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ECPR Standing Group on Participation and Mobilization

Themes & aims

The Standing Group gives room to a broad set of research questions related to individualized participation in politics, collective processes of organizing political demands and interactions between active citizens and their organizations on the one side and targets of their efforts and other affected groups on the other side. Scholars affiliated to the standing group represent different methodological perspectives ranging from quantitative to qualitative investigations and including studies based on mixed-methods approaches.

The main themes address diverse empirical and methodological aspects of participation and mobilization:

The plurality of participation and mobilization

• The development and emergence of forms of participation: from conventional, formal and institutional to unconventional, informal and non-institutional

• The overlapping, intertwining and competition amongst different forms of participation

• The relationship between individual and collective forms of participation with a focus on self-reflexive processes of political responsibility-taking in participation

• The role of political culture and political opportunity structure in the forms, issues, and magnitude of participation.

The territorial levels of participation and mobilization

• The impact of Europeanization and globalization on the emergence of transnational forms of participation and on the transformation of local, regional and national forms of participation

• The reconfiguration of political mobilization in the context of multi-level governance and transnational public spheres.

Mediation and communication processes in participation and mobilization

• Communication processes at the individual and collective level of participation

• Information and communication technologies in offline and online forms of participation

• Local, national and transnational discursive opportunities as constraints and opportunities for participation.

Outcomes for participation and mobilization

• The effectiveness and consequences of the different forms of participation and mobilization for individual citizens, for political systems and for policy implementation

• The impact of forms of participation and mobilization on political inequalities, social exclusions, social cohesion and social capital

• The elaboration of different democratic models in new forms of participation and mobilization.

Implications for theory

• The links between participation's political theory and operational theory

• The role of political identities, risks, globalization, and citizenship theory on the issues and forms of participation and as mobilization agents.