Classify forms of political participation into two broad types.
In politics, as in many other aspects of life, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The way citizens “squeak” in politics is to participate. Americans have many avenues of political participation open to them:
Mrs. Jones of Iowa City goes to a neighbor’s living room to attend her local precinct’s presidential caucus.
Demonstrators against abortion protest at the Supreme Court on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
Parents in Alabama file a lawsuit to oppose textbooks that, in their opinion, promote “secular humanism.”
Mr. Smith, a Social Security recipient, writes to his senator to express his concern about a possible cut in his cost-of-living benefits.
Over 120 million people vote in a presidential election.
All these activities are types of political participation, which encompasses the many activities in which citizens engage to influence the selection of political leaders or the policies they pursue.44 Participation can be overt or subtle. The mass protests against communist rule throughout Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989 represented an avalanche of political participation, yet quietly writing a letter to your congressperson also represents political participation. Political participation can be violent or peaceful, organized or individual, casual or consuming.
Generally, the United States has a culture that values political participation. Americans express very high levels of pride in their democracy: the General Social Survey has consistently found that over 80 percent of Americans say they are proud of how democracy works in the United States. Nevertheless, just 59 percent of adult American citizens voted in the presidential election of 2012, and only about 36 percent turned out for the 2014 midterm elections. At the local level, the situation is even worse, with elections for city council and school board often drawing less than 10 percent of the eligible voters.
Although the line is hard to draw, political scientists generally distinguish between two broad types of participation: conventional and unconventional. Conventional participation includes many widely accepted modes of influencing government—voting, trying to persuade others, ringing doorbells for a petition, running for office, and so on. In contrast, unconventional participation includes activities that are often dramatic, such as protesting, civil disobedience, and even violence.
Millions take part in political activities beyond simply voting. In two comprehensive studies of American political participation conducted by Sidney Verba and his colleagues in 1967 and 1987, samples of Americans were asked about their role in various kinds of political activities, such as voting, working in campaigns, contacting government officials, signing petitions, working on local community issues, and participating in political protests.45 Recently, Russell Dalton has extended the time series for some of these dimensions of political participation into the twenty-first century.46 All told, voting is the only aspect of political participation that a majority of the population reported engaging in but also the only political activity for which there is evidence of a decline in participation in recent years. Substantial increases in participation have been found on the dimensions of giving money to candidates and contacting public officials, and small increases are evident for all the other activities. Thus, although the disappointing election turnout rates in the United States are something Americans should rightly be concerned about, a broader look at political participation reveals some positive developments for participatory democracy.
From the Boston Tea Party to burning draft cards to demonstrating against abortion, Americans have engaged in countless political protests. Protest is a form of political participation designed to achieve policy change through dramatic and unconventional tactics. The media’s willingness to cover the unusual can make protests worthwhile, drawing attention to a point of view that many Americans might otherwise never encounter. For example, when an 89-year-old woman walked across the country to draw attention to the need for campaign finance reform, she put this issue onto the front page of newspapers most everywhere she traveled. Using more flamboyant means, the Occupy Wall Street activists attracted a good deal of attention to the issue of economic inequality by camping out in prominent public places. The liberal Occupy movement and the conservative Tea Party movement may not share many political values, but they have both followed the now-standard playbook for demonstrations—orchestrating their activities so as to provide television cameras with vivid images. Demonstration coordinators steer participants to prearranged staging areas and provide facilities for press coverage.
Throughout American history, individuals and groups have sometimes used civil disobedience as a form of protest; that is, they have consciously broken a law that they thought was unjust. In the 1840s, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his taxes as a protest against the Mexican War and went to jail; he stayed only overnight because his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson paid the taxes. Influenced by India’s Mahatma Gandhi, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and others in the civil rights movement engaged in civil disobedience in the 1950s and 1960s to bring an end to segregationist laws. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is a classic defense of civil disobedience.47 In 1964, King was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35—the youngest person ever to receive this honor.
Nonviolent civil disobedience was one of the most effective techniques of the civil rights movement in the American South. Young African Americans sat at “whites only” lunch counters to protest segregation. Photos such as this drew national attention to the injustice of racial discrimination.
Sometimes political participation can be violent. The history of violence in American politics is a long one—not surprising, perhaps, for a nation born in rebellion. The turbulent 1960s included many outbreaks of violence. African American neighborhoods in American cities were torn by riots. College campuses sometimes turned into battle zones as protestors against the Vietnam War fought police and National Guard units; students were killed at Kent State and Jackson State in 1970. At various points throughout American history, violence has been resorted to as a means of pressuring the government to change its policies.
Perhaps the best-known image of American political violence from the Vietnam War era: A student lies dead on the Kent State campus, one of four killed when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on anti–Vietnam War demonstrators.
Although the history of American political protest includes many well-known incidents, Americans today are less likely to report that they have participated in protests than citizens of most other established democracies around the world. As you can see in “America in Perspective: Rates of Conventional and Unconventional Political Participation,” the relative lack of protest activity in the United States is not because Americans are “couch potatoes” when it comes to political participation. Rather, Americans are just more likely to employ conventional political participation—contacting politicians and/or governmental officials—than they are to engage in protests.
In a cross-national survey of political behavior in 20 established democracies, citizens were asked whether they had engaged in a variety of forms of political participation over the past 5 years. Whereas Americans were among the most likely to engage in the conventional mode of contacting politicians, they were among the least likely to engage in protest demonstrations.
In surveys in 20 established democracies, citizens were asked whether they had engaged in varieties of political participation over the past 5 years. Whereas Americans were among the most engaged in conventional contacting of politicians, they were among the least engaged in protests.
SOURCE: Authors’ analysis of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, module 2 (2001–2006).
Do you think the fact that Americans are more likely to contact politicians than protest is a good sign for American democracy, showing that people are largely content with conventional channels of transmitting public opinion to policymakers?
Do you think that when many people engage in political protest, this indicates that citizens are frustrated and discontented with their government, or is it likely just a reflection of political passion and involvement?
Rates of political participation are unequal among Americans. Virtually every study of political participation has come to the conclusion that “citizens of higher social economic status participate more in politics. This generalization … holds true whether one uses level of education, income, or occupation as the measure of social status.”48 People with higher incomes and levels of education are not only more likely to donate money to campaigns but also to participate in other ways that do not require financial resources, such as contacting governmental officials and signing petitions. Theorists who believe that America is ruled by a small, wealthy elite make much of this fact to support their view.
Inequality in political participation is a problem in a representative democracy. Public policy debates and outcomes would probably be substantially different if people of all age groups and income groups participated equally. If young adults participated more, politicians might be more inclined to seek ways by which the government could help young people get the training necessary to obtain good jobs in a changing economy. And if the poor participated at higher levels, government programs to alleviate poverty would likely be higher on the political agenda.
To what extent does race affect participation? When the scenes of despair among poor African Americans in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina refocused attention on racial inequalities, some commentators speculated that one reason that the federal government was so slow in coming to the aid of African Americans is that they are less likely to vote. But in actuality, the difference in turnout rates between whites and blacks in Louisiana has been minimal to non-existent in recent years; in 2012, for example, 57.6 percent of whites voted compared to 57.84 percent of blacks.49 (Notably, in the area that encompasses the poverty-stricken lower Ninth Ward, the turnout rate of African Americans was exactly the same as it was statewide.)
One reason for this relatively small participation gap is that minorities have a group consciousness that gives them an extra incentive to vote. Political scientists have long recognized that when blacks and whites with equal levels of education are compared, the former actually participate more in politics.50 For example, the Census Bureau’s 2008 nationwide survey on turnout found that among people without a high school diploma, blacks were 11 percent more likely to vote than were whites.
People who believe in the promise of democracy should definitely be concerned with the inequalities of political participation in America. Those who participate are easy to listen to; nonparticipants are easy to ignore. Just as the makers of denture cream do not worry too much about people with healthy teeth, many politicians don’t concern themselves much with the views of groups with low participation rates, such as the young and people with low incomes. Who gets what in politics therefore depends in part on who participates.