CREATING GOOD CITIZENS?:
TOWARD A CLARIFIED UNDERSTANDING OF SELECTION AND CAUSALITY
IN VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS1
Matthew Baggetta
Indiana University
baggettm@indiana.edu
WORKING PAPER
Paper presented at the 2012 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. This research is
supported in part by a Research Grant from the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
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Abstract
Scholars since Tocqueville have considered voluntary associations “schools of democracy”
that causally impact the civic characteristics of their members. Critics of the perspective have argued
that apparent causal effects are likely driven by self-selection. This paper argues that, by more
carefully considering the mechanisms at work within associations, we can understand how selection
and causality might both be occurring. I develop a theoretical typology of association features and
then discuss the ways in which these might operate as bases for selection and as mechanisms of
causality. Despite the prevalence of self-selection, substantial theoretical opportunities for causal
effects of associations still exist. I conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of this for
theory and research.
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In recent years observers and scholars have become increasing concerned about apparent
declines in “good citizenship” in the U.S. especially among members of recent generations (Bellah
et. al 1991; Bellah et. al 1996; Levine 2007; Longo and Meyer 2006; Putnam 2000; Schudson 1998).
While some have argued that today’s youth are engaging in new and different forms of civic
engagement than prior generations (Dalton 2008; Zukin et. al 2006), virtually all agree that at least
some forms of civic knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors are in decline. These changes in patterns of
engagement may have significant impacts on the responsiveness of government (Putnam 1993) and
the representativeness of policy outcomes (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995) as well as on the
overall quality and trajectory of community life (Putnam 2000).
As these concerns have intensified, a variety of proposals have been made to improve the
citizenship characteristics of Americans (Macedo 2005), again focusing in particular on the civic
training of youth (Levine 2007). Many of these focus on changes that could be made to course
offerings and course content in high school or college (e.g. Battistoni 2002; Hibbing and TheissMorse 2002). Such programs, especially those implemented in public high schools, could have broad
reaching impacts because they would include so many young people. Despite the civic advantages of
such an approach, their widespread implementation is unlikely given recent trends in education—
especially higher education—away from principles of broad, general education and toward narrower
market-oriented training goals (Nussbaum 2010; Roche 2010)
Citizenship development in the U.S., however, has rarely (if ever) been seen as solely the
responsibility of institutions of formal education (Schudson 1998). Empirical models of political and
civic engagement demonstrate that a variety of factors play a role (Campbell 2006; Rosenstone and
Hansen 2003; Verba and Nie 1972; Verba et al. 1995). A key element highlighted in the civic
engagement literature is the role played by voluntary associations (Fung 2003). Empirical research
has regularly demonstrated a relationship between associational participation and further forms of
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political and community engagement (e.g. Almond and Verba 1963; Putnam 2000; Rogers, Bultena,
and Barb 1975; Verba and Nie 1972; Verba et al. 1995). In the Tocquevillean (1969) tradition, these
associations—from bowling leagues (Putnam 2000) to fraternal orders (Skocpol 2003) to
environmental movement organizations (Andrews et al. 2010)—are interpreted as “schools of
democracy” that prepare citizens for the requirements of democratic citizenship.
The “schools of democracy” perspective hinges on the assumption that associations causally
impact their members—that participation in associations actually changes people. The voluntary
nature of associations, however, means individuals are choosing to join groups and choosing what
groups to join. This self-selection process has been empirically demonstrated on a variety of
dimensions (McPherson and Smith-Lovin 1986; McPherson and Smith-Lovin 1987) raising the
serious concern that what appear to be causal effects of some associations on civic development are
merely the results of the self-selection of already “civic” individuals into particular associations.
In essence, this area of research is still faced with questions of fundamental importance: in a
context where self-selection is known to occur, can associations have causal impacts on members? If
so, how? This paper begins to answer these questions. I begin by generating a typology of features
of associations. I then specify the ways in which these features might serve as bases for selfselection. Then, following the trend toward mechanism-based theorizing in sociology
(Demeulenaere 2011; Hedstrom and Bearman 2009; Hedstrom and Swedberg 1998), I consider a
variety of ways that, even with self-selection occuring, a causal mechanism could also be at work. I
conclude by offering thoughts on the empirical implications of this framework.
A Typology of Associational Features
Before addressing the way associations may (or may not) influence the civic development of
association members, I briefly describe the ends toward which such development is directed. Levels
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of civic engagement have been a rising concern for scholars of civil society, although definitions of
what should and does constitute civic engagement is a matter of some debate (e.g. Dalton 2008;
Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2002; Macedo 2005; Putnam 2000). Levine (2007), in an effort to
synthesize many of these perspectives, draws on a wide swath of theoretical and philosophical
traditions to suggest the following broad definition:
“civic engagement”… is any action that affects legitimately public matters (even if
selfishly motivated) as long as the actor pays appropriate attention to the
consequences of his behavior for the underlying political system. In turn, “public
matters” include the commons, the distribution of goods in a society, and all the laws
and social norms that prohibit or discourage particular behaviors. (Levine 2007:13)
Levine argues that acts of engagement may be ideological or open-ended, or even largely selfinterested, so long as their impact is felt in the arena beyond both the private sphere and the market.
Such a broad definition is difficult to parsimoniously operationalize, a fact reflected in the myriad
ways elements of “civic engagement” have been measured in recent years (Dalton 2008; Flanagan,
Syvertsen, and Stout 2007; Ladd 1999; Putnam 2000; Zukin et al. 2006). McFarland (2011) suggests
thinking about citizen activities as fitting within five broad approaches to public participation: the
forum (public deliberation toward consensus), interests and institutions (aggregation of private
interests through institutional channels), social movements (communication outside of institutional
channels), civic engagement (narrowly conceived as face-to-face social interaction), and “creative”
participation (innovative non-institutional action for the commonweal). From a civic development
perspective an ideal course of civic learning would teach lessons in all these domains such that the
well-formed citizen could choose among these approaches based on her desires and goals, on the
context of engagement, and on current public needs and demands.
Given this variety of venues in which the “good citizen” should be prepared to engage, we
must look extensively within associations to see if and how they might be training developing
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citizens. Initial discussions focused on the practice of “civic skills” that allowed individuals to turn
personal resources (like knowledge or money) into acts of political and civic engagement (Verba et
al. 1995). Others discussing characteristics of associations have since noted things like the potential
importance of the particular content a group addresses (Theiss-Morse and Hibbing 2005), the norms
of discourse within a group (Eliasoph 1998; Perrin 2006), and the structure of interaction
opportunities provided (Baggetta 2009; Skocpol 2003). While quite varied in their specifics, I suggest
we can categorize these associational features on two important dimensions as shown in Figure 1.
First is a distinction between features that deal with associational content, the qualitative substance
of what happens in a group, and associational structure, the regular form of action and interaction
that takes place. Second is a distinction between the manifest elements of associations, the
components that are explicitly and intentionally produced, and the latent elements, unintended (and
potentially unrecognized by participants) features of group life. The interaction of these categories
produces four types of associational features. These could be causal mechanisms (they work to
change people who join groups), or they could be bases for self-selection (they shape why a person
joins). For now, I describe the categories in general terms, and return to a detailed discussion of
selection and causality below.
The upper-left-hand box captures the manifest content of an organization. This is the core
substance of a group—what it takes as its official subject matter. One organization advocates for the
rights of the homeless, another provides math tutoring to middle school students, and a third
focuses on the collection and display of model trains. In this scenario, the first would seem to have
the most “public sphere” oriented content (although the second and third likely include some as
well). There is a danger of oversimplifying the civically relevant components of manifest content.
Brief examinations of what appear to be primarily “recreational” organizations may miss the
substantial civic content of their work while even some ostensibly public sphere oriented
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organizations explicitly avoid discussion of serious political issues or any topics that might lead to
conflict or broader reflection about society (Eliasoph 2011). Even within each of the three examples
noted above, we could imagine variation in manifest content of a more politically normative sort
accompanying the explicit substance of interest and activity. As Theiss-Morse and Hibbing (2005)
argue:
If the group’s goals are democratic, politically oriented, and tolerant of others, then
its members will learn democratic values and become politically active as a benefit of
being involved in the group. If, however, the group is antidemocratic, disdainful of
politics, and intolerant of outsiders, then its members will learn undemocratic values
and probably become disengaged from the political system. (p239)
While the variation in content can clearly be great, the theoretical importance is that the explicit
substance of what a group is clearly an important feature of the association.
While manifest content might be the easiest feature to observe about an association, the
upper-right-hand box of Figure 1 has garnered perhaps the most attention in recent years. An
association’s manifest structure is the way it is intentionally designed and run. This could include
things like the macro-structure of national organizations as centralized, federated, or franchised or
locally structured opportunities for various kinds and levels of participation (Andrews et al. 2010;
Baggetta 2009; Skocpol 2003; Skocpol, Liazos, and Ganz 2006). While the teaching of “civic skills”
like public speaking, persuasive writing, decision-making, and organizing (Verba et al. 1995) may not
be the explicit aims of a particular organizational structure (most often these are not explicit goals),
the spaces for skill development are created by the ways that groups choose to organize themselves
(Djupe and Gilbert 2006). Manifest structures could operate in ways beyond skill development as
well, perhaps providing opportunities for social interaction of a social capital producing variety
(Baggetta 2009).
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The lower-left-hand box of Figure 1 contains the latent content of an organization, the
substance of group life that is not explicitly intended by the organization, or more simply, the norms
of interaction within a group. Descriptions of features of this variety have focused largely on
discursive norms within groups. Eliasoph found in her studies of adult associations (1998) that
organizational cultures often led people to frame their public sphere concerns in narrow, close-tohome, self-interested terminology essentially avoiding contentious political talk. In these
organizations, the manifest content may have been “civic,” but the latent content emerging out of
these conversation norms communicated a much different message. Similarly, Perrin (2006) found
that sets of members from a variety of voluntary associations ranging from teachers unions to
church groups to softball teams developed shared menus of possible reactions to public events.
While not explicitly part of the official content of the organizations in which they were participating,
these latent understandings about what were reasonable courses of action—and reasonable ways to
justify them—constrained or extended what each individual could envision. The civic implications
of an organization’s latent content may duplicate and reinforce the manifest content, but as these
examples suggest, they may also contradict or undercut it.
Finally, the lower-right-hand box of Figure 1 contains latent structure features. These are any
regularly occurring features of group life that are not intended by organizers. The most
straightforward form of a latent structure would be the unintended characteristics of an association’s
membership. People joining groups do so in response to certain shared interests (in content or
structure or both), but they also carry with them other interests, ideas, and characteristics that are
not related to the organization’s purpose—what Gouldner (1957) referred to as “latent social roles.”
Inadvertent assemblages of these latent social roles can occur, shaping the nature of interaction in a
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group.2 For example, imagine a photography club that recruits broadly for members. In a given year,
the group has 18 members who regularly participate in club activities because they are interested in
photography. Due to chance factors in one year, 6 of those members turn out to be children of
military families. As they come to realize this, topics regarding the military arise more in informal
discussion at club events. A focus on the military was not the goal of group leadership or of any
member when joining the group, but semi-regular conversation about military-related issues
becomes a regularly occurring component of group life for all members, at least for that year. In this
manner, the combination of latent roles has created a latent organizational structure.
Latent structures of this variety need not be completely orthogonal to organizational
interests. Consider a mountaineering club that engages in both organized group hikes and political
activism to protect mountain environments. The mix in any given year between members who are
solely interested in recreational hiking activities, members who are solely interested in mountain and
trail protection activities, and those who are interested in both can substantially structure the nature
of interactions within the organization. As this blend shifts from year to year—in a manner
unrelated to organizers’ efforts, as they attempt to maximize the number of participants joining for
any reason—the experience of members can change.
These four categories—manifest and latent content and structure—capture a variety of
associational features. This leads to a question: given the voluntary nature of associations, are these
features causal mechanisms or bases for selection? They could, of course, be both. In the next
section, I discuss the likelihood that each acts as a selection basis (i.e. as grounds for choosing an
Early discussions of “latent social roles” focused on highly salient demographic characteristics like race or gender, in
essence arguing that their latent-ness was effectively covert discrimination (Becker and Geer 1960). Group leaders would
use an organizationally relevant characteristic as a recruitment criterion, perhaps ignoring the fact that the manifest
category effectively excluded many people sharing a socially “undesirable” latent status trait. While this certainly
continues to occur in some (perhaps many) associations, in my typology, such a situation would fall in the manifest
structure category (if such exclusions were overtly built into organizational rules) or in the latent content category (as
covert action within a group communicated that certain “types” of people are as unwelcome as certain kinds of talk. The
latent statuses that lead to the latent structures I discuss are more socially benign characteristics that would be unlikely to
face much overt or covert discrimination and exclusion.
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organization). Following that, I consider what—if any—possibilities remain that they could also be
causal mechanisms.
Bases For Selection: Why Join? Why Stay?
The category that clearly contains the greatest likelihood of selection is manifest content.
From Tocqueville onward, scholars and observers have marveled at the incredible array of topics,
activities, hobbies, and interests that have been advanced and enjoyed through voluntary
associations. The content of some of these associations is more “civic” than others—and the people
who join them are choosing them for that reason (Stolle 2001). The stated purpose of an
organization is in many cases the primary reason why people choose to join it.
Manifest structure, while perhaps a less likely selection criterion than manifest content, is still
a potential selection basis. People seeking to make friends or to become more active will choose an
organization structured to facilitate face-to-face social interaction over one that mediates contact
with other members. Organizations that require active fundraising efforts or significant volunteer
time contributions from members will not attract people with no interest in doing associational
“work.” Conversely, someone interested in developing new skills or making professional network
connections will pass on a group that does not provide them the opportunity to do so. Manifest
structures may even exceed the level of interest of a member even when the member’s interest is
initially met. A colleague once described for me a kickball league she joined. The manifest content
(kickball) was interesting, but the manifest structure (weekly face to face social interaction) was
perhaps an even bigger attraction. Unfortunately, team organizers made binge drinking an explicit
part of the activity. Some players found this component of the association’s manifest structure quite
appealing; my colleague left the team in search of tamer weeknight fun.
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The manifest content and structure have the highest likelihood of acting as selection bases
because they are so visible. We choose to join groups—and stay in them—because of what we see in
them. Latent elements, while harder to see, may still serve as selection bases. Latent content, in
particular, offers this possibility. As Eliasoph (1998; 2011), Lichterman (2005), Perrin (2006) and
others have shown, associations develop internal cultures that encourage and reward some kinds of
thought, speech, and behavior, while subtly but effectively punishing others. To those attuned to the
social context around them, the “feel” of a group produced by these processes may be as important
in the decision to join or stay as is what a person can see. Especially if we have multiple groups
available that offer the right content and structure, we will likely choose to join the group that “feels
right”—or at least “right enough.” We can tolerate some amount of mis-fit if the manifest content
and structure are compelling, but when we feel too out of place, we depart.
Latent structure seems to be the least likely grounds for selection. When approaching a new
association, we are unlikely to know the non-organizationally-relevant characteristics of other
members. Over time, we may come to know more of the “latent statuses” of others in the group
(“we’ve got three Ivy Leaguers this year” or “who knew we’d have five Californians?”) and unless
those statuses are substantially off-putting (e.g. overt racism), we are unlikely to leave.
This does not mean latent structure could never be a selection factor. Joiners in search of
mates may seek out organizations that have unintentionally assembled a particularly attractive mix of
members (another colleague of mine once joined a religious congregation because of some faces she
once saw in the pews). Similarly, if we were recruited to join an organization in which we actually
had little to no interest by a close friend, we would be selecting the organization on a nonorganizationally relevant basis (our pre-existing friendship) rather than on the substance, structure,
or “feel” of the group. Network recruitment is a hallmark strategy of voluntary associations,
although often this latent structural element ends up less important in the final decision to join a
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group than one’s actual level of interest in what the group does (network recruitment “works”
because the recruiters choose targets who are likely to say yes; see Lim 2010).
In sum, the possibility exists for all four types of associational features to serve as bases for
selection. There appears to be variation, however, the likelihood that each category will be acting as
a basis of selection for any particular joiner. Manifest content has a great deal of selection potential;
it is likely in operation to some extent in most joining decisions. Less likely, but still significant, is the
manifest structure of a group. Latent content has some chance of playing into selection choices.
Latent structure appears to have little likelihood of acting as a selection factor, but in certain special
cases even this category can include points of attraction.
Causal Mechanisms: How Can Associations Change Members?
Critics of the “schools of democracy” perspective on associations often point to selfselection as the downfall of the approach. Given the discussion above, it is clear that those critiques
must be taken seriously; all types of organizational features could be grounds for selection. Given
this situation, is there any theoretical space left for causality? In an environment where selection is
operating, frequently and abundantly, are there still ways an association might change a member?
To consider this more carefully, let’s first imagine a pure selection circumstance, where no
associational features are operating in a causal fashion. In this situation the association merely
becomes a vehicle for expressing pre-existing characteristics and not for developing new ones. For
example, imagine a first-year college student deciding what extra-curricular organizations to join.
The student is roughly aware of the civic trajectory she is already on and intends to remain on that
track. Given her prior education and experiences, she intends to become an adult citizen with a
certain level of civic engagement. Knowing this, she chooses an organization whose content matches
that trajectory. An observer after the fact might see her higher level of civic engagement after joining
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as a causal effect of the organization, but the observer would be mistaken. Removing the
organizational affiliation would have made no change in her civic outcomes, because the trajectory
was already set.
This pure selection story does not require a full knowledge situation at the start so long as
we allow for multiple affiliations over time. A student could be on a certain intended civic trajectory
and could join an organization that did not match that trajectory. Perhaps the organization’s
manifest content is more public-sphere oriented than matches with the student’s established tastes.
This student then leaves the organization, making a self-selection correction, and joins another
organization whose manifest content better matches the intended trajectory.
Both scenarios have intuitive appeal. Our student need not be wholly cognizant of all her
civic tastes, but is at least loosely aware of her preferences and can alter her associational affiliations
to eventually meet her already established civic path. Background factors like social class (Verba et
al. 1995) and hometown community values (Campbell 2006) would have set the individual on a civic
life-course that she continues to follow. Given this baseline selection story, what causal
opportunities might still exist?
Because of the impact of selection, we must look for contexts where experiences in groups
have the potential to prepare participants for civic engagement but do not conform to the initial
intensions of joiners. I consider these extensions beyond selection as “accidents of participation.” I
argued above that an association’s manifest content had the greatest likelihood of serving as a
selection factor. Several possibilities still exist within this category for causality as well. A first
possibility is an organization’s content marginally impacting an individual beyond the intended
trajectory. Imagine again our first year collegiate joiner. The student is on a trajectory toward a
particular civic outcome level and joins a group whose manifest content she thinks matches. She
finds, however, that she has landed in a context with more or different “civic” information than
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expected—but not so much of a departure from her intention that she leaves for another group. In
this case, the student could be changed by the experience to become more engaged than the initial
trajectory would have produced. In this case, manifest content would be acting as a causal force on
the student joiner, even though manifest content was also the dimension of selection. I refer to this
as manifest content intensification.
While causal in nature, intensification would likely produce marginal civic changes; it is
unlikely to be civically transformational. A second circumstance might offer more room for the
causation of civic growth. Let’s say our student joins an organization for its manifest content only to
discover later that the organization includes multiple manifest purposes. For example, our student
joiner might join the mountaineering club described above for the purpose of hiking. After joining,
she finds that the group also engages in political activity intended to preserve mountain
environments. The student does not intend to engage with politics through participation, but
through her participation in the group, she moves from the recreational wing of the organization to
the political wing. I call this “accident of participation” content-to-content extension, as the
association provides a context where a participant is exposed to and influenced by other elements of
manifest content. Such a process could occur even if the student were aware of the multiple
purposes of the organization at the outset, so long as her explicit intention was to ignore the political
component of the organization and focus entirely on the recreational aspect. If, over the course of
membership, the recreational joiner was recruited into the political domain, the organization would
have had a causal impact on the student’s civic trajectory.
Moving from manifest content to manifest structure, we can find similar causal
opportunities for intensification and extension. Perhaps our collegiate joiner is seeking to develop
her leadership skills and she joins the mountaineering club because it has an opening for a hike
leader. Soon after taking the position, the organization’s vice president suddenly steps down. The
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leadership responsibilities of the departed vice president are taken up by the remaining leaders,
including our joiner. Her leadership experience, while sought out, ends up being far more extensive
and intense than she anticipated or intended—an intensification mechanism present in the manifest
structure. It is also possible that she joined the mountaineering club with no desire to take on
leadership, but was instead interested in a structure that offered opportunities for social interaction.
In time, however, she is invited (or, as is more often the case in recreational associations, cajoled or
drafted) into begrudgingly taking on a leadership position. The leadership experience ends up
substantially changing her civic trajectory from its original baseline. This would be a form of
manifest structure-to-structure extension.
While extension from content-to-content or structure-to-structure, a perhaps even more
likely causal circumstance would be extensions across the manifest content and structure boundary.
A person who joins an organization out of a strong interest in its manifest content could then be
exposed to certain organizational structures that provide training in civic skills that they neither
anticipated nor intended. If our student joined the mountaineering club out of a very strong interest
in mountain-climbing, but as a function of membership participated regularly in internal debates
about organizational concerns is still gaining “forum” skills that could be put into use later. Similarly,
a joiner whose sole interest in joining a group is finding a leadership position (perhaps for resumebuilding purposes) will inevitably be exposed to the manifest content of the organization; if that
content has some “civic” component to it, the civic trajectory of the purely structural joiner would
be altered.3
The latent features of associations may offer more opportunities for causality as they are less
likely to serve as bases for self-selection. Latent content may be an especially important causal force.
It should be noted, of course, that these extension effects need not always push joiners in a more civic direction.
Perhaps the resume-padding joiner finds a leadership position in a group that explicitly focuses on personal reformation
and officially rejects broader community engagement. Such content might depress the civic development of the joiner.
Nevertheless, an unintended civic reduction is still a causal effect.
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As noted above, people choose to join and stay in groups because of their “feel” (a function of
latent content), however the subtle nature of conversation norms may not lead to swift departures.
Rather, individuals involved in repeated conversations with members of one association may slowly
adopt the patterns of thought and speech of their new organizational peers (Perrin 2006).
Considering once again our student mountaineer, if the trail conversation norm among the other
individuals with whom she regularly hikes is to consider politics and society in ways that encourage
an expanded sense of civic possibility, she too may come to think and talk in those ways.
Conversely, if conversation norms focus on narrowly individualist interpretations (Eliasoph 1998),
her sense of civic possibilities may contract. The latent content of associations could be an especially
powerful causal force in a situation where the joiner’s selection criteria were strongly content based.
If the desire to go hiking in a group is strong enough, the joiner may ignore oddities of group “feel”
in order to act upon the strong interest. This provides ample opportunity, then, for the subtle push
of latent content to influence her.
The final set of potential causal mechanisms fall in the latent structure category. This domain
offers perhaps the greatest possibility for causality because latent structure is so rarely a dimension
of selection, opening more opportunities for “accidents of participation.” As described above, the
latent structure of a group depends on the chance assembly of latent statuses of members which can
create unexpected interaction contexts. When a joiner encounters individuals with whom she shares
some interests (likely the manifest content and/or structure of the association), she will have
grounds for conversation and interaction. Over the course of those repeated interactions, however,
the non-organizational relevant characteristics of others will become visible. These orthogonal
interactions have the opportunity to influence people through the provision of new information (a
“weak ties” phenomenon; see Granovetter 1973), through recruitment into other activity (Lim
2008), or through processes of social comparison and emulation. If our collegiate joiner begins
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hiking with a group of other members, several of whom are political blog readers, she may find
herself talking about political news (and gossip) more than she ever anticipated. In this case, her
orthogonal interactions with group members would have a causal impact on her political knowledge.
For this process to “work,” of course, group members must have latent statuses that differ,
allowing for a latent structure that provide opportunities for orthogonal interaction. Many have
noted the homogeneity of associations on a variety of dimensions (McPherson and Smith-Lovin
1986; McPherson and Smith-Lovin 1987; Theiss-Morse and Hibbing 2005), making most groups
sites of “bonding” rather than “bridging” (Putnam 2000). Still, people’s interests and “latent
statuses” vary on far more dimensions than the standard socio-demographic traits often captured in
social science research. In some ways, all groups are simultaneously “bridging” on some dimensions
while “bonding” on others. The unintended “bridges” that comprise the latent structure of an
organization provide the chance for individuals to be influenced.4
A final causal context related to orthogonal interaction included in the latent structure
category, is the process of network joining. As noted above, some people occasionally join groups that
they know about which they know little (and if they did, they would be uninterested) at the behest of
a friend or through some other chance encounter with the group (Munson 2008). In this
circumstance the initial connection to the group is, at best, on an orthogonal dimension (and
possibly even a largely chance occurrence). In this circumstance, interaction with the manifest
content and structure of the group are both unintended and other dimensions of latent structure
(beyond the shared interest with the recruiter-friend) remain causal possibilities. For our collegiate
joiner, the process could be simple. Perhaps she is looking for a mountaineering club that matches
It is important to note that the theoretical purpose here is to define all the possibilities for causal influence, not to
suggest the extent or direction of such causal changes. Critics of the idea that interactions within “homogenous”
associations cannot produce meaningful changes in participants are often concerned with whether or not associational
engagement can make people more tolerant of racial, ethnic, religious, socio-economic, linguistic, or cultural differences.
Associations that are homogenous along these lines are certainly unlikely to produce causal effects in a direction of
greater tolerance. This does not imply, however, that an association that is heterogeneous on other dimensions could not
lead to individual changes of other kinds.
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with her civic trajectory, but before she finds one she is placed into a room in a dormitory with a
random roommate. The roommate invites the student to an event at the student newspaper and she
enjoys the experience. She stays with the newspaper, rather than joining the hikers, taking her in a
very different civic direction.
The choice to join was not made on the basis of an evaluation of a field of groups and the
selection of a good match, but instead was determined by a connection unrelated to interest in the
news—the chance matching with a roommate. Clearly, the choice to join would not be completely
random. The student would still have the opportunity to evaluate whether or not the organization
seemed to offer benefits that he desired before continuing on with the group. But the highly fluid
social context at that moment of substantial biographical change may dramatically lessen what might
have otherwise been strong impacts of prior civic tendencies and trajectories. Anything that reduces
the connection between the choice to join and the intended civic trajectory leaves substantial room
for organizations to causally influence their individual members.5
Discussion & Implications
The “schools of democracy” understanding of voluntary associations hinges on the
assumption that associations can, in some way, causally impact the civic characteristics of their
members. Critics of the perspective have pointed to the problem of self-selection; since associations
are joined voluntarily it is possible that what appear to be changes caused by the group are actually
the enactment of individual trajectories already in progress. People choose to join groups that reflect
their current path toward certain civic outcomes.
Such a path is not unheard of; Munson (2008) finds that many pro-life activists considered themselves pro-choice at
the time of first encounter with the pro-life movement. Chance encounters with the movement at a moment of
biographical availability created a context in which individuals were substantially changed by the organization they
encountered.
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I have argued that, by more carefully considering the mechanisms at work within
associations, we can gain a better understanding of how both selection and causality might be
occurring within associations. Figure 2 summarizes the arguments made. Selection is more likely on
“manifest” features of organizations—people choose groups based on characteristics that they can
see. Certain types of selection may also be occurring based on “latent” features as well, although
these are likely substantially less common. Even recognizing all the potential for selection, there are
still many ways that causal processes may be at work, above and beyond the choices made by
individuals. These mechanisms may operate as intensifiers or reducers, marginally altering the
intended civic paths of joiners. The combination of organizational features may also interact with
individual choices to produce extensions of original desires into new areas unplanned by the joiners
and at times unplanned even by association organizers.
The theoretical work begun in this paper is far from complete. I have discussed the four
features of organizations as broad categories for a reason: these categories likely contain more
mechanisms than currently established here. Continued examination of existing theoretical and
empirical work on how people participate in associations and the ways that they develop civically
may shed additional light on how the figures in this paper should be more completely filled.
Perhaps more challenging are the implications of this perspective for future empirical work.
The possibilities for causality are an important consideration for scholars in this area, but the
struggle to accurately measure reasons for joining, manifest and latent characteristics of associations,
and marginal changes from intended civic trajectories is substantial. Still, a better understanding of
the theoretical possibilities should allow us to create more appropriate research and analytic designs
that can better capture some (or all) of these processes.
18
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20
Figure 1. Typology of Associational Features
Content
Structure
Manifest
Stated subject matter
Intentionally defined
organizational forms
Latent
Interaction norms
Regular but unplanned
social contexts
Figure 2. Selection Likelihood and Causal Opportunities
Content
Structure
Selection Likelihood
Great
Manifest
Latent
Selection Likelihood
Some
Causal Opportunities
Causal Opportunities
Intensification/Reduction
Intensification/Reduction
Content-to-Content Extension
Structure-to-Structure Extension
Content-to-Structure Extension
Structure-to-Content Extension
Selection Likelihood
Selection Likelihood
Some
Little
Causal Opportunities
Intensification/Reduction
21
Causal Opportunities
Orthogonal Interactions
Network Joining