Attitudes, Opportunities and Incentives: A Field Essay on Political Participation

One of the ironies of the behavioral movement in political science is that scholars following in its wake were more likely to study attitudes than behavior. Nonetheless, over the past several decades political scientists have produced an abundant body of research on mass political participation (for recent reviews of this research, see Conway 1989; Crotty 1991). In this essay, I provide nonspecialists a substantive overview of the major theoretical models and empirical findings of this literature I also focus part of the discussion on the assumptions and applicability of several theoretical orientations evidenced in the subfield today and propose a brief research agenda for the subfield; scholars specializing in the subfield will find these points of particular interest. Three broad conclusions drawn from my review of the literature structure the proposed research agenda presented in the concluding section. First, the discipline broadly accepts as a basic model of participation the "standard socioeconomic model" which emphasizes individuals' socioeconomic status and civic orientations as predictors of participation. Yet a growing body of research emphasizes the importance of mobilization as a major factor influencing participation in U.S. politics. Hence, mobilization factors simply cannot be ignored if we are to develop a complete understanding of who participates and why they do so. Second, political participation is typically equated with voter turnout, although citizens participate in a variety of political activities, with varying levels of involvement over time. We will improve the theoretical rigor of our models of participation by studying this variety of political acts and how it changes over time; focusing on voter turnout alone-as discrete acts structured by the electoral calendar-offers no such advantage. We must therefore shift the focus of our study to alternative forms of participation.