caa a22 4500 445822392 CHVBK 20180317145248.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20110101xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s11186-010-9128-y doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11186-010-9128-y Associations, active citizenship, and the quality of democracy in Brazil and Mexico [Elektronische Daten] [Peter Houtzager, Arnab Acharya] In many Third Wave democracies large classes of people experience diminished forms of citizenship. The systematic exclusion from mandated public goods and services significantly injures the citizenship and life chances of entire social groups. In democratic theory civil associations have a fundamental role to play in reversing this reality. One strand of theory, known as civic engagement, suggests that associations empower their members to engage in public politics, hold state officials to account, claim public services, and thereby improve the quality of democracy. Empirical demonstration of the argument is surprisingly rare, however, and limited to affluent democracies. In this article, we use original survey data for two large cities in Third Wave democracies—São Paulo and Mexico City—to explore this argument in a novel way. We focus on the extent to which participation in associations (or associationalism) increases "active citizenship”—the effort to negotiate directly with state agents access to goods and services legally mandated for public provision, such as healthcare, sanitation, and security—rather than civic engagement, which encompasses any voluntary and public spirited activity. We examine separately associationalism's impact on the quality of citizenship, a dimension that varies independently from the level of active citizenship, by assessing differences in the types of citizenship practices individuals use to obtain access to vital goods and services. To interpret the findings, and identify possible causal pathways, the paper moves back-and-forth between two major research traditions that are rarely brought into dialogue: civic engagement and comparative historical studies of democratization. Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 2010 Citizenship practices nationallicence Civic engagement nationallicence São Paulo nationallicence Mexico City nationallicence Quality of democracy nationallicence Associationalism nationallicence Houtzager Peter Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, BN1 9RE, Brighton, UK aut Acharya Arnab London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), London, UK aut Theory and Society Springer Netherlands 40/1(2011-01-01), 1-36 0304-2421 40:1<1 2011 40 11186 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9128-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9128-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Houtzager Peter Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, BN1 9RE, Brighton, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Acharya Arnab London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), London, UK aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Theory and Society Springer Netherlands 40/1(2011-01-01), 1-36 0304-2421 40:1<1 2011 40 11186 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer