Question

How do citizens participate in politics and civic life in
a
democracy?​

Answer 1

Answer:

The more people who participate in a democracy, the more democratic it becomes – or so de Tocqueville believed. But sceptics have challenged that assumption on the basis that not everyone has the skills to make informed political decisions. In his new book, Russell J Dalton argues that the problem lies with the participation gap: the better-off are more engaged in policy, while the poorest vote less and lack the resources to lobby for change.

It seems an odd question, but researchers are increasingly asking whether citizen participation is good for democracy. Robert Putnam’s concern about apparently diminished participation in the US reflects a Tocquevillian belief that more citizen participation benefits society and the polity. Many political observers lament the decline in voting turnout across the established democracies and view this trend as detrimental to the democratic process.

In contrast, a different chorus of experts claim that democracy suffers because too many active citizens lack the abilities and resources to make meaningful decisions. Some sceptics state that democracy is based on “fairy tales” and “folk theory” because of the limitations of the citizenry. Other voices seemingly yearn for an epistocracy where the knowledgeable decide. Thus, the experts agree: contemporary democracies are suffering; the reason is either too little or too much citizen participation

Explanation:

Answer 2

The participation gap is also widening over time. Evidence from several nations shows that the decline in voting turnout is concentrated among lower-status citizens, while the better off continue to vote at roughly the same levels as the past. Given the centrality of elections in selecting the officials who govern, this widening participation gap in turnout implies unequal representation with all the implications that this signifies.

For non-electoral participation, the increase in activity has come disproportionately from better-educated and higher income citizens who possess politically valuable skills and resources. Protest activities often display the widest social status participation gap. And while there is a one-person/one-vote limit on voting that moderates inequality, no such ceiling exists for writing emails, working with public interest groups, protesting, and other non-voting forms of action. The sum result is a widening in the SES participation gap in overall terms.

Thus, democracy’s dilemma is that the expansion of participation in old and new forms comes at the cost of a widening gap between the politically rich and the politically poor. This runs counter to democratic ideals, and it runs counter to democracy’s goal of effectively reaching the best policy outcomes for society by involving all of the public in the process.

Participation, inequality and governance

The two views of citizen participation summarised at the start of this post offer contrasting assessments of whether an active citizenry improves or harms the functioning of democratic governance.

I directly consider the basic Tocquevillian logic that democracy will benefit when more citizens participate. There are many potential ways to test this thesis, and I turn to the simple example of the quality of governance. Does government function better if the public is more involved? The Economist Intelligence Unit’s measures the quality of governance with a 14-item index of the functioning of the government, including items such as quality of administration, government control of its territory, regularised government and the rule of law. (There is no explicit item on participation in the index.). The 2004 ISSP provides overall participation levels for about a dozen and a half nations, plus Belgium and Iceland from the 2014 survey. I test whether an active citizenry correlates with good governance.

Nations with higher overall political participation also have better performing government (Figure 1). This is a substantial relationship based on these 20 democracies (r=.55, p=.01). Nations that score highly on the EUI index, such as Norway, New Zealand, Canada and Denmark, also have fairly high levels of overall citizen participation. Conversely, the four lowest levels of participation occur in nations that are below average in the functioning of government. This supports the general logic that an attentive and involved public press the government to be more responsive and effective. Simply put, good citizens make for good democratic governance.