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The main issue discussed is the difficulties in collective action. Three logics of collective action are identified and discussed in terms of their implications for solidarity within interest organizations and for organizational action. Both solidarity and organizational action are important for successful policymaking. Policies can be decided without the support of the members, but their implementation may thus prove difficult. The theoretical issue of interest articulation by interest organizations is the important one here. The article concludes that encompassing organizations will most likely have difficulty in articulating a definite organizational policy. It is maintained that corporatism and public responsibility‐taking can severely hamper the articulation of organized special interests. They lead to interest inarticulation. This may lead to legitimacy problems for the organization and be one explanation for the recent decline in certain established interest organizations in Sweden and recent discussions on the future of corporatism.

AbstractSweden's COVID‐19 policy was characterized by reliance on voluntary compliance. Citizens were expected to act responsibly. Previous research has not focused on the role of citizenship norms (duty‐based, engaged, and critical) in the COVID‐19 crisis. This is an important omission, since citizenship norms are expected to raise social responsibility and trigger prosocial behavior. This article asks how important citizenship norms are for explaining voluntary COVID‐19 policy compliance. Additionally, it considers perceptions of how other people comply, individual background factors, and interpersonal and institutional trust. The study focuses on Swedish high school youth, a group reported to comply less with voluntary COVID‐19 measures. Using survey data (N = 1823), we find higher reported voluntary compliance by high school youth who adhere more strongly to the duty‐based citizenship norm. Importantly, believing that other people follow the COVID‐19 recommendations is strongly associated with following them. Thus, next to citizenship norms, "descriptive norms" (i.e., what other people are doing) are central for individuals to decide how they will comply. We further find that differences in worry about the pandemic and socioeconomic background factors (migration background and economic situation of the household) explain variation in compliance. Institutional and interpersonal trust play a less important role. These findings challenge the strong focus on trust in previous research. Our findings have implications for research on policy compliance in the context of crisis, and for public policy.

This article develops the notion of "sustainable citizenship" and distinguishes it from more conventional forms of citizenship. The authors formulate indicators of the presence of sustainable citizenship among individuals, in corporations, and in nongovernmental organizations and apply those indicators in two empirical studies. The first study is of institutions (Fairtrade International, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and The Walt Disney Company), and the second is of individuals, particularly those who practice political consumerism and vegetarianism. The studies show that citizenship is expanding in three significant ways: by addressing concerns about past and current injustices and their effects on the future (broadened temporal dimension); by addressing responsibilities worldwide, not just within one's country (broadened spatial dimension); and by adding a material dimension that emphasizes responsibility to nature and animals. The studies find that the development of sustainable citizenship is taking detours. In particular, self-interest often dominates its nonreciprocal or other-regarding concerns.

This article studies the antisweatshop movement's involvement in global social justice responsibility-taking. The movement's growth (more than one hundred diverse groups) makes it a powerful force of social change in the new millennium. The rise of global corporate capitalism has taken a toll on political responsibility. As a response, four important movement actors—unions, antisweatshop associations, international humanitarian organizations, and Internet spin doctors—have focused on garment-production issues and mobilized consumers into vigilant action. The authors examine these actors, their social justice responsibility claims, and their views on the role of consumers in social justice responsibility-taking. The authors determine four paths of consumer action: (1) support group for other causes, (2) critical mass of shoppers, (3) agent of corporate change, and (4) ontological force for societal change. The authors find that the movement mobilizes consumers through actor-oriented and event-specific (episodic) framing and offer a few results on its ability to change consumer patterns and effect corporate change.

ch. 1. Introduction : responsibility-taking in politics / Michele Micheletti -- ch. 2. Why creative participation today? / Andrew S. McFarland -- ch. 3. Swarming : imagining creative participation / Alexandra Segerberg -- ch. 4. Two faces of political participation : conventional and creative participation among American clergy / James L. Guth -- ch. 5. Grammars of political action among urban Muslim youth / Therese O'Toole and Richard Gale -- ch. 6. Capitalist housing developers as green activists / John S. Watson -- ch. 7. Everyday shopping to fight the mafia in Italy / Francesca Forno and Carina Gunnarson -- ch. 8. Vegetarianism : a lifestyle politics? / Michele Micheletti and Dietlind Stolle -- ch. 9. Is creative participation good for democracy? / Jan W. van Deth -- ch. 10. Creative participation : concluding thoughts from the land of the Boston Tea Party / Kay Lehman Schlozman.