The Socio-Political Context of Citizen Activism: An International Comparative Perspective

This paper examines the moderating effects of socio-political factors on the influence of issue salience and prosocial values on citizen activism in different governance contexts. While the literature on citizen activism has examined the emergence, motivations, and channels of activism, we still lack a broader understanding of how different social (membership of social groups and sense of attachment to local communities) and political (ease of citizen involvement and trust in government) contexts affect people's ultimate decisions about activism in different governance systems. This paper fills this gap, drawing on a comparative research methodology and using data from the World Values Survey Wave 7.