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Definition
Political participation to Verba is “activity that is intended to or has the consequence of affecting,
either directly or indirectly, government action.” (pg. 9)
Although citizens are theoretically of equal political worth, practical variation in exercising
political rights leads to substantial participatory inequalities.
To explain why citizens elect not to participate, Verba offers three explanations: a dearth of
resources, a lack of engagement with issues and separation from recruitment networks. The
importance of resources, including money, time and civic skills, is stressed. Verba, et al place special emphasis in their analysis on resources.
Institutions play a role as well; "activity frequently takes place in the context of rich interpersonal networks" (p. 17).
Ordinary interactions on the job, at church, etc. facilitate political activity.
Civic voluntarism model encompasses resources, engagement, and recruitment not just SES. |
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Term
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Definition
Analyze representation based on economic circumstance
Education takes precedent over income with regard to participation
Very basically speaking (not accounting for differences among acts of participation), the higher one's income the morel likely they are to engage in political acts. This difference was much more pronounced with regard to money as opposed to time.
In the religious domain, participation much more equal Affluent more involved in politics, underclass more involved in religious affiliations.
Activity of the disadvantaged 4x as likely to be motivated by concerns about basic human needs (poverty, jobs, housing, healthcare). Also more likely to be motivated by drugs and crime. The wealthy are more likely to be motivated by abortion, the environment, economic issues.
"...Time is more equally distributed than is money, Moreover, in sharp contrast to money, spare time is not differentially available to those who are in other ways privileged by virtue oftheir education, occuptation, race, or ethnicity. The implications for political activity are profound. If the necessary resource for participation is money, politics will be more stratified than if the necessary resource is time. The data suggest, and we shall demonstrate, that a participatory system based on money will be more unequal than one based on time" (303). |
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Term
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Definition
The Civil Society Argument
“What is the preferred setting, the most supportive environment, for the good life? What sorts of
institution should we work for?”
Offers 5 settings: Political community, socialism, the marketplace, the nation (nationalism), finally, the strongest, civil society.
"there is a fifth answer, the newest one...which holds that the good life can only be lived in civil society, the realm of fragmentation and struggle but also of concrete and authentic solidarities..." (p 162).
“The picture here is of people freely associating and communicating with one another, forming
and reforming groups of all sorts, not for the sake of any particular formation—family, tribe,
nation, religion, commune brotherhood or sisterhood, interest group or ideological movement—
but for the sake of sociability itself.” |
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Definition
"...The infinite number of intricate problems that daily require solution (within the democratic process) involve matters that are never within the horizon of popular consciousness or interest. The idea, then, that the public does or could rule directly is a myth” (Bennet Hall Review).
Lippman would like to strip down the role that citizens play to those simple tasks that they can understand and have an interest in. The rest should be left us to politicians. Citizens should only really have to step in when the government requires "adjustment."
Most of the time the public is just a “deaf spectator in the back row” (13) because for the most part individuals are more interested in their private affairs and their individual relations than in those matters that govern society, the public questions about which they know very little.
Such a conception of society “economizes the attention of men as members of the public, and asks them to do as little as possible in matters where they can do nothing very well.” Finally, it “confines the effort of men, when they are a public, to … an intervention that may help to allay [social] disturbance, and thus allow them to return to their own affairs. For it is the pursuit of their special affairs that they are most interested in" (198-9). |
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