PhD defence S.N. (Steven) Blok

Brief summary of the doctoral thesis:

Citizens’ initiatives are groups of people who take action because they believe it is important enough to do something about. When people act together, they face the pertinent collective action problems. This dissertation has two research objectives: The first goal is to increase knowledge about the collective action capacity of citizens’ initiatives. How does this capacity develop, and how is it maintained? This research also aims to unravel the tense relationship between citizens' initiatives and well-meaning governments that expect—possibly based on misunderstandings—many of these initiatives. This thesis makes contributions to collective action theory, crowding theory, civil society literature and public value literature.

The key findings and conclusions of this thesis provide important considerations for practice and points of discussion for academia. When citizens self-organize and overcome collective action problems, they must collaborate with other individuals, solve conflicts, and make moral appeals. Those activities increase humanity’s capacity to work together. At the same time, this thesis concludes that citizens' initiatives risk being instrumentalized, because they often are optimized to work with the overarching orientation of governments. Ultimately, this situation risks citizens’ initiatives becoming over-asked and depleted.