Voluntary associations and political participation

Abstract

Voluntary associations played a role in processes of politicisation that are visible in Europe in the nineteenth century. This is not in itself a new insight, but we lack a good understanding of how and why this was the case. In my contribution I will reflect on various ways in which associational life broadened popular participation as well as broadened people’s understandings of politics between 1820-1860. Middle-class reformers of all sorts and stripes played an important role in reinventing voluntary associations as tools for political pressure. Using examples from such organizations as the Irish Catholic Association and British antislavery societies in the 1820s, and from a Dutch temperance society in the 1840s and 1850s, it will become clear that mass organization in politics could be very attractive, and was sometimes successful.