What are the possibilities for effective political participation beyond the ballot box? Who participates in these nontraditional activities and how do they relate to more conventional forms of politics? Can individual citizens, as consumers, address some of the great challenges associated with globalization (e.g., child labor, poor wages, environmental degradation) through their purchasing decisions? These are the key questions analyzed in the excellent new book, Political Consumerism, by Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti. These same questions have been debated for years, especially as various market-based forms of activisms (e.g., fair trade certification, anti-sweatshop campaigns) have grown in recent years. But this is the first comprehensive analysis of the individuals behind these movements. On the basis of 10 years of research, blending together surveys, case studies, archival research, interviews, and the content analysis of an email exchange that reached more than 10 million people throughout the world, Dietlind Stolle and Michele Micheletti show convincingly that individuals, as consumer-citizens, do make purposeful choices in their every day lives—choices that have the potential to shape the attitudes and behaviors of fellow citizens, civil society groups, and even the corporations they target in their campaigns.
The underlying premise of the book is that a combination of factors—declining citizen trust in their government, growing complexity of societal problems, and the limited regulatory reach and capacities of governments to address these increasingly complex global problems—has led to a new form of politics based not on traditional (government-centric) forms of authority and accountability but, rather, on the taking of individualized responsibility by citizens as consumers. The authors are clear that this new form of politics does not hold for all sociopolitical problems nor is it equally prevalent in all advanced postindustrial democracies. But, “[w]hereas governments and conventional political institutions might not be able or willing to adequately address various current global problems, some citizens invent and create new approaches and solutions to global-problem solving and take over responsibility themselves” (p. 25). The focus of the book is on describing and analyzing some of these ”new approaches” (e.g., boycotts, buycotts, lifestyle choices, and discursive political consumerism) that individual citizens as consumers pursue to influence corporations and thus address some of the problems that arise as a result of global production systems. Contrary to Robert Reich who argued in his 2007 book Supercapitalism that individuals are torn between their obligations as citizens and their appetites as consumers, Stolle and Micheletti show that it is precisely through everyday acts like shopping that individuals exercise their citizenship rights and express their political preferences.
The authors build their case for citizen-consumers by first analyzing various social surveys (e.g., World Values Survey, European Social Survey, and two Swedish surveys) to illustrate the remarkable growth of citizens who express their political and moral concerns vis-à-vis global problems and who report that they act on these concerns through boycotts or buycotts (privileging “ethical” products or producers with their purchasing choices). Of course, what people say and what they actually do is not always the same, and the authors admit that a “30:3 syndrome” (where 30% of survey respondents report certain views but only 3% actually act on these attitudes) exists. Nonetheless, the data presented in Chapters 2–4 of this book are quite impressive. Across several European countries and even in the United States, a plurality, and in some countries an outright majority of respondents, report that they care about the social and environmental conditions under which the products they buy are made, and that they have engaged in boycotts (less often buycotts) to express these concerns.
Who are these consumer-citizens? According to the analyses presented by Stolle and Micheletti, political consumers are primarily women, middle-aged (between 30 and 44) and employed people living in urban centers. They are more highly educated than nonpolitical consumers. Political consumers are more prevalent in Protestant as opposed to Catholic communities, and in countries with legacies of neocorporatism and high levels of social equality and social capital. Interestingly enough, political consumers are not extreme or fringe in their political views and are often members of both new and more traditional (e.g., union) civic organizations. In addition to expressing their political views through individualized and very private purchasing choices, political consumers are active in traditional forms of political participation as well. In other words, this new form of individualized, consumer-based politics does not crowd out more traditional forms of political participation.
Over and above the attitudes, (reported) behaviors, and distribution of these consumer-citizens across various European countries and the United States, Stolle and Micheletti also analyze more discursive forms of political consumerism as well as lifestyle politics. Particularly interesting is the content analysis of an email exchange between an MIT graduate student and Nike that went viral and was followed up by an online survey of some of the recipients of this email exchange (Chap. 6). This chapter is based on an interesting and unique data set and nicely illustrates the power that creative activist strategies (in this case, culture jamming) can have in shaping the perceptions of would-be consumers.
How effective are these strategies? Assessing the impact of these various approaches to political consumerism is very difficult—as Stolle and Micheletti are quick to admit. Although the book documents the rise of consumer consciousness in the advanced postindustrial democracies, the reported engagement of many of these citizens in various acts of political consumerism (boycotts, buycotts), the growing commitment by large global corporations to “social responsibility,” and even the expansion of markets for fair-trade, ethically sourced, and organic products, the authors are unable to demonstrate the causal linkages between a set of attitudes and reported behaviors by a subset of consumers and the various political outcomes reported in this book. They see political consumerism as a long-term process that will take time to assess. They also suggest a contagion theory of change/diffusion in which fellow citizens will absorb and emulate the attitudes and behaviors of consumer-citizen activists over time. Both propositions are worthy of further research.
A related question worth pursuing is whether the shift in individual consumer purchasing decisions toward more ethical, sustainable, or healthful products is enough, or whether we need to revisit underlying consumption patterns and the business practices that support them. Encouraging individual consumers to purchase “better” products is a step in the right direction, but alone, it might not bring about the more systemic changes desired by Stolle and Micheletti’s consumer-citizens. Buying better products does not alter the underlying patterns of (over)consumption in advanced economies that drive unhealthy and exploitative business practices. When it comes to many consumer products (e.g., electronics, garments, footwear, foods) exploitative labor practices originate in our own consumer behavior. For example, the average life cycle for most consumer electronic products is about eight months. After that, consumers want, and are prompted to want, the new model: lighter and faster, with more memory and new features. This pattern is even more accentuated in fashion-conscious goods like clothing and footwear. In response to consumer desires for more and different and cheaper products, global corporations have organized their supply chains in ways that hedge against shifting consumer tastes and volatility of demand but that, in the end, put added pressure (in the form of longer work hours and poor working conditions) on the workers making these products in the supply-chain factories of myriad developing countries. Thus, if we truly want to address complex global problems through our purchasing decisions, consumer-citizens need to reexamine aggregate patters of consumption and not simply individual choices.
A final question that arises from this excellent book is whether consumer activism can effectively promote a more just and sustainable world without the active role of national governments/more traditional forms of public authority and responsibility. Recent research suggests that private initiatives are more effective when they coexist with active state policy and complement public regulation. The prevalence of consumer-citizen attitudes and behaviors in the northern European countries analyzed in this book suggests that this may be the case for political consumerism as well. Thus, rather than focus primarily on well-informed and well-intentioned individual consumers, we may wish to expand our analysis to explore more fully how government policies can shape private politics and promote significant reform—not one consumer or company or factory at a time, but throughout the broader global economy.
