Political participation is a central component in all democratic systems, since citizen involvement is a prerequisite for assuring the lehitimacy of the system. Research on political participation has long acknowledged that this involvement cannot be restricted to elections. Nonetheless, the different institutional systems found in the established democracies create different possibilities and axpectations for citizen engagement beyond the vote. This goes not only for how much involvement is expected, but also for the ways in which citizens should be involved in political matters. In this study, the author examines how the institutional context affects various aspects of political participation in a comparative anallysis of 18 established European democracies. The aspects analysed include the dimensionality of participation, country-level differences in the rates of participation, the characteristics of the participants, and the institutional incentives for participation. The results suggest that the institutional context affects key aspects of political participation. However, the precise impact frequently runs counter to the theoretical expectations. The study hereby challenges some of the central theoretical assumptions of political science for how institutional openness affects patterns of political participation.

A brilliant condemnation of political hobbyism—treating politics like entertainment—and a call to arms for well-meaning, well-informed citizens who consume political news, but do not take political action. Who is to blame for our broken politics? The uncomfortable answer to this question starts with ordinary citizens with good intentions. We vote (sometimes) and occasionally sign a petition or attend a rally. But we mainly “engage” by consuming politics as if it’s a sport or a hobby. We soak in daily political gossip and eat up statistics about who’s up and who’s down. We tweet and post and share. We crave outrage. The hours we spend on politics are used mainly as pastime. Instead, we should be spending the same number of hours building political organizations, implementing a long-term vision for our city or town, and getting to know our neighbors, whose votes will be needed for solving hard problems. We could be accumulating power so that when there are opportunities to make a difference—to lobby, to advocate, to mobilize—we will be ready. But most of us who are spending time on politics today are focused inward, choosing roles and activities designed for our short-term pleasure. We are repelled by the slow-and-steady activities that characterize service to the common good. In Politics Is for Power, pioneering and brilliant data analyst Eitan Hersh shows us a way toward more effective political participation. Aided by political theory, history, cutting-edge social science, as well as remarkable stories of ordinary citizens who got off their couches and took political power seriously, this book shows us how to channel our energy away from political hobbyism and toward empowering our values.

American voting behavior has long been paradoxical. Although levels of voter participation increase with age, income, and education, middle- and upper-class voters—those who profess to hold the electoral process in the highest regard—still tend to cast their ballots by "image" rather than issue. Beyond the Electoral Connection provides a comprehensive analysis and systematic explanation of this fundamental paradox. Kim Ezra Shienbaum's unusually broad perspective leads her to conclude that the nature of American democracy has been altered in fundamental ways over the past thirty years. She asserts that voters have rationally adjusted their political behavior to cope with a system in which public policy outcomes are determined largely by judicial and bureaucratic politics rather than through electoral politics. Shienbaum concludes that for the average "smart" voter, a trip to the polls is little more than an act of political ritualism: a demonstration of support for the status quo.

Volume numbers determined from Scope of the guidelines, p. 12-13.

The author provides a response to the question of ongoing potential for civic engagement programs such as Carnegie's Political Engagement Project if voting among young adults soars in the upcoming election, and concludes that need for continued efforts will remain strong even if voting among 18-30 year olds shoots up in November. Beaumont maintains that voting increases among the young would not necessarily represent a stable shift towards greater participation, nor would it indicate that the problem of disengagement is permanently solved, especially among Americans with less education and less money. Voter participation is not the only reason to continue to look at and support civic and political engagement efforts. Voting rates hold particular social value: although necessary for the legitimacy of democratic governance and for the strength of a pluralist democratic culture, quality of participation is also vital and means working to increase relevant political knowledge, skills, and motivations that can support engaged and effective citizenship. Noting that even many faithful voters make political choices based on relatively little information or misinformation, the author advocates that civic engagement efforts can help remedy this and foster the kinds of civic values that can support political participation even when citizens know their actions are unlikely to achieve immediate success. If improving the overall quality of American democracy is understood as the definitive goal, concludes Beaumont, many tasks will remain for the Political Engagement Project and other civic engagement efforts even if we wake up on Nov 3 feeling jubilant by voter turnout among the young.

​This Brief uses game-theoretic analysis to debunk the turnout paradox and offers an alternative economic model to elucidate the patterns behind the socioeconomic bias in turnout. The author argues that the turnout paradox—the idea that rational, strategic actors would not vote in an election—is an overstated problem, and that, contrary to widespread belief, game-theoretic models of elections with highly realistic parameters are compatible with high turnout. The author applies the method of stability sets to the study of voting games so as to characterize the behavior of electoral turnout in response to the game’s structural parameters. To illustrate the power and potential of this framework, the author then develops a politico-economic model that generates testable theories about the way in which the modern welfare state and redistribution of wealth can shape the patterns of biased turnout that exist in most democracies. By turning a classic problem of rational choice into a source of new methods of analysis this Brief allows game theory to intervene in relevant conversations about the political economy of electoral participation, creating an opportunity for formal methods to make a welcome contribution to the discipline. As such, this Brief will be of use to scholars and student of political science, economics, political economy, and public policy, especially those who work in the tradition of formal methods.

In the last decades, political participation expanded continuously. This expansion includes activities as diverse as voting, tweeting, signing petitions, changing your social media profile, demonstrating, boycotting products, joining flash mobs, attending meetings, throwing seedbombs, and donating money. But if political participation is so diverse, how do we recognize participation when we see it? Despite the growing interest in new forms of citizen engagement in politics, there is virtually no systematic research investigating what these new and emerging forms of engagement look like, how prevalent they are in various societies, and how they fit within the broader structure of well-known participatory acts conceptually and empirically. The rapid spread of internet-based activities especially underlines the urgency to deal with such challenges. In this book, Yannis Theocharis and Jan W. van Deth put forward a systematic and unified approach to explore political participation and offer new conceptual and empirical tools with which to study it. Political Participation in a Changing World will assist both scholars and students of political behaviour to systematically study new forms of political participation without losing track of more conventional political activities.