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207 books match the query 'Political participation' and 23 start with p

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Participation and Political Equality

Sidney Verba

University of Chicago Press, 1987

In this survey of political participation in seven nations—Nigeria, Austria, Japan, India, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia, and the United States—the authors examine the relationship between social, economic, and educational factors and political participation.

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Participation in America

Political Democracy and Social Equality

Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie

University of Chicago Press, 1987

Participation in America represents the largest study ever conducted of the ways in which citizens participate in American political life. Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie addresses the question of who participates in the American democratic process, how, and with what effects. They distinguish four kinds of political participation: voting, campaigning, communal activity, and interaction with a public official to achieve a personal goal. Using a national sample survey and interviews with leaders in 64 communities, the authors investigate the correlation between socioeconomic status and political participation. Recipient of the Kammerer Award (1972), Participation in America provides fundamental information about the nature of American democracy.

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Participatory Culture Wars

Controversy, Conflict, and Complicity in Fandom

Simone Driessen

University of Iowa Press, 2025

From writing fan fiction to campaigning for better media representation, fandom and participatory culture have long been seen as tools to resist dominant narratives and fight for a better future. But participatory culture is not always socially and politically progressive; rather, as Participatory Culture Wars demonstrates, it can be politically regressive and socially reactive. Communities coalesce around the exclusionary and the misinformed.
Fans, fandoms, and fan practices are no longer the realm of media and popular culture; they have been adopted and co-opted across the contemporary political terrain. This volume offers specific examples and suggests approaches that can help make sense of the constantly shifting interaction between fandom and politics.

Contributors:
Alfred Archer, Renee Barnes, Simone Driessen, Xing Fan, Monica Flegel, Zoe Hurley, Bethan Jones, Sklaerenn Le Gallo, Judith Leggatt, Georgina Mills, Peng Qiao, James Rendell, Mel Stanfill, Michelle Stewart, Rebecca Williams, Christina Wurst

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Peasants in Revolt

A Chilean Case Study, 1965–1971

By James Petras and Hugo Zemelman Merino; translated by Thomas Flory

University of Texas Press, 1973

Based on extended interviews at the Culiprán fundo in Chile with peasants who recount in their own terms their political evolution, this is an in-depth study of peasants in social and political action. It deals with two basic themes: first, the authoritarian structure within a traditional latifundio and its eventual replacement by a peasant-based elected committee, and second, the events shaping the emergence of political consciousness among the peasantry. Petras and Zemelman Merino trace the careers of local peasant leaders, followers, and opponents of the violent illegal land seizure in 1965 and the events that triggered the particular action.

The findings of this study challenge the oft-accepted assumption that peasants represent a passive, traditional, downtrodden group capable only of following urban-based elites. The peasant militants, while differing considerably in their ability to grasp complex political and social problems, show a great deal of political skill, calculate rationally on the possibility of success, and select and manipulate political allies on the basis of their own primary needs. The politicized peasantry lend their allegiance to those forces with whom they anticipate they have the most to gain—and under circumstances that minimize social costs. The authors identify the highly repressive political culture within the latifundio—reinforced by the national political system—as the key factor inhibiting overt expressions of political demands.

The emergence of revolutionary political consciousness is found to be the result of cumulative experiences and the breakdown of traditional institutions of control. The violent illegal seizure of the farm is perceived by the peasantry as a legitimate act based on self-interest as well as general principles of justice—in other words, the seizure is perceived as a “natural act,” suggesting that perhaps two sets of moralities functioned within the traditional system.

The book is divided into two parts: the first part contains a detailed analysis of peasant behavior; the second contains transcriptions of peasant interviews. Combined, they give the texture and flavor of insurgent peasant politics.

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Peripheral Visions

Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen

Lisa Wedeen

University of Chicago Press, 2008

The government of Yemen, unified since 1990, remains largely incapable of controlling violence or providing goods and services to its population, but the regime continues to endure despite its fragility and peripheral location in the global political and economic order. Revealing what holds Yemen together in such tenuous circumstances, Peripheral Visions shows how citizens form national attachments even in the absence of strong state institutions.

Lisa Wedeen, who spent a year and a half in Yemen observing and interviewing its residents, argues that national solidarity in such weak states tends to arise not from attachments to institutions but through both extraordinary events and the ordinary activities of everyday life. Yemenis, for example, regularly gather to chew qat, a leafy drug similar to caffeine, as they engage in wide-ranging and sometimes influential public discussions of even the most divisive political and social issues. These lively debates exemplify Wedeen’s contention that democratic, national, and pious solidarities work as ongoing, performative practices that enact and reproduce a citizenry’s shared points of reference. Ultimately, her skillful evocations of such practices shift attention away from a narrow focus on government institutions and electoral competition and toward the substantive experience of participatory politics.

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Polarization and Democracy in Latin America

Legacies of the Left Turn

Santiago Anria and Kenneth M. Roberts

University of Chicago Press, 2026

An insightful examination of Latin America’s contemporary democratic landscape and how it is marked by patterns of polarization and volatility.

Although Latin American democracies have shown considerable resilience, today they face new forms of political polarization and instability. These challenges are closely connected to the legacies of the region’s “left turn,” which sought to transform entrenched inequalities and social hierarchies in the early twenty-first century. Unprecedented in its scope and duration, the left turn reflected an underlying realignment of political contestation in a highly unequal region. Yet despite notable achievements in addressing social needs, leftist parties struggled to deepen democracy by empowering popular majorities, and they faced powerful elite backlashes.

Through a comparative analysis of seven South American countries, Santiago Anria and Kenneth M. Roberts trace the different origins and trajectories in power of the populist and social democratic currents that emerged within the left turn. Anria and Roberts argue that today’s democratic orders face intensifying polarization and institutional fragility, even where social democratic parties made explicit efforts to build broad coalitions and temper political conflict. They show how activist networks and social movements on the left and the right triggered latent political conflicts and are now reshaping democratic competition and the terms of social inclusion in South American politics.

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Political Action

Key To Understanding Politics

Dick Simpson

Ohio University Press, 1984

Politics and the study of politics are at a watershed. They are deficient because they fail to respond to fundamental crises in our society, fail to incorporate new knowledge from other fields of study, and fail to allow citizens to function as mature human beings shaping their own destiny. Political Action demonstrates the need for a new political science which, in turn, may lead to a new politics more adequate to the problems of this era.

Modern political science, as currently studied and practiced, is irrelevant for both public officials and citizens because it fails to focus on political action. Simpson and Beam provide a methodology for the study of political action and demonstrate how the study of political action using these methods provides a better understanding of politics and how these methods aid in identifying effective strategies for building a better America.

Without a new focus on political action, political science will remain sterile and without a more humane politics, citizens will remain misinformed, apathetic, and helpless. Political Action is controversial because it challenges the profession of political science. It provides a “paradigm shift” in the field which is important for allied social science disciplines as well. For political strategists, it provides the methodological tool of political action propositions which allow a careful calculation of the effects of alternative strategies.

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Political Participation and Government Regulation

Sam Peltzman

University of Chicago Press, 1998

Sam Peltzman is one of the world's leading economists, and the essays in this collection are central to the modern canon in political economy. These ten articles and an original introduction respond to two broad questions: How does government work? How do voters and their elected representatives make decisions? Given the media's portrayal of the cynical political atmosphere in America, Peltzman's responses are rather surprising—the electorate really does make well-informed decisions and elected officials actually do tend to vote according to their constituents' interests. These conclusions bear the stamp of the Chicago approach to political economy (which applies microeconomic principles to political phenomena), an approach that has had considerable success explaining why certain government policies have not achieved their intended effects.

This collection reflects Peltzman's long career studying the interface between the private economy and the public sector. It will be essential to anyone who wishes to study government activity and voting behavior from an economic perspective.

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Political Support in Canada

The Crisis Years

Allan Kornberg and Harold D. Clarke, editors

Duke University Press, 1983

All governments require popular support, and in democracies this support must be maintained by noncoercive means. This book analyzes the question of political support in Canada, a country in which the maintenance of the integrity of the political community has been and continues to be, in the words of the editors, "the single most salient aspect of the country's political life."
The nature of popular support is first considered in broad, theoretical terms, then from the standpoint of those agents most responsible for maintaining support in Canadian democracy, then as influenced by particular issues and policies, and finally as it affects and is affected by the separatist movement in Quebec.

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Political Trust in China

Lianjiang Li

University of Michigan Press, 2025

The authoritarian regime in China is a prime target of the US-led war on autocracy; however, the regime claims a majority of the Chinese people trust the government, with national surveys since the 1990s supporting this assertion. How much do Chinese citizens actually trust the one-party regime? Instead of dismissing survey results, Li examines the contexts in which Chinese citizens are predisposed to say they trust the government. He argues that political trust in China is a power-accommodating and nonbinding hope rather than a rights-based and binding expectation as Chinese citizens do not have the right to grant and retract trust through free and fair elections.

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Politics and the Class Divide

Working People and the Middle Class Left

David Croteau

Temple University Press, 1994

Finalist for Transformational Politics Book Award, American Political Science Association, 1996 "In this useful introduction to the connection between social class and political participation in the modern United States, David Croteau explores the 'class divide' separating middle-class activism and working-class non-participation in left political and social movements." --Labour History Review "People don't believe they have a say anymore, so they've given up." That's the cynical conclusion of one worker in this study of the relationships between working people and the middle-class left. This rare accessible book on class differences in American life examines the impact of class status on an individual's participation--or non-participation--in the political process. Focusing on the relative absence of white working-class involvement in many contemporary U.S. liberal and left social movements, David Croteau goes straight to the source: members of the working class and activists in the environmental, peace, women's, and other social movements. Croteau rejects standard assumptions that apathy or simple conservatism explain working-class nonparticipation. Instead, he highlights the role of class-based resources and explores how varying cultural "tools" developed in different classes are more or less helpful in navigating and influencing the existing political environment. Commonly, he finds, the result is a middle-class sense of power and entitlement and a working-class sense of powerlessness and fatalism. Contemplating the future of social movements, he explores how lack of diversity hurts the effectiveness of what have become isolated middle-class movements, and proposes solutions that would increase the future political participation of working people in social movements.

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Politics for People

Finding a Responsible Public Voice

David Mathews

University of Illinois Press, 1999

A must for anyone angry at being shut out of the political system. David Mathews points out that many Americans, making no secret of their anger at being shut out of the political system, are looking for ways to take that system back. Because of their low opinion of "politics as usual," Mathews believes, some people are trying to create a politics relevant to their everyday lives. These efforts give us a richer understanding of political life and of a much-neglected subject: the public. In Politics for People, Mathews describes how people become politically engaged, how they build civic communities, and how they generate political energy or public will. He argues that political discussion is the doorway into politics, and he makes a case for leavening partisan debate with more public dialogue. He then explains what a democratic citizenry must do if representative government is to perform effectively, and he shows how officials might work with, and not just for, the public.

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Politics in the Trenches

Citizens, Politicians, and the Fate of Democracy

Thomas J. Volgy

University of Arizona Press, 2001

Ask most Americans what they think of politics and you'll likely get an earful. With suspicion and distrust of public servants running high, many citizens seem dispirited by the very process that has made the United States a showcase for democracy.

Now ask Tom Volgy. This former mayor of a major western city, who is also a political scientist, contends that most elected officials are the very opposite of what the public thinks: honest, hardworking people whose real work goes unnoticed by most of their constituents and the media.

Volgy has interviewed more than 300 elected officials—mayors, city council members, legislators—from all over the United States to offer a decidedly contrarian view of politics. He explores the lives and working conditions of elected officials at the local level— the area of democracy closest to the public— to show that officeholders are for the most part average citizens, not the slick lawyers or political pros we usually imagine them to be. Most are motivated by a sense of civic duty, and they often work for token salaries, yet once elected they give up their personal lives and fall prey to every conceivable brickbat of public and media outrage.

In Politics in the Trenches, Volgy shows what really happens behind the scenes of government. He contrasts perception with reality regarding the rewards and perks of office. He examines the process of experimentation in the political laboratory and shows how the news media distort it. He provides a case study of homelessness to illustrate the system's constraints and limitations. And he offers a chapter on a typical week in office that will be an eye-opener for most readers.

Although admittedly there are many flaws in the democratic political process, observes Volgy, all are correctable as long as citizens believe in the essential worth of the system itself. His book offers a fresh perspective on democratic governance and tackles tough issues such as campaign finance reform, urging citizens to understand the process before they condemn its players out of hand. More than that, this is a call to action, warning us that we could lose true democracy if we don't get involved.

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Politics of Democratic Inclusion

Christina Wolbrecht

Temple University Press, 2005

The issue of political participation has been central to American politics since the founding of the United States. The Politics of Democratic Inclusion addresses the ways traditionally underrepresented groups have and have not achieved political incorporation, representation, and influence—or "democratic inclusion"—in American politics. Each chapter provides a "state of the discipline" essay that addresses the politics of diversity from a range of perspectives and in a variety of institutional arenas. Taken together, the essays in The Politics of Democratic Inclusion evaluate and advance our understanding of the ways in which the structure, processes, rules, and context of the American political order encourage, mediate, and hamper the representation and incorporation of traditionally disadvantaged groups.

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Politics of Rightful Killing

Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan

Sima Shakhsari

Duke University Press, 2020

In the early 2000s, mainstream international news outlets celebrated the growth of Weblogistan—the online and real-life transnational network of Iranian bloggers—and depicted it as a liberatory site that gave voice to Iranians. As Sima Shakhsari argues in Politics of Rightful Killing, the common assumptions of Weblogistan as a site of civil society consensus and resistance to state oppression belie its deep internal conflicts. While Weblogistan was an effective venue for some Iranians to “practice democracy,” it served as a valuable site for the United States to surveil bloggers and express anti-Iranian sentiment and policies. At the same time, bloggers used the network to self-police and enforce gender and sexuality norms based on Western liberal values in ways that unwittingly undermined Weblogistan's claims of democratic participation. In this way, Weblogistan became a site of cybergovernmentality, where biopolitical security regimes disciplined and regulated populations. Analyzing online and off-line ethnography, Shakhsari provides an account of digital citizenship that raises questions about the internet's relationship to political engagement, militarism, and democracy.

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Politics the Wellstone Way

How to Elect Progressive Candidates and Win on Issues

Wellstone Action Wellstone Action Wellstone Action

University of Minnesota Press, 2005

During the past four years, political activism has grown to a level that has not been seen in the United States since the Vietnam War. Tensions over the war in Iraq and the presidential election motivated hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the political fence to take to the streets. Politics the Wellstone Way offers a comprehensive set of strategies to help progressives channel that energy into winning issue-based and electoral campaigns.

Wellstone Action is a nonprofit organization dedicated to continuing Paul and Sheila Wellstone’s fight for progressive change and economic justice by teaching effective political action skills to people across the country. Politics the Wellstone Way is a workshop in book form, providing the detailed framework needed to jump-start a new generation of activists plus plenty of helpful tools for old pros, including articulating a strong message, base building, field organizing, budgeting, fundraising, scheduling, getting out the vote, and grassroots advocacy and lobbying, illustrated by practical and inspirational examples.

From the school board all the way to the White House, Politics the Wellstone Way instructs people on becoming better organizers, candidates, campaign workers, and citizen activists, empowering them to make their voices heard.

Wellstone Action was established by the Wellstones’ two surviving sons, David and Mark. The main vehicle for this ongoing work is Camp Wellstone, a weekend training program that Wellstone Action leads regularly in locations across the country. Jeff Blodgett, Paul Wellstone’s longtime campaign manager, is the executive director of Wellstone Action. For more information visit www.wellstoneaction.org.

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Postpolitics and the Aesthetic Imagination

Juan Meneses

University of Minnesota Press, 2025

Igniting political power through the lens of art and the imagination

Postpolitics and the Aesthetic Imagination investigates the erosion of meaningful political action in today’s world. Gathering writings from an array of scholars, editor Juan Meneses asks: can an aesthetic theory of postpolitics help us understand and counteract the most insidious processes of depoliticization?

The contributors to this volume explore how the aesthetic imagination can play a crucial role in reenvisioning key political elements, including governance, agency, rights, and responsibility. With a survey of various artistic mediums—film, dance, music, literature, and digital media—the essays illustrate how the aesthetic can reveal ways to breathe new life into the work of emancipatory politics. Reclaiming the arts and humanities as vital to political life, the contributors revisit but also move beyond the social sciences’ central focus on neoliberalism and public administration to address other topics such as tech-capitalism, race, environmental violence, and patriarchy.

Postpolitics and the Aesthetic Imagination argues for a conscious deployment of aesthetics to resist political anesthesia and promote a more just society, underscoring the role of the imagination in political engagement and change.

Contributors: Jacquelyn Arcy, U of Wisconsin–Parkside; Christopher Breu, Illinois State U; Stephen Charbonneau, Florida Atlantic U; Eric Lemmon, Webster U; Robert P. Marzec, Purdue U; Allison Page, Rutgers U–Camden; Matthew Scully, U of Lausanne; Erik Swyngedouw, U of Manchester; Sherryl Vint, U of California, Riverside.

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Poverty and Problem-Solving under Military Rule

The Urban Poor in Lima, Peru

By Henry A. Dietz

University of Texas Press, 1980

Many countries in Latin America have experienced both rapid urbanization and military involvement in politics. Yet few studies examine how military regimes react to the political pressures that wide-spread urban poverty creates or how the poor operate under authoritative rule. Henry Dietz investigates Lima’s poor during the “revolution” of General Juan Velasco (1968–1975). His study examines both the structural conditions promoting poverty and the individual consequences of being poor. The poor join together in several ways to resolve politicized communal needs; Dietz’s data indicate that the local neighborhood plays a crucial role in determining modes of involvement. Considerable attention is given to government attempts to encourage and control political activities by the poor. Dietz analyzes the failure of SINAMOS, the regime’s mobilization agency, and in so doing raises general questions about corporatist solutions to social problems. The wide range of original survey, informant, and ethnographic data provides much new information on elite-mass relationships in contemporary Latin America. Dietz’s research illuminates much that is of concern to scholars and planners dealing with urbanization, poverty, and social policy formation.

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Practical Politics

Five Principles for a Community That Works

Michael K. Briand

University of Illinois Press, 1999

This wise and sensible guide to practicing democracy will be invaluable to members of community and neighborhood organizations, parent-teacher associations, local government, citizens groups, and other grass-roots organizations. It will also be of interest to anyone wanting a deeper understanding of how democracy should work--and why it often fails to do just that.

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Private Life, Public Action

How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow

Anna Zhelnina

Temple University Press, 2026

Renovation, an urban renewal plan in Moscow that was announced in the spring of 2017, proposed to demolish thousands of socialist-era apartment buildings. In a country where it is rare under an authoritarian government, residents supported or opposed the redevelopment by mobilizing and organizing into local alliances. They were often shocked by their neighbors who were excited about the new housing or those suspicious of being displaced.

Private Life, Public Action traces how residents impacted by the relocation plan became activists despite having little to no experience organizing or even forming political affiliations and opinions. Author Anna Zhelnina details the ways in which neighbors engaged in collective action, as well as the individual and structural changes these interactions caused.

Zhelnina develops the concept of “housing strategies” to explain how residents’ debates with their neighbors about housing were shaped by their private life strategies. She applies her findings about housing in Moscow to ongoing questions about political mobilization, demonstrating how public engagement is shaped by historical and social contexts.

Examining the intersection of housing, politics, and citizenship in contemporary Russia, Private Life, Public Action offers a new way to look at urban change.

In the series Politics, History, and Social Change

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Protestors and Their Targets

James Jasper

Temple University Press, 2020

The strategic interactions between protestors and their targets shape the world around us in profound ways. The editors and contributors to Protesters and Their Targets—all leading scholars in the study of social movements—look at why movements do what they do and why their interactions with other societal actors turn out as they do. They recognize that targets are not stationary but react to the movement and require the movement to react back.

This edited collection analyzes how social movements select their targets, movement-target interactions, and the outcomes of those interactions. Case studies examine school closures in Sweden, the U.S. labor movement, Bolivian water and Mexican corn, and other global issues to show the strategic thinking, shifting objectives, and various degrees of success in the actions and nature of these protest movements.

Protesters and Their Targets seeks to develop a set of tools for the further development of the field’s future work on this underexplored set of interactions.

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Public Policy and Community

Activism and Governance in Texas

Edited by Robert H. Wilson

University of Texas Press, 1997

The decentralization of public policy from the federal government to state and local governments offers increased opportunities for ordinary citizens to participate directly in public policymaking. Yet these opportunities may not be equally shared. Due to a variety of factors, low-income citizens have long been denied a meaningful role in the public life and governance of our country.

By contrast, the essays in this volume explore how low-income citizens have successfully affected public policy. The book is built around six case studies, all from Texas, that cover education finance and reform, local infrastructure provision, environmental protection, and indigent health care.

This research illuminates several issues of national importance, including how communities gain standing and recognition for themselves and their issues, how policy agendas are defined, how communities mobilize technical and institutional resources, and how they form coalitions and alliances to accomplish their goals.

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