Understanding Low Citizen Participation in America

¶ … Stand Democracy fundamentally stands on citizen or civic participation (Verna et al. 1997). This is how citizens of a nation choose those whom they want to rule them. It is also the chief means of communicating and influencing these chosen leaders to carry out what the people want. Specifically, it is through he mechanism of political participation that the people get to transmit their interests, preferences, needs and objections to those who hold public office.

Successful citizen or political participation must, therefore be loud and clear and representative of the people's pulse. Collective interests must be considered equally if they must be representative (Verba et al.). The continuously declining electoral turnout in the country has long been known and deplored. Statistics reveal that citizen participation in presidential elections went down from 63% in 1960 to 49% in 1996, the lowest recorded since 1924 (Verna et al. 1997). The unevenness is notable in three ways or forms.

These are persistent inequalities in education and income, disparities in opportunities to cultivate and practice civic skills, and the near-substitution of money for time (Verna et al.). The authors conducted a Citizen Participation Study with more than 15,000 American volunteers and personally interviewed 2,517 of them. They tackle the three forms of inequality and arrive at a common finding. Civil participation in America is unequal. Body Americans are as active in political campaigns as peoples in other countries (Verba et al. 1997).

The difference is that Americans' political participation is much greater among the well-educated and advantaged populations than those who are not. As to non-voting political participation, a separate study conducted by one of the authors found that the number of Americans donating to campaigns increased more than twice in the past two decades from 13 to 23%. In this period, the number and role of paid campaigners and producers of campaign materials largely reduced the number of unpaid citizen volunteers to the role of preparing checks for payment.

Technological advancement has raised the level of campaign sophistication and demand for funds outpaced the demand for volunteers, Findings of the Citizen Participation Study also found that the role of more than 2/3 of those who participated in or donated to political campaigns was limited to writing checks (Verba et al.). Money has replaced time as the form of political participation (Verba et al. 1997). This has substantially reduced both the volume of effective participants and the gamut of issues they represent and voice out.

The unevenness of wealth and income in the United States has been the observed trend, especially in the past one and a half decade. Findings further show that free time is not determined by income or any other socioeconomic factor. The rich in America are more politically active. The poorer ones who earn less than $15,000 a year are much less likely to vote, join protests or contact a government official to express grievances or preferences, participate in an informal community activity or donate to a campaign.

Yet they give more time to campaign work than the better educated while those who earned top incomes of more than $125,000 yearly donated 14 times as much as the smallest earners. Thus, those on the top income groups appear to produce more votes at 4%, campaign hours at 8%, contacts with government officials at 6%, protests at 5% and 35% of campaign donations. In comparison, those who earn $15,000 or less a year account for only 14% of the country's votes, 12% of contacts with government officials and staging protests and a near-invisible 2% of campaign donations.

The democratic ideal of civic participation is missed when money replaces the time that should be spent for political activity. And when this happens, as it is already happening, inequality in civic or citizen participation increases. The very many who do not express their needs and interests or protests to those in government who should do something about these prevent the democratic principle of equal responsiveness from operating.

The Citizen Participation Study thus concludes that those who are active in politics and whose voices are heard do not necessarily represent the sentiments and thoughts of those who are not active. A especially affected group of this latter group consists of the disadvantaged (Verba et al.). The disadvantaged are those who are less educated and earn less income (Verba et al. 1997). They also participate in political activity and they have their own concerns, needs, sentiments and opinions.

Among them are recipients of non-means benefits as veterans and from social security or Medicare, members of veterans' organizations, the retired and the elderly. The government, then, can hear and receive feedback less from them and more from the advantaged. The advantaged and the disadvantaged are further separated by the topics they discuss and are concerned with. The disadvantaged focus on basic human needs, such as poverty, employment, housing, and health. They constitute 1/6 of the population, have only a high school education or lower and earn below $20,000 yearly.

On the other hand, the advantaged are a smaller group, which is concerned with taxes, government spending, the budget or social issues. They have some college education and earn more than $50,000 a year. The disadvantaged are not as politically active as the advantaged. This is why issues about basic needs, housing, health and jobs reach or are more audible to government than the concerns of the more audible advantaged. In addition, the disadvantaged give priority to issues of personal in nature.

Yet these concerns among the disadvantaged do not reach government officials. Because of the lack or infrequency of representation, government officials are not too familiar with issues of basic human.