POLITICAL PARTICIPATION LESTER W MILBRATH Classroom Only Introduction

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION LESTER W. MILBRATH 上課使用 Classroom Only

Introduction • The empirical study of political participation is approximately 30 years old. The earliest studies concentrated on explaining why some people chose to vote and others did not. Gradually, inquiries into political participation looked at other behavior such as campaigning, making financial contributions, attending meetings, and so forth. 上課使用 Classroom Only

• Political participation • Early studies of no longer can be participation generally conceptualized as a were confined to a unidimensional set of single nation, most of activities. It is now them to either the clear from studies in United States or several countries that European countries. A there are modes or second important styles of participation; change has been in these modes will be the conceptualization discussed more fully of political in the next section of participation. this chapter. 上課使用 Classroom Only

• A third important change has occurred in the methods of analysis. • The newer studies use more sophisticated analytical techniques such as multiple and partial correlations, regressions, path analysis, and causal modeling. • It is fair to say that the study of political participation nas matured. 上課使用 Classroom Only

Conceptualizing Political Participation • Political participation will be defined as those actions of private citizens by which they seek to influence or to support government and politics. This definition is broader than many others; it includes not only active roles that people pursue in order to influence political outcomes but also ceremonial and support activities. The major concern is to explain individual human behavior as it relates to the political system. 上課使用 Classroom Only

Decisions about Participation • Taking any political action generally requires two decisions: one must decide to act or not to act and one must also decide the direction of one's action. • Decisions to act in a particular way often are accompanied by a third decision about the intensity, duration, and/or extremity of the action. 上課使用 Classroom Only

• Persons can lend political support mildly or vigorously, in a single instance or repeatedly. This third choice is intimately related to the other two. 上課使用 Classroom Only

Inputs and Outtakes • In a similar sense, people who are not in government but who are relating to government in one way or another are also playing roles and acting in structured ways. • If we take governmental decision? making as the focus of inquiry, two sets of behaviors by citizens can be distinguished. 上課使用 Classroom Only

• Certain behaviors constitute inputs to the political system (voting, campaigning, contacting, protesting); other behaviors are outtakes or extractions from the system (services, public order, justice, economic opportunities). An input is something a citizen does to try to influence official decisions. 上課使用 Classroom Only

• In contrast, an outtake is something that an individual takes from a system, such as a sense of justice, a sense of safety, a sense of being listened to, a sense of worth, a sense of freedom, and so forth. Outtakes can be expressed as a sense of satisfaction with such things as police protection, product quality protection of civil rights, freedom to live where one wants, freedom of speech, employment opportunities, the elimination of poverty, 上課使用 and so on. Classroom Only

Modles of Participation • One can separate a population into three basic modes: apathetics, persons who are withdrawn from the political process; spectators, persons who are minimally involved in politics; and gladiators, persons who are active combatants. 上課使用 Classroom Only

Voting • A person casting a vote rarely believes that it will make an important difference to the political outcome. 上課使用 Classroom Only

Party and Campaign Workers • Similar proportions have • Only a relatively small proportion of people take been found in several other countries. These a party and campaign people are the gladiators activist posture toward the political system; such in political contests; they do most of the work activists constitute about 15% of the United States while the majority of the population sits in population. spectator grandstands and decides who has won the contest. 上課使用 Classroom Only

Community Activists • The following actions characterized this mode: formed a group to deal with a social problem; worked with an existing group to deal with a social problem; contacted public officials about a social problem; and held a number of active memberships in organizations concerned with public issues. 上課使用 Classroom Only

• In many ways, community activists are similar to party and campaign activists; they both have a strong general activist pattern toward community life and they both have a high level of psychological involvement in community matters. • Approximately 20% of Americans in the Verba and Nie (1972) study are identified primarily as community activists. 上課使用 Classroom Only