological stance, higher income, and being older. Orthodox Countries Moving now to majority Orthodox Christian countries, namely Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and the Ukraine, one cannot ignore the fact that all were under communist rule for much of the second half of the twentieth century. The most striking result concerning the political impact of cultural membership here is its passive outlook-something not be found in any other context. There is no correlation between, say, being a member of a chorus in Romania and endorsing a rights-claiming conception of citizenship rights. Similarly, cultural membership has the least impact on protest activities. Furthermore, signaling perhaps a divorce between arts participation and institutional politics in this context, the only kind of trust promoted by this specific sort of social participation is social, not political trust Catholic Countries Consider next the two cultural traditions historically most influential in western democracies-Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. In majority of Catholic countries, a cultural tradition that includes Southern European and Latin American countries, 34 the political impact of cultural membership assumes yet another configuration. The most salient finding is the anti-hierarchical and libertarian political meaning, absent in NPC or Protestant contexts. Two results illustrate. First, cultural membership is negatively correlated with voting 37 These are among the most interesting and unexpected findings our model has produced. We have already seen how contexts such as the NPC, class politics, or clientelism shape the political consequences of cultural membership. The significant differences 34 The complete list of major Catholic countries included in our analysis is Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Uruguay. 35 Standardized regression coefficients (cultural membership predicting voting): β=−0.028 (p<0.001). 36 Standardized regression coefficients (cultural membership predicting protest): β=0.057 (p<0.001). 37 Standardized regression coefficients (cultural membership predicting duty and engaged norm): β=−0.047 (p<0.001) and 0.025 (p<0.001). Culture on the Rise found among all these contexts share one thing-they are consistent with the cultural patterns 38 prevalent in each context. But Catholicism seems to enhance a different contextual effect: the political impact of cultural membership is not consistent with the broad cultural traits of the Roman Catholic Church, but a reaction to them. Following this interpretation (not unique to us, except for the arts data), the anti-hierarchical and libertarian political consequences of cultural membership is an indication that members in cultural associations in countries like Spain, Portugal, or Poland find in these organizations an outlet providing a critical distance from the socially conservatives of the Catholic tradition. Protestant Countries Several Catholic effects reverse in majority Protestant countries. 39 Here, increased support for protest activities, 40 for engagement and legal-civic norms of citizenship, and for increased social and political trust, 41 arts participation shows positive impacts-all in line with Protestantism's cultural legacy. That is, principles like individual autonomy and personal expression not only support norms of citizenship and types of political participation emphasizing critical engagement and creative self-realization, but they give this cultural tradition a distinctive flair. It differs from NPC contexts, for example, in that individuals in Protestant countries joining cultural organizations are even less likely to associate citizenship with serving in the military or paying taxes. And it differs from class politics in that political impacts of cultural membership are substantially stronger. Imagine a literary club member in the Netherlands. Our findings suggest that he would be significantly inclined to conceive of citizenship as claiming rights. He would also strongly reject civic models associated with fulfilling duties or showing solidarity for the most vulnerable members of society. 42 But now consider that our imaginary Dutch bibliophile has a materialist, class politics orientation. In this case, as we saw above in considering the buffer zone effect of class politics, the political impact of his cultural membership would be much weaker. To sum up, belonging to a literary club or a choral society in a Protestant country makes one more prone to trust other fellow citizens and the government, to object to models of citizenship based either on the fulfillment of duties or in solidaristic values, while supporting protest activities and norms of citizenship based on a legal-civic, rights-claiming understanding of the good citizen. This makes the Protestant cultural tradition different from all the others considered so far. In Catholic countries, cultural membership is associated with anti-hierarchical attitudes and practices; in Orthodox countries, it promotes social trust; in Eastern religious countries, it has individualistic and engaged political implications; in NPC contexts, it is linked to protest activities and the engagement norm; in class politics contexts, to voting and political campaign; and in clientelist settings, to the duty-based and identity citizenship norms. One type of social participation, seven cultural contexts and seven different political consequences, if put in a word, would 38 "Cultural determinants" refer to structural features of each context, in the sense of Raymond Boudon's "operative" definition of structure (see Silva et al. be culture matters. Culture matters, first of all, because it is on the rise globally. Culture matters also because of all types of voluntary associations here considered, cultural membership has the most significant political impacts. And culture matters further in that these political impacts are is significantly mediated by different political cultures and cultural-civilizational traditions. These last two findings combined seem to vindicate our efforts at building a theoretical model of the political meaning of the rise of culture, i.e., how and why, in multiple contexts around the globe, is cultural membership associated with democratic values and practices. Conclusion This paper documents the rise of culture and arts participation as a dramatic exception to the widely held view that we are increasingly bowling alone, i.e., that civic activity is declining. In the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Scandinavia, arts and culture participation has tripled or doubled from 1981 to 2004. Our finding derives from examining civic participation items for issue specificity, rather than implicitly assuming that issues are not distinct (the working rule of most participation research). We next explored interrelations between arts and culture participation and several measures of democratic politics, finding that they vary considerably by context. This sharply contradicts and qualifies the generality of the Tocqueville/Putnam hypothesis. The core of the paper interprets differences by context. As far as we know, this is the first attempt to identify and discuss the political consequences of cultural membership on a global scale. The implications for democratic politics of nonpolitical associational life are a classic theme in the social sciences. Using survey-based cross-national data, we analyzed specifically the impact of being a member of a cultural organization on various indicators of democratic politics-from practices like voting or protest, attitudes toward political institutions, to beliefs regarding citizenship. Our specific findings bolster the hypothesis that the recent rise of culture has important political consequences. These consequences, however, are neither limited to a certain component of democratic politics-say, the representative democracy component vs. elite-challenging activities-nor are they homogenous across contexts (transnational or country level). Our model has shown how the impact of cultural membership on the different components of democratic politics is profoundly shaped by the concrete cultural contexts in which individuals live. While in some it drives one away from traditional party politics, in others, it has the exact opposite effect, leading one to vote and participate in political campaigns. Besides significant political implications, the rise of culture also has important policy implications. As local governments around the world have shown since the mid-1970s, policy innovation in the arts and culture is a powerful political instrument: from the strategic electoral use of humor and irony to ambitious municipal plans of urban renovation associated with cultural events or institutions, in such disparate locations as Bogota, Colombia, Naples, Italy, or Chicago, USA, there is overwhelming evidence of the rise of culture in local policy making. 43 Bogotá, Naples, and Chicago are among the many sources of a new style of leadership and citizenship, new modes for engaging citizens that often conflict with the Tocqueville-Putnam tradition. Rather than focusing on the Kiwanis Club or the League of Women Voters, mayors in Naples, Chicago, and especially Bogotá have developed highly popular, symbolic leadership, joined in specific actions, as alternative modes of governance that work (instead of the classic civic group). These alternative modes of urban governance work in part since they are founded on a base of distrust, alienation, and cynicism that makes the Tocqueville model distinctly more 43 The importance of arts and culture in contemporary urban policy is discussed in the very recent work of Grodach and Silver (2012, p. 13). Culture on the Rise difficult to construct. In the last few years, we have collaborated with several Latin Americans, Italians, and Spaniards to document and generalize the lessons from Bogota, Naples, and even Chicago in a manner that they might be applicable to situations such as the civic vacuum found in Mexico City as well as some LA (and Chicago) neighborhoods. From this perspective, UNsupported initiatives like the 2004 "Agenda 21 for culture" are but a high-level, institutional response to the accumulated experience of dozens of local government initiatives around the world that had been using arts and culture to foster social, economic, and political development for decades. Culture and arts participation should be taken seriously for all the above reasons. More people have life experiences shaped by it; as "schools of democracy," to paraphrase Tocqueville, cultural organizations nurture a wider range of civic virtues than most other types of associations surveyed, at least the standard types in the World Values Surveys; and one can only begin to understand the political significance of the rise of culture if cultural diversity is adequately accounted for. There are then good reasons to place culture high on the research agenda of the social sciences.