Citizen participation is essential to democracy. It is difficult to imagine stable, ongoing democracy on a national scale without the citizens’ right to vote for their political leaders and to take part freely in politics in many other ways. Through their political participation, citizens have an opportunity to control who will hold public office and to influence what policy makers do when they govern. When they are active politically, citizens in a democracy communicate information about their preferences and needs and generate pressure on public officials to respond.
The Ambiguous Boundaries Of Democratic Political Participation
Voluntary political participation refers to citizen activity that has the intent or effect of influencing government action, either directly by affecting the making or implementation of public policy, or indirectly by influencing the selection of people who make those policies. Citizens in a democracy who wish to have an impact have a variety of participatory options. They can communicate their concerns and opinions directly to policy makers, for example, by signing a petition, joining an organization that advocates on behalf of issues of concern, sending an e-mail, or attending a demonstration. Alternatively, they can seek to affect policy indirectly by influencing electoral outcomes by voting or supporting a favored party or candidate. As they engage in such activities, they can donate, on one hand, money, or, on the other, time, brains, and sweat. They can use conventional techniques or protest tactics. They can employ a variety of media ranging from face-to-face conversations to electronic means, including the Internet, to communicate with other activists or with public officials. They can work locally, nationally, or, increasingly, transnationally with others or on their own, in an informal effort or in the context of a formal organization.
Each of the three defining components of the domain of behavior known as voluntary political activity has porous, ill-defined borders with the result that the definition itself is contested territory. First, with respect to the political nature of this domain of endeavor, it is essential to recognize that the distinction between political and nonpolitical activity is by no means clear, and voluntary activity in both the religious and secular domains outside of politics intersects with politics in many ways. For one thing, because voluntary associations and religious institutions often take stands on public issues, organizational and religious activity can themselves be forms of political participation. In addition, participation in these spheres is, in many ways, a politicizing experience. Those who engage in voluntary activity outside politics may develop organizational and communications skills that are transferable to politics; they may make social contacts and, thus, become part of networks through which requests for participation in politics are mediated; they may also be exposed to political cues and messages—as when a minister gives a sermon on a political topic or when organization members chat informally about politics at a meeting. In addition, even those who engage in conventional participatory techniques may not be animated by political concerns, but may instead make a campaign donation to satisfy a friend who asked, attend a demonstration to have fun, or join a labor union to acquire job benefits rather than to support its political stands.
Furthermore, some activists deliberately choose extra governmental means for seeking to achieve public purposes. They might take public positions aimed only indirectly at policy makers, for example, by wearing a political button, displaying a bumper sticker with a political message, writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper, or calling a radio talk show. Although not targeted explicitly at government officials, such acts have the purpose not only to express opinion, but also to persuade others and, thus, indirectly influence public outcomes. Some activists circumvent the governmental sphere entirely. For example, they may volunteer in a social service agency that aids the needy rather than press the state to deliver such assistance. Or, in an era when the behavior of multinational corporations may be regulated by many governments or none at all, some may engage in political consumerism, that is, deliberately make purchases, or refuse to make purchases, from a company on the basis of its employment practices or environmental sensitivity.
Activity that is voluntary is not obligatory and receives, if any pay at all, only token financial compensation. Once again, both aspects of the definition contain ambiguities. For one thing, the boundary between choice and coercion is indistinct. When a request for participation accompanies leverage—for example, when it comes from the boss—the boundary of the voluntary may be breached. Similarly, the distinction between voluntary activity and paid work is not always clear. It is possible to serve private economic purposes through social and political activism. Many people seek to do well while doing good, undertaking voluntary activity for which they receive no compensation in order to make contacts or otherwise enhance their careers, or to pursue policy goals with consequences for their pocketbooks.
Finally, with respect to activity, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the point at which actually doing politics shades into being attentive to politics. Thus, working for a party or attending a peace march are clearly political acts. However, the line is not as clear for private communications, such as engaging in political discussions with friends or attempts to acquire political information by, for example, following political events on the Internet or watching public affairs programs on television.
The Importance Of Democratic Participation
Discussions about democratic participation, and civic engagement more generally, are ordinarily conducted as if the reasons why it matters are self-evident. There are three broad categories of reasons for caring about levels of political activity: the creation of community and the cultivation of democratic virtues, the development of the capacities of the individual, and the equal protection of interests in public life.
First, political participation, and voluntary activity more generally, have implications for community and democracy. Those who make this argument stress several themes. When people work together voluntarily, whether for political or nonpolitical ends, democratic orientations and skills are fostered: social trust, norms of reciprocity and cooperation, and the capacity to transcend narrow points of view and conceptualize
the common good. Thus, when there is a vigorous sector of voluntary involvement—and the strong associational foundation that underlies it—it becomes easier for communities, and democratic nations, to engage in joint activity and to produce public goods. Communities characterized by high levels of voluntary activity are, in many ways, better places to live: the schools are better, crime rates are lower, and tax evasion is less common. Moreover, a vital arena of voluntary activity between individual and state protects citizens from overweening state power and preserves freedom. Those who are concerned about declining rates of civic participation in democracies emphasize these multiple beneficial consequences for politics and society.
The other two reasons for concern about levels of political participation shift attention from social benefits to individual benefits. Not only does the community gain when citizens take part but, as John Stuart Mill pointed out, individuals grow and learn through their activity. Political participation builds individual capacities in several ways: those who take part learn about community and society; they develop civic skills that can be carried throughout their lives; they can also come to have a greater appreciation of the needs and interests of others and of society as a whole.
The third rationale for concern about civic engagement acknowledges the conflicting interests of individuals and groups, and focuses on equal protection of interests. Through the medium of political participation, citizens communicate information about their preferences and needs for government action, and apply pressure on public officials to heed what they hear. Of course, public officials in democracies act for many reasons, only one of which is their assessment of what the public wants and needs. In addition, policy makers have ways other than the medium of citizen participation to learn what citizens want and need from the government. Nonetheless, what public officials hear clearly influences what they do.
The emphasis on equal protection of interests raises somewhat different questions than those raised by a focus on the nurturance of community and democracy, or on the development of the individual. First, the cooperative voluntary activity that promotes community and democracy, or fosters individual faculties, need not be explicitly political. In contrast, when equal protection of interests is at stake, the voluntary activity that counts is necessarily political. Furthermore, when it is a matter of the cultivation of democratic habits or the education of individuals, the aggregate quantity of civic engagement is critical. Questions of representation arise when moving from a conception of congruent community interests to one of clashing individual and group interests and, thus, to a concern with equal protection of interests. What matters is not only the amount of civic activity but its distribution—not just how many people take part but who they are.
Quantifying Political Activity
Because the relevant surveys vary in terms of the number of countries and number of political acts they cover, it is difficult to make ironclad generalizations about levels of political participation across all democracies and all forms of political activity. Nevertheless, it is clear that, for most citizens, political participation is episodic and relatively infrequent. Across democracies, there is only one political act, voting in national elections, in which a majority consistently takes part. For other kinds of participation, minorities of differing size are involved. More common participatory acts include signing petitions, contacting politicians or civil servants, and boycotting. Much less frequent are activities such as working for a political party or taking part in a protest, especially an illegal one.
Not only are there differences among activities, but there are also differences among polities with respect to the frequency of political participation. A nation’s ranking with respect to the most frequent political act, voting, is not necessarily a good predictor of how politically active its citizens are when it comes to taking part politically in other ways. For example, the United States and Switzerland are widely observed to have both frequent elections and relatively low levels of voter turnout, but rank high when it comes to other forms of political participation. In contrast, one nation with compulsory voter participation and a high rate of electoral turnout, Italy, does not have notably high levels of nonvoting activity. In general, the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands tend to have high rates of participation across the board. Reflecting a variety of factors, some individual countries have relatively high rates of particular participatory acts. For example, France has a longstanding tradition of direct-action participation and ranks higher with respect to protest than it does to more conventional varieties of political activity. With a distinctive electoral configuration that includes weak parties, candidate-centered campaigns, and an absence of public financing, Americans are much more likely to make campaign contributions than are citizens elsewhere.
One area of controversy is whether there has been erosion in political participation over the last generation in stable, advanced democracies. According to one perspective, civic life in many countries has been characterized by a diminution in a variety of kinds of voluntary activity—not only political but also religious and secular nonpolitical—in particular among younger citizens. An alternative point of view stresses transformation rather than simple attenuation. Especially among the young, the mix of participatory acts has shifted to reflect decreased emphasis on addressing public problems through governmental action and, thus, a greater role for such forms of activism as political consumerism. A development with particular potential for altering the nature and volume of political participation is the Internet, which lowers the cost of acquiring political information and communicating with large numbers of people including like-minded citizens and public officials. While the full meaning of the Internet for citizen politics continues to unfold, it is clear that its impact will be much more substantial for new citizens than for their elders.
Accounting For Differences In Individual Participation
Using multivariate statistical techniques, political scientists— especially in the United States where a number of detailed surveys of participation have been conducted and a deep federal tradition implies considerable variation in institutional arrangements—have had some success in explaining individual differences in activity. These inquiries demonstrate that, in the United States, the origins of political participation are complex and involve a variety of individual and contextual factors and that different kinds of participatory acts require different explanatory models. For example, strength of partisanship has a more substantial effect on voting than on getting involved in a community problem-solving effort. Income is also much more strongly related to campaign giving—and, in particular, to the size of the gift—than to working in a campaign. In addition, educational attainment matters more for contacting a public official than for protesting.
Models seeking to account for why Americans choose to take part in politics include a large number of individual characteristics as explanatory factors. Among them are such resources as time, money, and civic skills—those organizational and communications capacities that make it easier to get involved and that enhance an individual’s effectiveness as a participant. In addition, several psychological orientations facilitate political activity. All else equal, individuals are more likely to participate if they are politically informed, interested, and efficacious, that is, if they know and care about politics and if they think that their participation would make a difference. Moreover, those who have intense issue commitments—for example, those who take a strong pro-life or pro-choice position on abortion—are, not surprisingly, more politically active. Furthermore, recruitment plays a role in political participation: those who have the wherewithal and the desire to take part in politics are more likely to do so if they are asked. Requests for political activity may come from politically motivated strategic elites such as party activists; from the leaders and staff of nonpolitical institutions; or from those who are familiar—relatives, friends, neighbors, coworkers, fellow organization or church members.
Studies of political participation across polities find an association between political activity and socioeconomic status— that is, income, occupation, and, especially, education. This association is particularly strong in the United States, where labor unions are weak and there is no social democratic or labor party to mobilize those of limited income and education into politics. Studies of political activity in the United States demonstrate why education is so central to the participatory process. Not only does education have a direct impact on political activity but, more importantly, education also has indirect effects through its consequences for the acquisition of nearly every other participatory factor. The well-educated earn higher incomes on the job; are more likely to develop civic skills at work, in organizations, and, to a lesser extent, in church; are more likely to receive requests for political activity; and are more politically interested and knowledgeable.
With respect to the most common form of citizen participation, voting, the substantial cross-national variations in electoral turnout suggest that attention must be placed not only on the attributes of individuals, but also on the participatory consequences of electoral laws and arrangements. Many practices not in place in the United States—among them holding elections on Sundays and, especially, making voting compulsory—are associated with higher levels of turnout. Within the United States, studies use the states as laboratories to consider various electoral reforms designed to raise turnout: among them, easing the requirements for registration and the casting of absentee ballots and permitting mail-in ballots and other forms of early voting. A number of institutional reforms have shown to have a positive, though modest, impact on turnout. Less permanent aspects of the political context also have potential consequences for participation. It is well-known that turnout is higher when there is a presidential contest at the top of the ticket. In addition, having attractive choices on the ballot seems to raise voter participation. Otherwise, empirical inquiries reach no consensus on how such attributes of elections as competitiveness, negative campaigning, or levels of campaign spending affect the propensity to go to the polls. Moreover, even when the context of electoral characteristics is favorable, turnout in the United States does not approach the levels that are common in other developed democracies.
Identifying Citizens Engaged In Communicating With Public Officials
The processes by which people come to take part imply that, taken together, activists are in various respects not representative of the public and, thus, that public officials are disproportionately likely to hear from people with certain politically relevant characteristics. Across democracies, participatory input may be stratified not only by socioeconomic status but also by race or ethnicity, gender, age, and immigration status. Although there are variations across polities and across particular political acts, those who have high levels of socioeconomic status, men, members of the dominant racial or ethnic group, and the middle aged are especially likely to be politically active. It is often possible to account for such group differences in ter ms of disparities in such participatory factors as education and income, or political orientations such as political interest, information, and efficacy. However, understanding the origins of group differences in participation does not put the matter to rest. Knowing, for example, that disparities in participation among ethnic groups within a particular polity stem not from ethnicity per se but from group differences in participatory factors, most of which are rooted in class, does not obviate the fact that policy makers are hearing less from members of ethnic minorities. Members of such ethnic groups may have distinctive political preferences and participatory agendas: they may differ in their opinions on public matters and, when they are active, they may be concerned with a different mix of issues. That the sources of these group differences in activity lie in characteristics other than ethnicity does not vitiate the political significance of disparities in participation.
The same logic obtains for participatory differences rooted in groups defined by gender, class, age, or such politically relevant characteristics as dependence on government benefits.
Although policy outcomes inevitably hinge on many factors, only one of which is what policy makers hear from citizens, when the messages to public officials are skewed, then the democratic norm of equal responsiveness to all is potentially compromised.
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