Understanding Low Citizen Participation in America Essay

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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.

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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.

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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….....

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