Democratic Participation in Voluntary Associations: A Multilevel Analysis of Sports Clubs in Europe

Non-profit associations are usually democratically organized, and this feature plays a legitimizing role for the public support to associations. This article examines which characteristics at country level, organizational level and individual level can explain variations with regard to member engagement in the association democracy in sports clubs in Europe. The statistical analyses use data on 12,755 members from 642 sports clubs in ten European countries. The findings show that the majority of the members in sports clubs participate in the association democracy, but the level and form of engagement varies considerably. At the country level, no link between the democratic strength and quality of the countries on the one hand and member engagement on the other could be identified. Instead, characteristics at the organizational and individual level were found to be relevant. More concretely, (1) the size of the sports club, (2) the socioeconomic background of the members (gender, age and education), and (3) the way in which the members are involved in and affiliated to the club (engaged in voluntary work, participating in social activities, etc.) were found to be significantly correlated with the engagement of members in the association democracy

Conceptual Framework and Research Design

The overarching aim of this book is to analyse the contribution of sports clubs to public welfare across different European countries. Sports clubs are firstly concep-tualised as voluntary organisations. Then a multi-level conceptual framework is de-veloped to consider the following three analytical levels: (1) historical roots and the embedment of sports clubs in society and sports policy systems (macro-level), (2) the sports club with structural characteristics, goals, resources and management (meso-level), (3) the members and volunteers and their sport activities and engage-ment in the club (micro-level). We then briefly introduce relevant research as well as important policy documents about various socio-political functions, i.e. health promotion, social integration, democratic involvement and participation as well as volunteering. The research questions that guide the analysis across the ten countries chapters are also developed. Finally, the research design of the project “Social In-clusion and Volunteering in Sports Clubs in Europe” (SIVSCE) is presented and limitations are discussed. This project collected comparable data across ten Euro-pean countries by means of the same instruments and standardised questionnaires