Abstract
Petrova and Tarrow (2007) coined the term transactional activism arguing that despite weak individual-level political participation, civil societies in CEE were surprisingly strong due to their capacity to establish transactional links. Yet the research which followed, relying mostly on quantitative data, has not uncovered much evidence of how the transactional activism works.
To fill in the white spot, we take a more qualitative approach and focus on transactional ties among NGOs, developing a more fine-grained conceptualization. Specifically, we distinguish associative ties of loosely defined cooperation and interlocking ties based on division of labour.
We follow our concept with a case study of a successful campaign of "The Reconstruction of the State" anti-corruption initiative. The initiative presented itself largely in transactional terms (plurality of participating actors) and was extremely successful before the Parliamentary elections in 2013 in the Czech Republic, inspiring similar initiatives abroad.
We use social network analysis and qualitative interviews to test our concept of interlocking transactional ties. In contrast to our expectations, we find limited division of labour in the initiative with mainly just one organization carrying out the majority of important work tasks.
We use our findings to question the theorized relevance of transactional activism in CEE and we call for more robust evidence if transactional activism is to be taken as a serious source of empowerment for the civil society.