The Population Ecology of Grassroots Democracy

Prior research on citizen political participation suggests a narrow role for organizations, that they promote the political activity solely of their members. Yet studies at the individual level cannot assess any other role for organizations than a narrow, direct one. The authors estimate hierarchical models of how the intensity of Christian Right groups’ activism in the states affects individual political participation as a means of identifying the degree of context dependence of grassroots activism. The authors find evidence to support a broad-based, pluralist effect of movement activism rather than a narrow effect of mobilizing a target constituency.