Citizen Activity: Who Participates? What Do They Say?

We use responses to a large-scale national survey designed to oversample political activists to investigate the extent to which participant publics are representative of the public as a whole. Building upon the finding that while voters differ from nonvoters in their demographic attributes, their attitudes as measured by responses to survey questions are not distinctive, we consider a variety of political acts beyond voting that citizens can use to multiply their political input and to communicate more precise messages to policymakers. In addition, we consider not only respondents' demographic characteristics and policy attitudes but also their circumstances of economic deprivation and dependence upon government programs. Although activists are representative of the public at large in terms of their attitudes, they differ substantially in their demographic attributes, economic needs, and the government benefits they receive. Furthermore, in terms of the issues that animate participation, groups differentiated along these lines bring very different policy concerns to their activity.

[1]  H. Pitkin.  The Concept of Representation , 1969 .

[2]  Christopher H. Achen.  Measuring Representation: Perils of the Correlation Coefficient , 1977 .

[3]  J. Kirkpatrick.  The new Presidential elite , 1975 .

[4]  David R. Mayhew.  Congress: The Electoral Connection , 1975 .

[5]  G. Parry,et al.  Participation in politics , 1972 .

[6]  K. L. Schlozman,et al.  Organized interests and American democracy , 1986 .

[7]  Stephen D. Shaffer.  Policy Differences Between Voters and Non-Voters in American Elections , 1982 .

[8]  D. Resnick,et al.  The Implications of Nonvoting for Democracy in the United States , 1990 .

[9]  M. Jennings,et al.  Parties in Transition: A Longitudinal Study of Party Elites and Party Supporters , 1988, American Political Science Review.

[10]  Charles S. Bullock,et al.  Party, Constituency, and Roll-Call Voting in the U. S. Senate , 1983 .

[11]  Allan J. Cigler,et al.  Interest Group Politics , 1994 .

[12]  P. Bachrach.  The theory of democratic elitism , 1967 .

[13]  David A. Bositis,et al.  HERBERT McCLOSKY AND FRIENDS REVISITED , 1982 .

[14]  C. Pateman.  Participation and democratic theory , 1970 .

[15]  Jane J. Mansbridge.  Beyond Adversary Democracy , 1980 .

[16]  B. Barber.  Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age , 1985 .

[17]  M. Margaret Conway,et al.  Political participation in the United States , 1985 .

[18]  H. Eulau,et al.  The Puzzle of Representation: Specifying Components of Responsiveness , 1977 .

[19]  G. Markus.  Electoral Coalitions and Senate Roll Call Behavior: An Ecological Analysis , 1974 .