The Puzzle and Problem of Participation

1
The Puzzle and Problem of Participation
Public Opinion and Political Participation

• February 16

2
Political Participation

• Two books
• Mobilization, Participation and Democracy
• Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in America

3
Political Participation

• What to look for as you read
• Similarities and differences in
• Theories
• Approaches to study
• Findings

4
Political Participation

• Three explanations for why people dont
  participate in politics
• Because they cant
• Because they dont
• Because nobody asked

5
Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in
America

• Introduction The Puzzle of Participation in
  America
• Turnout has been declining since the 1960s while
  other forms of political participation are
  increasing. Why? What does it mean?

6
Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in
America

• Why do some citizens participate while others do
  not?
• Why is public involvement in American politics
  plentiful at some times and scarce at others?
• Who participates, when do they participate, and
  why do they participate, as they do and when they
  do?

7
Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in
America

• Defining political participation
• Action directed explicitly toward influencing the
  distribution of social goods and social values
• They limit their study to
• Voting
• Persuading
• Campaigning
• Giving
• Contacting
• Attending
• Signing

8
Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in
America

• Use data from
• the National Election Studies since 1952
• Studies of governmental politics since 1973

9
Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in
America

• Specific questions arising from the data
• Why did participation in many kinds of electoral
  politics peak in the 1960s and plunge in the
  1980s?
• Why did attendance at meetings of local
  governments decline in the 1970s?
• Why did letter writing to Congress surge in the
  early 1980s?
• Why did participation in many kinds of
  governmental politics typically rise in the
  summer and dip in the winter?

10
Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in
America

• Their argument
• Political analysts, we contend, have until now
  told only half the story of participation in
  America, the half that stresses the resources,
  interests, identifications, and beliefs of
  individual citizens. We complete the story.
  Political leaders, in their struggles for
  political advantage, mobilize ordinary citizens
  into American politics. The strategic choices
  they make, the strategic decisions they reach,
  shape the contours the whos, whens, and whys
  of political participation in America.

11
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• Theoretical perspective
• Citizen participation is at the heart of
  democracy.
• Political participation provides the mechanism
  by which citizens can communicate information
  about their interests, preferences, and needs and
  generate pressure to respond.
• Since democracy implies not only governmental
  responsiveness to citizen interests but also
  equal considerations of the interests of each
  citizen, democratic participation must also be
  equal.
• No democratic nation certainly not the United
  States lives up to the ideal of participatory
  equality.

12
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• They focus on three factors in explaining
  participation
• Motivation
• Capacity
• Networks of recruitment

13
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• Their focus is on civic skills and where they
  come from

14
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• Their data
• A 2-stage sample (early 1990s)
• First stage brief telephone interview of 15,000
  people. Collected basic information on political
  participation.
• Second stage Used answers to select a sample for
  longer in-person interviews that would
  overrepresent activists and minorities
• Then corrected imbalances to population with
  weighting

15
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• Defining political participation activity that
  is intended to or has the consequence of
  affecting, either directly or indirectly,
  government action

16
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• Political voluntary activity can take many forms
• They distinguish modes of political involvement
  in which the currency is time and effort from
  those in which the currency is dollars
• Also, participatory acts vary in their capacity
  to convey detailed messages to policymakers.

17
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• Equality in political rights does not necessarily
  translate into equality in their effective use
• Unequal participation can carry serious
  consequences

18
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• One of their goals is to show when and where
  political inequality occurs
• They investigate whether activists are
  representative of inactive citizens in terms of
  politically relevant characteristics including
• What they think
• Demographic characteristics
• Needs from government

19
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• Three explanations for why people dont
  participate in politics
• Because they cant
• Because they dont
• Because nobody asked
• They cant suggests a lack of resources
• They dont suggests a lack of political
  engagement
• Nobody asked suggests isolation from recruitment
  networks

20
Voice and Equality Civic Voluntarism in American
Politics

• Verba, Schlozman, and Brady focus primarily on
  the role of resources
• They link participation to social institutions
  that help provide necessary resources
• They identify the church as one important social
  institution where people pick up civic skills.
• They argue that churches play an unusual role in
  the American participatory system by providing
  opportunities for the development of civic skills
  to those who would otherwise be resource-poor.

21
The Puzzle and Problem of Participation

• Why participate?
• For many people, the perceived costs of
  participation outweigh the benefits.

22
Midterm

• Two main components
• Identification of terms or short explanatory
  answers
• Explain what they mean (examples are helpful) and
  why they are important or significant
• Critical thinking and application of knowledge.
  This might take some of the following forms
• Interpret results
• Identify what information is missing that would
  be needed to identify whether or how much the
  results can be trusted

23
Midterm Review

• In addition to the material listed on the midterm
  review slides on Tuesday, you should know the
  following
• 2/7
• Principle-policy gaps
• Moral moods
• 2/9
• How responsive is the government to public
  opinion? Is that good or bad?
• 2/14
• Value hierarchies
• Tables or figures to interpret may come from
  class dates not mentioned and articles not
  explicitly included on the midterm review.