Political Participation in a Changing World: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges in the Study of Citizen Engagement

ISBN-13: 9781138305984 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 130 str.

Yannis Theocharis; Jan W. Van Deth

Opis

Democracy's life elixir is political participation. In the last five decades, the avenues and means for political engagement have expanded continuously. This expansion has included activities as diverse as voting, signing petitions, blogging, tweeting, demonstrating, boycotting products, blocking traffic, joining flash mobs, attending meetings, throwing seed bombs, or donating money. The spread of internet-based technologies has reinforced this expansion. Despite the growing interest in measuring new forms of participation, there has been virtually no systematic empirical accounts on what these new and emerging forms of engagement look like, how they fit within the broader structure of well-known participatory acts conceptually and empirically, and how prevalent they are in various societies. Written in an accessible style, Yannis Theocharis and Jan W. van Deth offer a conceptual and empirical fairway to sail between the Charybdis of excluding many new modes of political participation by using dated conceptualizations, and the Scylla of stretching concepts and instruments to cover almost everything. Crucial questions analysed include:

• How do we recognise political participation if we see it?
• How do we avoid falling into the trap of considering everything as participation?
• How can new forms of political participation be measured? Do they fit into the general taxonomy of participatory activities?
• How widespread are new forms of political participation and who uses them?
• How do we study new and emerging forms of political participation, without excluding more conventional forms?

Political Participation in a Changing World is an essential companion to any student or scholar in the social sciences seeking to understand the concept of political participation, its evolution across time, and the various approaches to its study.

Spis treści

Preface  1. Would you recognize a form of political participation if you saw one?  2. The continuous expansions of political participation  3. The continuous expansions of concepts and definitions of political participation  4. Conceptualizing political participation  5. Measuring old and new forms of political participation  6. A road map for the study of political participation