Trade unions and churches are commonly regarded as central pillars of civic society, drawing citizens into public life. As Rosenstone and Hansen argue, “Citizens participate in elections and government both because they go to politics and because politics goes to them.” Organized labor exemplifies the traditional mobilizing agency, characterized by the older form of Weberian bureaucratic organization with formal rules and regulations, a small cadre of full-time paid officials, hierarchical mass-branch structures, broad-based rather than single-issue concerns, and clear boundaries demarcating the paid-up, card-carrying membership. The structure of religious organizations varies widely by denomination and sect, as does the role of churches, synagogues, mosques, shrines, and temples. Most Christian churches tend to have looser boundaries and more fluid criteria for affiliation than trade unions, but many Catholic and Protestant denominations display fairly traditional hierarchical structures in their religious leadership. If the process of secularization has undermined church attendance in many modern societies, and if the decline of manufacturing industry has depleted the pool of trade union members, this may have weakened these conventional channels of civic mobilization.

To examine these issues, the first section of this chapter sets out the reasons why traditional mobilizing agencies can be expected to influence political participation. The second section examines cross-national levels of union density in the mid-1990s and long-term trends in union membership in postwar Western Europe. Along similar lines, the next section compares patterns of church attendance and religiosity in the mid-1990s around the world and longitudinal trends in Western Europe since the 1970s.