What Is Political Participation?

           Defining political participation is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. In a general fashion, it is the activism in the government by citizens of a country. Probably the most common form in the USA is voting. Even though in the United States, voting is an easy to do, well fought for privilege there are still low turnouts to many elections. The main cause for this is low registration rates for Americans. This is why around election time, voter registration drives are popular as well as drives that are created to get information out to the voters, so they will be more educated when going into the voting process. The other reason that people in the US don’t tend to have a high voter turn-out, is the fact that voting isn’t our only way to influence our government and get involved in politics. People can go to town hall meetings, protest, or even propose amendments to their state’s constitution, all without the need to vote. Many Americans today feel that in voting, they will not be represented sufficiently, therefore they do not vote at all. (American Government 9/e)

            Of the people who are able to participate in politics, there are six main types of participation. The first is inactive participation. This means that the person does not vote and probably rarely talks about politics. The second are voting specialists; these people pretty much only vote, but at least they participate in that way. The third are campaigners who not only vote but also participate in campaigning. They are often very aligned to a belief or political party. The fourth are communalists, or a more nonpartisan version of a campaigner. They tend to communicate on a more local scale. The fifth are parochials, they do not vote, but they do often contact politicians about personal problems that they have with the government. The sixth and final type of participants is activists. They are highly educated people who participate in every form of politics imaginable. (American Government 9/e)

            There are many reasons for someone to either participate in politics or not. The first is schooling, the more educated someone is, the more confident they are, and the more likely they will vote. The second is whether they go to church, studies have found that those who do tend to be more likely to vote. Overall, men and women will vote at the same rate and surprisingly, the level of trust someone has in the government shows no correlation with the probability that one will vote on any given year. If registration becomes easier or if political parties become stronger and closer to the voter, turn-outs will increase. The odd thing about this country is how we determine that our voter rates are low. We compare to European countries that have automatic registration for voting and do not have quite the system of government that we do here. Also, we have so many voting opportunities in America, that many people may feel that elections just aren’t very important. (American Government 9/e)

Resources

American Government 9/e – Study Online Cengage Learning (n.d.) retrieved from               http://college.cengage.com/polisci/wilson/am_gov/9e/students/studyoutline/ch06.html