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Dimensions of Political Participation in a Canadian Sample*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Susan Welch
Susan Welch
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
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Abstract

Recent works have compared political participation in a variety of democratic polities. One major finding of some of this research is that to classify individuals as highly active or inactive politically is to oversimplify the notion of participation. Political participation is multidimensional: active participants in one kind of political behaviour may be inactive in another. Preoccupation with one form of participation, such as voting, may obscure the extent and nature of participation taking place. This finding was summarized neatly in a recent work: “Citizens differ not only in the overall amounts of participation they perform but also as to the types of acts in which they choose to engage. Furthermore, these different types of acts are quite distinctive in form and function and can almost be thought of as alternative participatory systems: – systems that are used for different purposes, that are able to provide types of benefits, and that relate the participant to his government and to his fellow citizens in fundamentally different ways.” Surprisingly, perhaps, these types of participation have been found to be similar across several democratic polities. Four distinct activities have been located in the several nations: (1) voting; (2) active participation in political campaigns; (3) cooperative activity such as joining with others formally or informally to pursue political goals; and (4) contacting government officials about some public problem. There has been little analysis of the forms of participation of Canadians.

Type
Notes
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 553 - 559
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1975

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References

1 See for example, Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman, and Kim, Jae-On, The Modes of Democratic Participation: A Cross National Comparison (Beverly Hills, Calif. 1971)Google Scholar which compares Austria, India, Japan, the United States, and Nigeria. The latter nation hardly qualified as “democratic,” although at the time the survey was done full military control had not been established. For a review of comparative political participation in five nations (Germany, Italy, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States) see Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nie, Norman, Bingham Powell, G. Jr, and Prewitt, Kenneth, “Social Structure and Political Participation: Developmental Relationships, I and II,” in American Political Science Review, 63 (June and September 1969), 361–78 and 808–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Verba, Nie, and Kim, Modes of Democratic Participation, passim

3 For a statement of the importance of examining forms of participation other than voting, see Dion, Léon, “Participating in the Political Process,” Queen's Quarterly 75 (Autumn 1968), 432–8.Google Scholar

4 Verba, Nie, and Kim, Modes of Democratic Participation, 8

5 Ibid., particularly 37–42

6 In a further refinement brought about by re-analysis of the us data, Verba and Nie find a strong relationship between contacting government officials about social (as opposed to private) problems and cooperative activities. They redefined this combination as “communal” acts, acts taken in pursuit of common objectives of groups of people, organized or unorganized. Separate from this was simply contacting a government official about a personal problem. See Verba, Sidney and Nie, Norman, Participation in America (New York 1972).Google Scholar

7 For recent studies of Canadian political participation see Sproule-Jones, Mark and Hart, Kenneth, “A Public Choice Model of Political Participation,” in this Journal, VI, no. 2 (June 1973), 175–99Google Scholar; Van Loon, Rick, “Political Participation in Canada,” this Journal, III (1970), 376–99Google Scholar

8 For the purpose of another project, the sample was stratified according to the degree of crowding in the households sampled. Of the households meeting qualifications expressed above one of every five with less than one person per dwelling unit room was included in the sample, and every household where the number of rooms was less than the number of people was included. In the following analysis weighting was done so that the two types of families are in proportion to their appearance in the population.

9 The focus of the main project on crowding and its impact was also the reason why non-white, non-European persons were excluded. This was done in order to minimize the possible effect of cultural differences on adaptation to crowding. For a similar reason, in order to diminish effects of household composition on adaptation to crowding, only intact families with children were sampled. However, participation levels in this sample are quite close to that reported by Van Loon from a nationwide sample: he found about 70 to 75 per cent vote regularly while in our sample 72.5 per cent had voted in the past two years. His data revealed that 20 to 25 per cent of the population are involved in “transitional” types of political activity (more active than just voting or talking politics, but less active than running for office, planning a campaign and so on). In our sample from 3 per cent to 21 per cent are engaged in these sorts of activities. See Van Loon, “Political Participation,” 378, and Table I of this paper.

10 Exact wordings of the items are as follows:

“There are a lot of ways for people to take part in political activities. Some people don't take part at all. Here are a number of things that some people might do. We would like to know if you have done any of these things in the last two years and if you have, how many times. Vote for a political candidate whose ideas you think are good ones? Talk to friends, family or other people you know to try to get them to vote for or against a candidate or issue? Give money to help someone win an election? Attend rallies, barbeques, meetings or things like that in connection with an election? Work in a political campaign for a candidate whose ideas you think are good ones?”

A second set of items: “During the past two years, have you attended any meetings in which tenants’ rights, problems with landlords, housing code enforcement, public housing or neighbourhood renewal were discussed?” “Are there conditions in your home that you believe make it an unsafe or hazardous place in which to live?” If yes, “Have you ever talked about these or any kinds of housing problems to a government official or political leader – such as an alderman, housing officer, someone in City Hall, or a local party or community leader?”

A final set of items were as follows: “There are many ways for people to show agreement or disagreement with what the government is doing. I would like to know which of these means you approve of as ways of showing disagreement with the government and which you disapprove of. I would also like to know if you have ever used any of these methods. Writing letters to elected officials – members of parliament, mayors, etc. or signing a petition; taking a petition around to try to get neighbours and people you know to sign it; going to a meeting at a government office to tell what you think about something the government is doing; taking part in protest meetings, rallies or marches which are permitted by local authorities; refusing to obey a law that one thinks is unfair; trying to show the government what you think by taking part in nonviolent sit-ins, mass demonstrations and things like that which are not permitted by local authorities.” The final three items were classified as “protest” the remainder as “traditional” acts.

11 An eigenvalue of 1.0 was used as the cutoff for rotation. The factor matrix was subjected to an oblique rotation. The loadings of the items comprising the major part of each dimension are found in Table II.

12 See fn. 6 above. It has been suggested that the dimensions as delineated may reflect a local versus national orientation in participation, rather than a functional orientation. This is possible, as the communal activities are most likely (though not inevitably) locally oriented. However, each of the other dimensions explicitly involve all levels of government, or make no distinction among governmental divisions. Further, if a local-national dimension was being tapped, one would expect municipal voting to load highly with the other local activities, rather than with other forms of voting.

13 Four attitudes about government were examined: trust in government, the belief that government is responsive, the belief that the respondent himself or herself could influence the government, and the belief that violence is useful or necessary to bring about change. These particular dimensions were delineated through a factor analysis of 13 attitudinal items. The components of each scale were: (1) individual influence – “It seems to me that whoever you vote for things go pretty much the same”; “Nothing I ever do seems to have any effect upon what happens in politics”; No matter what people think; a few people will always run things anyway”; (2) governmental responsiveness – “The federal government is pretty much run for the good of all people instead of for a few big groups looking out for themselves”; “An ordinary person doesn't have the chance he deserves in the law courts”; “I feel that my political leaders hardly care what people like me think or want”; (3) Trust in government – “Most politicians can be trusted to do what they think is best for the country”; “If I complained to a city agency they would fix up whatever was wrong”; (4) belief that cruelty or violence is necessary – “There are times when it almost seems better for people to take the law into their own hands rather than to wait for the government to do something”; “We might as well make up our minds that in order to make the world free, a lot of innocent people will have to suffer”; “To bring about changes for the good of mankind often requires cruelty.”

14 “Social Structure and Political Participation,” 364