Douglas Baer

Nations of Joiners: Explaining Voluntary Association Membership in Democratic Societies

Levels of voluntary association membership for 33 democratic countries are compared using data from surveys of nationally representative samples of adults from the 1990s. Four explanations of national differences in association involvement are identified and tested: economic development, religious composition, type of polity, and years of continuous democracy. The analyses consider total and working association memberships, both including and excluding unions and religious associations. Americans volunteer at rates above the average for all nations on each measure, but they are often matched and surpassed by those of several other countries, notably the Netherlands, Canada, and a number of Nordic nations, including Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. Hierarchical linear models show that voluntarism tends to be particularly high in nations that have: (1) multidenominational Christian or predominantly Protestant religious compositions, (2) prolonged and continuous experience with democratic institutions, (3) social democratic or liberal democratic political systems, and (4) high levels of economic development. With some exceptions for working memberships, these factors, both separately and in combination, are clearly important predictors of cross-national variation in voluntary association membership.

Voluntary Association Membership in Fifteen Countries : a Comparative Analysis

We test the hypothesis, dating from the work of Weber and Tocqueville, that Americans are more likely to become involved in voluntary associations than people of other nations. Compared to previous work, we employ more recent data and consider more countries. We also examine several different measures of membership levels : all memberships versus working memberships as well as membership including and excluding church or union memberships. Cross-national differences are examined before and after controls for education, employment status, size of community, gender, marital status, and age. Results show Americans at or near the top on most measures of membership, although this ranking drops significantly when church membership is excluded and drops even further when only working memberships are examined. In these instances, people from several countries, including Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, and Sweden, equal or surpass the membership levels of Americans, especially when controls are introduced. Some alternative intepretations of the cross-national differences in voluntary association activity are considered

Respect for Authority in Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Australia

Abstract This paper presents a test of S.M. Lipsets thesis that Americans are less respectful or accepting of authority than people from Canada and from two other English-speaking democracies: Australia and Great Britain. We use data from World Values Survey, 1981–83, to compare adult samples from the four populations, with separate analyses for English Canada and French Canada. Twenty-one dependent variables are employed, measuring beliefs about authority in general, civil dissent and disobedience, authority in the workplace, confidence in social institutions and obedience in children. The English-Canadian—American comparisons consistently disconfirm Lipsets hypothesis, with English Canadians either being less accepting of authority than Americans or showing no significant differences. The results comparing Americans with the other samples are less consistent but also indicate that Americans are not the least accepting of authority. Contrary to Lipsets thesis, Australians are not especially low in res...