Chapter 8: Political Participation

Chapter 8 : Political Participation

The chapter examines the nature, amount, and determinants of political participation.

Most people get involved in politics only sporadically. The only political activity that is widespread is voting. There has been a recent downward trend in electoral participation but there appears to have been an increase in most forms of non-electoral participation. This has led to the suggestion that some people (especially youth) have shifted away from voting to more direct types of political engagement, but things are more complicated since those who march in the streets are also more inclined to go to the polling booth.

When we look at the correlates of political participation, the clearest and strongest pattern, observed in all places and periods, is for the better educated to be more involved than the less educated.

The two most influential theoretical perspectives for explaining political participation are the resource model and rational choice. Many studies have shown that a crucial factor explaining why so many people stay out of politics is lack of civic skills. But the resource model is much less fruitful with respect to the simplest form of political activity, voting.

As for rational choice, paradoxically, the model has been applied most extensively to the study of turnout, where it should be least relevant, because the stakes are lower and the incentives to calculate benefits and costs are weaker. From that perspective, the challenge is to account for any type of engagement, and this has led authors to examine “other” non-rational factors such as habit and sense of civic duty.

Much less research has been conducted on the consequences of political participation. One of the most important and difficult questions to be addressed in this regard is whether being involved in politics makes people “better” citizens. The jury is still out on this crucial question.