Authors: Bogdanor
Summary: In just less than 1250 words, this entry defines political participation, explains its role as a central concept in both theoretical and empirical political studies, and explores efforts to quantify political participation.
The entry broadly defines political participation as taking part in the public policy making process. The participation can occur during any stage of the process, and any citizen--elected official or not--is a potential participant. The participation need not be successful, it just has to occur.
As a concept, political participation is central to both theoretical and empirical political studies, and particularly important for democratic analyses. Some democratic theorists, including Rousseau, Mill, Pateman and Barber, emphasize citizen participation. Others, like Schumpeter, believe politics should be conducted by elected professionals, and citizens should have only a limited participatory role. Citizen participation is generally explained or justified in one of three ways: (1) instrumental, where the participation furthers the participant's own interests; (2) developmental, where participation expands the participant's moral, social and political awareness; and (3) communitarian, where participation furthers the common good.
Most empirical analyses assume citizen participation is instrumental and focus specifically on voting behavior. Research, particularly by Verba and Nie, has unearthed different patterns of participation, but measuring the effectiveness of this citizen participation is still imprecise and difficult. However, such measurement is considered vital to studying elite responsiveness to different participation patterns, and thus, essential to understanding democratic politics.