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The Political Bases of Citizen Contacting: A Cross-National Analysis
Abstract
This article examines a mode of political participation that frequently has been overlooked--individual efforts to obtain assistance from government officials. Using the seven nation data set of Verba, Nie, and Kim, we develop and empirically evaluate alternative models of citizen contacting. Our first model draws on variations in the distribution of social and economic resources to explain the likelihood of contacting. The second focuses on differences in political ties to locate those most likely to contact government officials. We find greater support for the political ties model. Persons active in political parties and election campaigns are the most likely to engage in citizen contacting. Without political ties, few poor or uneducated persons would ask officials for assistance. We conclude by noting the more general theoretical and normative implications of our study.
... If this is true, then we cannot expect that all contactors are motivated by the same factors. These researchers have divided contactors into two groups: particularized-referent contactors who contact on behalf of self and family and those who contact not only for self and family but for others as beneficiaries (e.g., Verba and Nie 1972;Zuckerman and West 1985;Sharp 1982Sharp , 1984. Social-referent contactors have been found to be more like other political participants in demographic characteristics, skills, and attitudes, while particularized-referent contactors appear to defy standard explanations of political participation. ...
... Particularized-referent contactors, on the other hand, generally do not engage in the standard acts of political participation. Zuckerman and West (1985), however, have tested a theory of "political ties,'' in which they found that individuals who form links with officials via campaigning activities do participate more, regardless of the referent of contacting. Research indicates that social-referent contactors are those who have benefited most from voting, attending public meetings, cam paigning, working with others on community problems, and membership in groups while the findings are mixed at best for particularized-referent contactors. ...
... Campaigning. Zuckerman and West (1985) found that political party activity and compaigning activities provided strong explanations for both particularized-referent and social-referent contacting. They theorized that people who had campaigned had formed political ties with officials and that these ties would stimulate subsequent contacting of those offi cials. ...
Two theories to explain contacting have been advanced: the SES theory which argues that people with higher socioeconomic status have the resources and skills to contact and the need-awareness theory which states that contacting is motivated by need, regardless of SES. Using data from a 1985 survey of citizens in three Florida cities, these two theories were tested. Two very distinct groups of contactors emerged. Social-referent contactors were those people motivated primarily by socioeconomic status. Awareness of government officials, participation in other types of political activity, and to a lesser extent need, as measured by evaluations of city services, were also connected with social-referent contacting. Particularized-referent contactors were those who contacted because of need and awareness, regardless of socioeconomic status. That the effects of city remained significant after controlling for the other variables indicates that environmental context plays a significant yet relatively unexplored role in contacting.
... online polls and surveys). The nature of citizen participation varies depending on who takes the initiative of selecting and suggesting a policy agenda discussed during citizen participation processes [67,57]. Oasis provides both government-initiated and citizen-initiated e-participation services. ...
... Meanwhile, citizen-initiated eparticipation services range from email contact [67] to online policy forums. This research focuses on citizeninitiated e-participation, specifically online policy forums designed to provide citizens with an opportunity to initiate inputs about SMG's public policy and day-to-day operations. ...
... Political Participation. Citizen-initiated contact literature has suggested political participation as one key factor [56,67]. This research used two types of political participation. ...
While a growing body of literature has touted e-participation as a means of facilitating greater citizen participation in policy decision-making processes, little is known about the driving forces behind active citizen e-participation. Based on a literature review of social capital and citizen participation, the study develops a model of active e-participation. In this model, this study argues that three dimensions of social capital and citizen participation management are positively associated with active e-participation. To test several hypotheses, the study uses the 2009 E-Participation Survey data collected from 1,076 participants of the Cheon Man Sang Sang Oasis, an e-participation program administered by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in South Korea. Using ordered logistic regression analysis, the study finds that active e-participation is positively affected by citizens' trust in government, their volunteer experiences, weak offline social ties, and perceived quality responsiveness during the e-participation process.
... Reviewing the literature reveals three important realities about contacting; first, it is a sophisticated phenomenon thus there is little consensus among researchers on one model (set of factors) that can describe contacting in America. Second, there are many reasons why people contact the government, in that they may seek receiving benefits or services, file complaints, request information, and so forth (see Verba and Nie 1972;Hirlinger 1992;Zuckerman and West 1984). Third, regardless of who benefits from the contact (who is the final recipient), researchers argue that contacting always has a clear purpose (Hirlinger 1992;Jacob 1972;Jones et al. 1977;Peterson 1986;Sharp 1982;Zuckerman and West 1984). ...
... Second, there are many reasons why people contact the government, in that they may seek receiving benefits or services, file complaints, request information, and so forth (see Verba and Nie 1972;Hirlinger 1992;Zuckerman and West 1984). Third, regardless of who benefits from the contact (who is the final recipient), researchers argue that contacting always has a clear purpose (Hirlinger 1992;Jacob 1972;Jones et al. 1977;Peterson 1986;Sharp 1982;Zuckerman and West 1984). ...
... Since researchers established a relationship between contacting and the responsiveness of the government, Zuckerman and West (1984) argue that contacting can influence the processes and outcomes of policymaking. Why not? ...
The literature on political participation indicates that initiating contacts with the government is a vital form of civic engagement. Using this criterion to define participation, some researchers claim that students in general are apathetic about government and have poor efficacy about public affairs. The present study examines this assumption by exploring 18 factors that may influence college-student-initiated contact with federal, state, and local governments. A survey is administered to a random sample of 3500 students in five American states, namely Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. Findings suggest that students are neither apathetic nor lacking efficacy as 64% of them have initiated at least one contact in a 12-month period and many have even contacted more than once. Using multiple regression reveals that 11 factors influence students' contacting, namely age, level at college, gender, needs, efficacy, political and civic affiliation, final recipient of services, goods and information, role of teachers, class discussions, campus environment, and availability of computers and the Internet. These findings and their implications are discussed in detail.
... Macintosh and Whyte (2008) described e-participation as the use of web technologies to provide information and support 'topdown' engagement, or to foster 'ground-up' efforts to empower citizens and gain their support. This distinction between top-down and ground-up is consistent with previous citizen participation literature, which has distinguished government-initiated from citizen-initiated participation (Zukerman and West 1985;Thomas and Streib 2003). In the present research, we focus on e-participation initiated by citizensspecifically, online policy forums designed to give citizens an opportunity to initiate communication on SMG's public policy and day-to-day operations. ...
... Literature on citizen-initiated contact with government has suggested that political participation is one key factor (Thomas and Melkers 1999;Zukerman and West 1985). This research used two measures of political participation: voting participation and involvement in interest groups. ...
Although a growing body of literature has touted e-participation as a means of facilitating greater citizen participation in policy decision-making processes, little is known about the driving forces behind citizens’ use of e-participation. Based on a literature review of social capital and citizen participation, this study develops and tests a model proposing that three dimensions of social capital and three dimensions of citizen participation management should be positively associated with e-participation in agenda setting. Using data from a Korean e-participation survey conducted in 2009, we found that citizens tend to be more active e-participants when they have greater trust in government and are weakly tied to offline social groups. We also found that citizen participants’ perception of government responsiveness to their input can facilitate their e-participation. The study findings imply that local governments should pay more attention to the function of public trust in local government and provide quality feedback in response to citizen input. They should also be sensitive to how the social factors of e-participants can facilitate involvement in agenda setting.
... Party membership is a robust predictor of citizen contacting, even when the present office-holders are eliminated from the analysis. Our findings support the results of Zuckerman and West (1985) in demonstrating the importance of political ties as opposed to social resource variables. Contacting as a Channel of Political Involvement 111 ...
... Neither do they correlate as strongly as do the other variables. 13. Zuckerman and West (1985) use campaign activity as a measure of political ties. They admit that party membership is the most 'intuitively plausible indicator', but their data did not allow them to employ this measure. ...
Citizen-initiated contact with politicians is an increasing, but often neglected, form of political participation. Direct contact fits well with new participation trends that increased individualisation and a single-issue focus have brought forth, and is often interpreted as a participatory form that conforms with such new demands. Yet while political participation through most traditional channels is decreasing, direct-contact increase implies that people are still channelling involvement through the established institutions. Accordingly, this article argues that the significant increase in direct contacting of representatives is not an expression of protest behaviour. On the contrary, contacting shows strong adherence to representative democracy. It is related to conventional modes of political participation, above all party-related activities. This study examines contacting in relation to other forms of political involvement, using data from the Norwegian Citizenship Survey. The analyses reveal that even after removing from the analyses those who themselves hold public office, citizen-initiated contacting is related to party activity. Political ties are more important in explaining contacting than is the socio-economic status of the contactors.
... As several scholars indicates that the nature of citizen participation varies depending on who takes the initiative of selecting and suggesting a policy agenda within citizen participation processes (Thomas & Streib, 2003;Zukerman & West, 1985). This study is focused on an e-participation program in Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) called Oasis program that provides both government-initiated and citizen-initiated e-participation services. ...
Drawing on motivation theories and social network literature, this research analyzes the relationship between each gender’s perceived intrinsic and instrumental value of participation and the strength of offline social ties and active e-participation in a local governance setting. Based on E-Participation Survey data collected from the members of an e-participation program run by local government in South Korea, the study finds that male participants who perceive greater instrumental value of e-participation are more likely to use e-participation actively. On the other hand, women who perceive a greater intrinsic value of e-participation are more likely to be active users. Female respondents were also more likely to use e-participation when they were connected to offline social groups through weak rather than strong ties, presumably because they use e-participation as a supplementary channel to their social networks. There was no significant relationship between male respondents’ social ties and their active e-participation.
... Verder dateert het onderzoek op dit gebied voornamelijk van voor de introductie van het internet, waardoor elektronische kanalen als websites en e-mail niet onderzocht zijn (e.g. Hirlinger, 1992;Jones et al., 1977;Thomas, 1982;Zuckerman & West, 1985). Ondanks deze beperkende factoren is er wel een overzicht te maken van de belangrijkste factoren die de kanaalkeuze beïnvloeden. ...
Dit rapport geeft een overzicht van multichannel management (MCM) vanuit drie verschillende invalshoeken, namelijk vanuit het perspectief van de klant, de organisatie en de technologie. Alvorens elk van de invalshoeken toe te lichten, is er eerst een introductie over MCM op basis van verschillende wetenschappelijke onderzoeksgebieden. Bij het klantperspectief zijn vooral aspecten als kanaalkeuze, gebruik en beïnvloeding van het kanaalgedrag van belang. In het organisatieperspectief staat het huidige beleid van overheidsinstellingen op het gebied van MCM centraal. Tot slot geeft dit rapport een overzicht van de huidige technologische oplossingen voor MCM. Bij elk van deze invalshoeken worden inzichten uit de wetenschap en de praktijk meegenomen.
... We know, for instance, that those traditional contacts have reached high levels in recent decades, both in the United States and abroad. Estimates put the proportion of U.S. citizens who contact their local governments in a given year in the range of 40-55 percent, well above the rate of voter turnout for most municipal elections (see Thomas and Melkers 1999;Zuckerman and West 1985;Vedlitz and Veblen 1980, p. 33). Those rates might lead us to expect substantial contacting of government via the Web, too, although these latter rates could be depressed by the still limited utilization of computers by the American public and by the probable lack of either a personal or an interactive component to Web contacting. ...
Dramatic developments in information technology are transforming society, challenging our nation's many governments to keep pace. As e-governance grows in popularity, Web pages could well become the new face of government. But how are citizens responding? We suggest that government Web sites may provide a new vehicle for citizen-initiated contacts with government, and, drawing from the literature on those traditional contacts, we propose a number of hypotheses on citizen interaction with government via the Web. To test those hypotheses, we examine data from a survey concerning how Georgians are contacting government via the Web. We find that citizen visits to governmental Web sites are increasingly common, and as such appear to have become a major new form of the traditional citizen-initiated contact. To date, however, most of these Web contacts have been made only to obtain information, thus lacking the interactive quality crucial to other citizen-initiated contacts. As an encouraging finding for government, visitors to governmental Web sites appear to be mostly pleased with their experiences, rating those sites as at least comparable in quality to other Web sites. A discouraging finding, however, is that the demographics of these visitors suggest cause for concern, since the digital divide is even more pronounced among government Web site visitors than among Internet users in general. In the concluding section, we discuss the implications of the findings for government and for future research.
... Many advanced democracies have institutions that allow citizens to communicate their grievances to political officials. Several literatures in comparative politics examine this kind of state-society engagement, such as citizen "contacting" (Zuckerman and West, 1985) and the institution of the ombudsman (Rowat, 1968;Stacy, 1978;Kucsko-Stadlmayer, 2008). Scholars who examine established democracies, as well as states which have undergone recent regime change, tend to see complaint-making as a means of further democratization. ...
Prior to December 2011, instances of widespread collective mobilization were relatively
rare in contemporary Russia. Russian citizens are more likely to engage in a different
means of airing grievances: making an official complaint to the authorities. This article
considers how complaint-making, as a variety of political participation, may contribute
either to authoritarian resilience or to political liberalization. The political significance of
complaints made to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation is
examined. Since it is the broader political context that shapes the significance of
complaints, in the absence of meaningful elections individualized appeals to the state are
unlikely to promote democratic change, although they may allow for redress of individual
rights violations.
... Rational choice theory's concern with individual assessments of issues, parties, candidates, and the median voter maintains the analytic focus on all individuals as free-floating atoms. Only recently are there examples of studies that return to the Columbia school's emphasis on the effects of social context on electoral and other forms of political behavior in the United States(Abowitz 1990;Brown 1991; Giles and D'Antico 1982; Huckfeldt and Sprague 1987, 1992; Knoke 1990a Knoke , 1990bSheingold 1973;Wald, Owen, and Hill 1988;and Zuckerman and West 1985). ...
The question of how social and political networks influence political behavior stands at the theoretical heart of this article. A general hypothesis details the patterns of crisscrossing and overlapping lines of division and cohesion as they relate to voting decisions: As individuals vary in their membership in mutually reinforcing social and political networks, they vary in the likelihood of persistently voting for the same political party and never voting for other parties. Analyses of panel data on British (1964–1966; 1966–1970; 1964–1966–1970; 1970–1974) and American voters (1956–1960) found supporting evidence for a series of hypotheses and empirical generalizations derived from the general proposition.
... Citizen initiated contacts have been a field of study in public administration, but most of the studies in this field date from before the introduction of the internet as a service channel [e.g. 26,27,46,54]. ...
Citizens have various service channels at their disposal to interact with governmental agencies. In this paper we explore citizens' motives to choose a certain channel in a certain situation. We conducted a qualitative study to accumulate the most important behavioral determinants. Six groups of determinants were found; habit, channel characteristics, task characteristics, situational constraints, experiences and personal characteristics. People appear to generally follow two lines of decision making when choosing channels, the first is based on habits. When task complexity and ambiguity increase, people start reasoning and follow the second line; channel choice based on a thorough elaboration between task and channel characteristics.
In this paper, we investigate the determinants of contact between citizens and Members of Parliament (MPs) in Africa by combining theories of contact developed in advanced Western democracies with theories of clientelism developed in the Global South. Based on Afrobarometer data matched with constituency‐level electoral data, we provide a first analysis of the determinants of citizen–MP contact in 32 African countries, encompassing a broad range of regime types. We find that smaller districts and single‐member districts strengthen contact across regime types, while electoral competitiveness is only positively associated with contact in more democratic settings. In line with clientelist theories of public resource access, district links to national ruling coalitions are positively associated with contact, but we find little evidence of partisan bias. Overall, we find that contact theories travel remarkably well across regions and regime types, and we caution against interpreting clientelistic contacts as harmful for democracy.
Citizen-initiated contacts with the government considerably influence the outcomes of public management. Nevertheless, the following question remains inadequately explored and explained: Why are some citizens more likely to initiate contact with the government than others? This study examines how two distinct types of social ties, namely, daily and political ties, influence citizen contacting. We point out that daily and political ties can generally help reduce the information constraints involved in citizen contacting. Particularly, political ties may also increase citizens’ civic skills and capability to punish unresponsive government officials. We use original data from a nationally representative survey conducted in China in 2015 to verify our expectations. We find that citizens with strong political ties are significantly likely to initiate contact with local one-stop governments. Although consistently positive, the effects of daily ties are not statistically significant and tend to be smaller than the effects of political ties.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) came into being in response to the housing and debt crisis that accompanied the Great Recession. Created as a means for aggrieved consumers to bring problems to the attention of federal regulators empowered to fine banking and finance companies, the inflow of complaints began late in 2010 and has steadily risen in the years since. This research examines the variable emergence of complaints across five years, asking what types of constituencies are most likely to register grievances with the CFPB. The filing of complaints is mostly responsive to the presence of middle and upper income populations with mortgages, though contacts are also high from African American neighborhoods. Government contacting among lower income populations is facilitated by the presence of counseling and consultative services at the grassroots. Notably, legal aid services present in lower and moderate income neighborhoods are associated with higher complaint frequency for several financial products. Through street-level consultative organizations, the gap in government service provision separating the affluent, who complain on their own, and less privileged, who do not know where to express their grievances, can be reduced.
Esta investigación cuestiona el saber convencional de la disciplina acerca de las causas del voto y de la abstención en varios aspectos cruciales. El estudio demuestra que el consenso acerca de la supuesta irrelevancia de las variables del modelo del votante instrumental ha de ser puesto en cuarentena. Este modelo es capaz de explicar mucho más de lo que se suele aceptar, lo que pone en entredicho que el voto sea el talón de Aquiles de los modelos de elección racional en ciencia política. Para llegar a estas conclusiones, el trabajo analiza diferentes fuentes de beneficios instrumentales (información imperfecta, racionalidad limitada, minimización del riesgo) con bases de datos holandesas y españolas especialmente adecuadas para investigar las causas del voto. Los resultados cuestionan asimismo la aceptación acrítica de que los ciudadanos votan guiados exclusivamente por consideraciones morales y por otras razones relacionadas con el valor intrínseco del voto (deseo de apoyar a la democracia, expresividad, beneficios selectivos). La decisión de votar no puede ser explicada apelando solo al homo economicus o al homo sociologicus: ambos homini deben estar presentes para que la mayoría de ciudadanos se decida a votar. Una contribución adicional del estudio es su formulación de modelos pioneros que tratan como endógenas las variables del modelo instrumental y de las explicaciones no instrumentales del voto.
Este manual acerca de cómo elaborar proyectos de investigación en ciencias sociales cubre un importante hueco en la literatura universitaria. Con una nítida estructura, caracterizada por la presentación de muy diversos temas acompañados por ilustrativos ejemplos, el manual ayudará a estudiantes de posgrado, tanto de máster como de doctorado, a realizar aquellos trabajos imprescindibles para la obtención de sus respectivos títulos. El texto acompaña a los estudiantes en todas las fases de la investigación, desde el planteamiento de la pregunta hasta el diseño del análisis empírico, pasando por la búsqueda de material y la elaboración de hipótesis teóricas. Su estilo ameno y pedagógico no está reñido con el necesario rigor académico en la discusión de asuntos varios como los problemas de explicación o las formas de citación en diversas disciplinas, como la sociología, la ciencia política y la economía.
The general argument of the theories of social capital is that the actors that are "better connected" "do better". However, a disagreement exists in the literature about what it means to be "better connected". Burt and Coleman proposed two "competing" network mechanisms responsible for social capital. Later, Lin proposed a model as an initial step towards building a network theory of social capital in which these two mechanisms are described as two different types of social capital. In this article sources, network mechanisms, and returns of these two types of social capital namely bonding and bridging social capitals are discussed. The purpose is not to import another fad or a metaphor to the Turkish public administration literature; but rather to highlight the analytical properties of a promising development in the literature. For this purpose testable hypothesis are formulated from the literature.
Americans rail against so-called special interests but at the same time many members of society are themselves represented in one form or another by organized groups trying to affect the policymaking progress. This concise but thorough text demonstrates that interest groups are involved in the political system at all levels of government – federal, state, and local – and in all aspects of political activity, from election campaigns to agenda setting to lawmaking to policy implementation. Rather than an anomaly or distortion of the political system, it is a normal and healthy function of a pluralist society and democratic governance. Nonetheless, Nownes warns of the dangers of unwatched interest group activity, especially in the realms of the electoral process and issue advocacy.
Direct mayoral elections have in recent decades become an important and popular feature of many local governments across Europe. The direct election of the mayor enhances the accountability and transparency of local political leadership and gives voters the opportunity to gain important influence on local politics. This contrasts with councillors who choose the mayor in single-party private settings. This article provides a case study analysis of two directly elected mayors in contrasting political settings, namely England and Slovenia. Whereas England is regarded as the mother of all Parliaments, Slovenia’s democratic traditions are more recent. Yet nonetheless Slovenia displays all the features of a strong local democracy where an independent mayoral system operates within a nonpartisan political setting. By contrast, whereas England provides the longest-standing case of local democracy in Europe, directly elected mayors have only recently been introduced into the political system, the outcome of which has been mixed in terms of successfulness and acceptance by national political parties within municipalities.
Using Detroit Area Study data on community life and politics, this paper demonstrates the utility of an alternative model of political participation, one based on measures of competing interests and role obligations. The study documents the significance of social context, above and beyond measures of social status, in determining individuals' levels of political activity. In addition, it indicates the need to examine the participation of men and women separately given the different combinations of social interests and obligations vested in the male and female roles. This model's combination of sociodemographic variables, at both individual and contextual levels, significantly increases the ability to explain micro-level participation above that of previous models.
Public managers in Western democracies have felt growing pressures in recent decades to involve citizens more in the work of public administration, perhaps transforming what was once viewed as a largely solitary technical enterprise into a community production. On the heels of this "participation revolution" has come the "information revolution, "wherein a vartety of new information and telecommunications technologies, including computers and modem linkages, Internet connections, electronic mail, and fax transmissions, is transforming society, economy and government. Although there has been much discussion of the likely effects of each of these revolutions, relatively little attention has been paid until recently to the interaction of the two revolutions, especially to how the information revolution may impact public involvement. The purpose of this chapter is to speculate on that impact. After first explaining the specifics of the two revolutions, the chapter will speculate on the possible effects of technology on public involvement in public administration, both for public involvement in general and for various specific techniques of involvement. A concluding section will consider the chapter's action implications for scholars, policymakers and public administrators.
Recent meta-analysis of research on citizen-initiated contacting of government officials revealed that the findings are basically an artifact of the method used. Macroanalytic studies using aggregate data find a negative or curvilinear relationship between contacting and socioeconomic status (SES), and microanalytic studies using survey data find a positive or null relationship between contacting and SES. This author argues that almost all survey researchers have used an invalid operational measure of contacting. Analysis of results from a Birmingham, Alabama, survey, which defined contacting in the conventional way and with specific, bounded-and aided-recall questions, strongly suggests that much of what researchers know or think they know about contacting is suspect.
In this article we examine the claim that certain characteristics of a community's political environment and specific attributes of a citizen's social context may stimulate participation in local economic development policy-making. Using data from a national survey of city council members, we find that several contextual and institutional factors affect the extent of citizen contacting regarding economic development policy. In particular, the diversity of campaign support received by council members and the amount of time that they devote to council duties tend to stimulate citizen contacts. Ward or district representation tends to increase contacting, ceteris paribus, but contacting of ward representatives tends to diminish as they serve more years on the city council.
Research on the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and the mobilization of officials has produced conflicting results. A number of conceptual and methodological problems may have contributed to such results. In this study, we examine the effects of SES on contacting officials in a way that avoids many of these problems. Focusing on the mobilization of officials in response to various neighborhood problems and restricting the analysis to individuals who perceive a particular neighborhood situation as a big problem, we found that income has no effect on the likelihood of contacting officials and education has a weak though inconsistent effect. We also found that the best predictors of contacting officials were having gotten together with neighbors to solve the problem and being a member of a block club.
Putin and Medvedev have created new models of citizenship while reforming the welfare state. The impact of the global financial crisis raises the question of what might happen if the state cannot fulfill its part of the bargain.
This article examines Chinese institutions designed to funnel citizen opinions to leaders. It argues that the dynamic between individuals hoping to solve grievances and officials hoping to scout out problems strengthens higher-level control over subordinates. The process, when done well, may promote regime legitimacy.
Citizen-initiated contacts represent an important, yet perplexing, category of political participation. The authors attempt to provide a comprehensive explanation of when and why citizens initiate contacts. They draw from prior research to summarize knowledge about these contacts and the measurement problems that have plagued earlier research. To explore the bases for citizen-initiated contacts, they use survey data on contacts with various municipal departments of the city of Atlanta. Logistic regressions of 15 different types of contacts reveal perceived needs as the most consistently significant predictor of most types. The influence of socioeconomic status over contacting is indirect.
This article applies network theory to consider the effects of neighborhood council reform on city governance in Los Angeles. The authors argue that neighborhood councils have the potential to change elite-dominated governance through several network effects: development of bridging social capital—network relationships that cross-cut traditional community cleavages, broadening of horizontal networks that improve information required for collective action, and creation of newties that elevate previously peripheral groups in the system of political communication. Based on field research and a network survey of neighborhood council board members, the authors find that although bonding ties help facilitate collective action, they also maintain social stratification because they develop between similar groups and involve status seeking. The development of weaker bridging ties among more diverse groups appears to promote mobilization through information sharing. Thus, bonding and bridging ties appear to play complementary roles in promoting information dissemination and mobilization among neighborhood councils.
One major way citizens interact with local government is through individual contacts with public officials. Applying multivariate analysis to data from a 1985 study of three Florida cities, the authors find that need (defined as perceptions of government mis- or inaction) and awareness of whom to contact best explains contacting by people who clearly attach no larger social significance to their acts (particularized-referent contactors). On the other hand, social-referent contactors (those who see their contacts as affecting both themselves and others) are more likely to be people with both higher socioeconomic status and a greater sense of need.
In the study of Australian mass political behaviour, political party preference has been well documented but political par ticipation has not. Using factor analysis this article establishes that the four modes of orthodox political participation which have been identified in a wide variety of national settings, viz. campaigning, voting, communal activity and personalised con tacting, apply also in Australia. Furthermore, Australia is in the cross-national mainstream in terms of the factors most promi nent in determining participation and also, to the extent the data permit such judgements, in the proportions of its citizens who participate in different political activities. The article develops an explanatory model containing an array of social background and subjective political orientation variables and applies it in turn to the four separate dimensions and to a com bined participation scale. Among other factors, interest in pol itics, strength of partisanship, place of residence and education feature as key determinants of participation. In broad terms, mass political participation is striking for the regularity of its frequency and causal antecedents in many different cultures.
The topic of grass-roots participation in China has acquired special interest in light of the local economic and political reforms introduced in the post-Mao period. This paper explores some major modes of participation, issues motivating participation, and the determinants of participation. The findings are based on interviews held in early 1990 with probability samples drawn from four countryside counties. The analysis emphasizes three modes of ''autonomous'' participation: cooperative actions, voicing opinions to cadres, and contacting representatives. Participants pursued selective and collective goods and were strategic in combining particular modes with particular problem areas. Determinants of participation included traditional resource model predictors but also unique predictors in the form of holding a second occupation, being a party member, and residing in a specific county. Local activists appear to be using new and traditional methods in moving toward more proactive, collective, and strategic forms of behavior.
This study explores those factors associated with older Americans' awareness of programs, use of programs, and program satisfaction. Among variables commonly assumed to be tied to the three stages of program encounters are social and personal resources, need, and program characteristics. A sample of rural elderly provides a data base for studying the extent to which these are, infact, related to the different stages. Some implications for programs for older Americans are suggested.
This unique study presents the results of a cross-national analysis of citizenship and participation among citizens in twelve European democracies. Research on the future and quality of contemporary democracy is usually restricted to focus either on political participation, on particular aspects of citizenship, or on social activities, exclusively. This new book offers the first empirical investigation of the relationships both between social and political involvement, and between 'small-scale' and 'large-scale' democracies. Citizenship and Involvement in European Democracies offers representative samples of the populations in a selection of European countries between 2000-2002, including: Denmark, Germany (East and West), Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The leading contributors provide new theoretical insights and offer a broad conceptualization of citizenship, stimulating the ongoing discussions about the problems and challenges of democratic political systems. This book has a companion volume entitled Social Capital and Associations in European Democracies edited by William A. Maloney and Sigrid Roßteutscher (Routledge, 2006). Both volumes will be of great interest to students and researchers of European politics, comparative politics and sociology. © 2007 Jan W. van Deth, José Ramón Montero, and Anders Westholm for selection and editorial matter. All rights reserved.
Among variables found to predict individuals' bureaucratic contacts are need, awareness of programs, socioeconomic status, political orientation, social involvement, and political participation. This study reports a full multivariate analysis of the predictors of bureaucratic contact, using a sample of 456 older Americans, to determine the relative impact of each of these. Two indicators of bureaucratic contact are used as dependent variables: contact with bureaucracies about some problem and actual use of programs. Results are discussed, with special focus on the different patterns of findings for the two dependent variables.
This article examines the responsiveness of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) to contacts initiated by members of Congress, interest groups, and private citizens. I develop and test hypotheses regarding the importance of internal bureaucratic factors (e.g., workload) and external political forces (e.g., contactor characteristics). Although previous research, which focuses on urban service bureaucracies, indicates that procedurally neutral rules related to agency missions are the primary predictors of responsiveness, I demonstrate that political considerations exerted substantial influence over HCFA responsiveness. For example, the agency was in some ways more responsive to congressional contacts than to contacts initiated by groups and citizens. These results suggest that scholars of legislative-executive relations should pay more attention to contacts as these routine, ongoing encounters may affect the extent to which bureaucratic policy choices are consistent with the preferences of elected officials and their constituents.
Concepts associated with theories of relative deprivation and distributive injustice are used to examine beliefs about overprivilege and underprivilege in the Chinese countryside. The data consist of interviews conducted with a probability sample of villagers residing in four counties. Open-ended questions were used to ascertain the magnitude and nature of felt injustices. Local officials are widely seen as unfairly advantaged and common people as widely disadvantaged, results that depart from those observed in western studies. The presence of personal problems and contextual features influence beliefs about local injustice. Even after controlling for other powerful predictors, perceptions of injustice continue to have a positive impact on local political activity. These results are interpreted in terms of the spheres and standards of justice and the relationship between distributive and procedural justice.
In addition to improving efficiency and transparency of government services, e-government may increase the frequency of interaction between citizens and government as well as improve perceptions of quality and trust in government more broadly. Analyses of citizen-initiated contact with government using Pew Internet and American Life Project survey data indicate that e-government has motivated citizen-initiated contact with government among some demographic groups and magnified existing gaps for others. Online citizen-initiated contact improves the quality of interactions with government; however, the findings here do not support the argument that e-government increases trust among its users. Findings are consistent with the goals of the American government in adopting and promoting e-government.
This study draws on a four-county probability survey of Chinese countryside residents in order to assess the participation levels of women and men in light of postliberation developments and the impact of reform in the post-Mao era. Participation rates for men exceed those for women across a variety of modes, a gap that remains substantial when other relevant traits are held constant and one which resembles that found in more open societies. An especially helpful trait for women is that of having a second occupation. Gender inequalities take on a parabolic shape across age, a pattern partially accounted for by similar inequalities in education experienced by different birth cohorts. In accordance with explanations offered in other polities, the lower participation rates for Chinese women stem from cross-sex differences in contemporary life situations, institutional and structural mechanisms, and preadult socialization patterns.
The Internet offers a new means by which citizens may contact government to express their views or concerns, and it raises interesting empirical and theoretical questions about whether citizen contacts are affected by communication media. This article uses survey data to explore hypotheses about whether means of communication shape contacting activity. It compares Internet-based contacts with traditional contacts, showing statistically significant but for the most part substantively small differences. Effects of technology are of two kinds, those affecting only the likelihood of citizens being active in communicating with government and those affecting the frequency or intensity of communication among those who are active. The article discusses these findings in terms of transitional effects of technology, which arise from uneven distribution of the technology in society, and in terms of inherent effects, which attend to the technology itself. The most important inherent effects involve gender and political connectedness: The gender gap in contacting is larger on the Internet than in traditional forms of communication, and political connectedness has a weaker association with communication through the Internet.
The contacting of public oficials is a major form of political participation. Using data from the 1987 NORC General Social Survey, this study expands the scope of contacting research by examining the determinants of contacting behavior at the state and national level as well as at the local level. Overall contacting at the local level is determined by SES, efficacy, awareness, and political ties. At the extralocal level, race, ideology (liberalism), and personal economic dissatisfaction are also significant factors. When contactors are divided into general-referent and particularized-referent contactors, we find that SES is an important determinant for general but not for particularized contacting.
There has been much research in gerontology and political science on why people use programs. This article synthesizes extant work and examines the impact of social resources, personal resources, need, and values on program awareness and use. The data base is 456 older Americans in rural upstate New York Results show that need, personal resources, social resources, and program awareness all have some influence on respondents' use of programs.
Citizen-initiated contacts, often with requests for services or information, complaints or opinions, occupy a great portion of citizen involvement with local governments. The ease and low cost of emails opens a new agenda for the contacts. Governments not only have to provide convenient and friendly access points on the websites to receive these voices, but also have to respond to them in a timely and responsive way. Responsiveness invites more usage and imposes more caseloads on bureaucrats and governments as well. How can a government develop and manage an efficient, timely and responsive citizen-initiated email handling system? We conduct a longitudinal in-depth case study of Taipei City Mayor's Mailbox, a successful citizen-initiated email handling system existing for over 12 years. Through the study of the development process, we find the actors, humans and non-humans, and their interplays shape the Mailbox. Several important issues are identified including an evolutionary, incremental and emergent process, citizens' dissatisfaction as an actor, continuous involvement of Mayor and Commissioners, and engaging street-level bureaucrats. The study contributes greatly to understand the evolution of E-Government which is underspecified in the E-Government literature.
La tesis estudia los factores que inciden sobre el voto, esto es, sobre la decisión delos ciudadanos de votar o abstenerse, decisión que entronca con cuestiones teóricas ysustantivas fundamentales de la ciencia política.La tesis regresa a los orígenes y somete a un contraste empírico riguroso la teoría deAnthony Downs (1957) sobre la abstención racional en su formulación literal. Parapoderlo hacer, utiliza una encuesta holandesa increíblemente detallada (DPES, 1998)que permite trabajar con indicadores de todas las variables que aparecían en la ecuaciónoriginal de Downs, de algunos de sus más importantes refinamientos posteriores, asícomo de las principales teorías alternativas, como las que entienden el voto como unacto expresivo, de consumo, o no-instrumental.Los resultados respaldan una visión del voto como un acto sencillo, que puede serpropiciado tanto por motivaciones instrumentales como de consumo, donde las primerasson tan importantes como las segundas. Los ciudadanos no votan sólo porqueconsideran que votar es valioso en sí mismo (porque entienden que votar es un debersocial y que el voto contribuye a sostener la democracia), también lo hacen porqueprefieren un partido a otro y quieren contribuir a su victoria.La tesis no se limita a verificar si Downs y sus seguidores estaban en lo cierto o no.Se adentra en nuevas direcciones, y obtiene resultados novedosos y originales,especialmente, por lo que se refiere a las relaciones entre las variables independientes.Por ejemplo, descubre que hay distintas combinaciones de variables que permiten darcuenta del voto. Muestra que es cierto lo señalado por muchos estudios, a saber, que losbeneficios instrumentales no son condición necesaria para el voto, pero que,contrariamente a lo que se solía dar por hecho, sí son condición suficiente para llevar alos ciudadanos a las urnas. Muestra que, efectivamente, las motivaciones de consumo,como el deber social, son condición suficiente para el voto, pero que, pese a lapresunción generalizada, no son una condición necesaria. Según esta visión del voto, lasconsideraciones instrumentales y las de consumo entran en la ecuación no sólo de formaaditiva sino, también, de forma interactiva.2 / Expresividad, cálculo y movilización en la decisión de votarA partir de aquí, la tesis sondea caminos prácticamente inexplorados. Si losbeneficios instrumentales son relevantes, es porque están sobrestimados, entonces, esnecesario examinar las causas de la eventual sobrestimación: ¿se debe a limitaciones enla racionalidad de los individuos y, en concreto, a su falta de comprensión del caráctermultiplicativo de los elementos que conforman los beneficios instrumentales? ¿Se debea la imperfección de la información barajada por los ciudadanos y, en concreto, a lasobrestimación del impacto del propio voto sobre los resultados electorales? Y, en estecaso, ¿cuáles son los factores que condicionan la percepción de dicho impacto?, esto es¿qué factores afectan a P y condicionan la magnitud de su eventual sobrestimación?De igual manera, mostrar que el voto es, al menos, en parte, un acto de consumo,que la gente vota porque le gusta votar o porque siente que tiene el deber de hacerlo tansólo traslada la pregunta un paso (Barry 1970, 15): hay que explicar por qué a algunosciudadanos votar les gusta más o les parece más perentorio que a otros. Para responder atodas estas cuestiones, la segunda parte de la tesis formula y contrasta modelos en losque las principales variables independientes pasan a ser dependientes.Los resultados de esta tesis tienen implicaciones teóricas y empíricas importantes.La tesis tiene relevancia teórica porque la decisión de votar es difícil de comprender, yninguna de nuestras explicaciones es suficientemente satisfactoria teórica yempíricamente (Aldrich 1993, 246-47). Es sustantivamente relevante porque el votoconstituye el acto central mediante el que los ciudadanos seleccionan a susrepresentantes políticos en los regímenes democráticos, con lo que explicaradecuadamente la decisión de votar es, probablemente, una de las cuestiones esencialesa las que la ciencia política debería dar respuesta de forma adecuada (Aldrich 1993,246). Es metodológicamente relevante porque demuestra la importancia de trabajar conbuenos indicadores de las teorías del voto, porque evidencia que los costes y losbeneficios intrínsecos no se pueden subsumir en costes netos, y porque prueba losproblemas de utilizar medidas indirectas para los primeros. La tesis tiene relevanciaepistemológica porque el fracaso empírico de los modelos instrumentales en su versiónmás ortodoxa y tradicional ha generado dudas importantes acerca de los límites y dela capacidad explicativa de los modelos de elección racional (Barry 1970, 13-23; Greeny Shapiro 1994, 47-71): lo que se cuestiona, lo que está en juego es la validez de losmodelos de elección racional como propuestas para estudiar y explicar los fenómenosde las ciencias sociales.
Although citizen–initiated contacting of municipal bureaucrats has been the subject of extensive research over the past quarter century, there has been relatively little research on the contacting of municipal elected officials or on why citizens might contact elected officials instead of appointed administrators. This research explores that question by using survey data on citizen–initiated contacts with various elected officials and appointed administrators in Atlanta, Georgia. The findings suggest a several–part answer: First, citizensin Atlanta anyway—usually prefer to contact city departments directly rather than through their elected officials, presumably because most contacts involve concerns about municipal services that a department must eventually address. Second, citizens contact both departments and elected officials for many of the same reasons; the most prominent reason is perceived problems with services. Third, the contacting of elected officials appears to be influenced by frustration with the bureaucracy (i. e., dissatisfaction with bureaucratic helpfulness when the bureaucracy is contacted) and also by ignorance of the bureaucracy (i.e., not knowing who to contact there). We conclude this article with a discussion of the possible implications of the findings for public administrators.
When citizens contact local government agencies, they generally attempt to influence service delivery decisions made by these bureaucracies. This paper examines the nature of citizen contacts, and the results of such contacts, with respect to the enforcement of environmental ordinances in Detroit, Michigan. We first examine the mechanisms responsible for the generation of citizen contacts. Assuming relations among citizen awareness, service need, and social well-being, we derive a downward-opening parabola as appropriate for describing the relationship between social well-being and propensity to contact a service agency. Using data on citizen contacts from City of Detroit agencies merged with census data, we find the expected relationship in evidence. We find that the Environmental Enforcement Division generally responds to citizen contacts, but the quality of the response varies with social characteristics of neighborhoods.
Economic development has consequences for many aspects of social life. Some of these social consequences, in turn, have an impact on a nation's political life. Studies of social mobilization, for example, have demonstrated that economic development is associated with sharp increases in the general level of political participation. These studies report strong relationships between aggregate socio-economic measures such as per capita income, median level of education, and percentage of the population in urban areas, on one hand, and aggregate measures of political participation, such as voting turnout, on the other. Simultaneously, scholars conducting surveys of individual political participation consistently have reported that an individual's social status, education, and organizational memberships strongly affect the likelihood of his engaging in various types of political activities.
In spite of the consistency of both sets of findings across many studies and although the findings appear frequently in analysis of political stability, democracy, and even strategies of political growth, we know little about the connections between social structure and political participation. With few exceptions the literature on individual participation is notable for low level generalizations (the better educated citizen talks about politics more regularly), and the absence of systematic and comprehensive theory. While the literature on the growth of national political participation has been more elaborate theoretically, the dependence on aggregate measures has made it difficult to determine empirically how these macro social changes structure individuals' life experiences in ways which alter their political behavior.
The topic of citizen-initiated contacting of government officials has received increasing attention, but research has yielded conflicting findings on the relationship of socioeconomic status to contacting behavior. Various studies find that the two are negatively, positively, parabolically, or negligibly related. Data are presented supporting the claim of a positive relationship, and reasons for the conflicting findings are explored. The need-awareness model, associated with the finding of a parabolic relationship between socioeconomic status and contacting at the aggregate level, is tested at the individual level of analysis. While the importance of the need and awareness factors is affirmed, the overall model is not supported. As with other modes of political participation, sense of efficacy is found to be an important predictor of contracting, but the positive relationship between socioeconomic status and contacting remains when efficacy is controlled. © 1982, American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
Geographically based intermediary groups in cities, primarily the political party structure and community groups, can potentially affect the distribution of public services to neighborhoods in three ways. First, they can stimulate citizen demands for services, which urban bureaucracies transform into outputs; more demands yield more services. Second, urban service agencies may grant special consideration to demands mediated by the intermediary structures, producing more output per demand for mediated demands. Finally, parties and groups may intervene in neighborhoods to co-produce services, gaining more impact from agency efforts than in neighborhoods not represented by strong intermediary structures.
Using data on citizen complaints, agency outputs and service impacts in neighborhoods, this study of building code enforcement in Chicago finds that the party structure is efficacious at all three stages of the service provision process, but that groups are not effective at any stage.
The topic of citizen-initiated contacting of government officials has received increasing attention, but research has yielded conflicting findings on the relationship of socioeconomic status to contacting behavior. Various studies find that the two are negatively, positively, parabolically, or negligibly related. Data are presented supporting the claim of a positive relationship, and reasons for the conflicting findings are explored. The need-awareness model, associated with the finding of a parabolic relationship between socioeconomic status and contacting at the aggregate level, is tested at the individual level of analysis. While the importance of the need and awareness factors is affirmed, the overall model is not supported. As with other modes of political participation, sense of efficacy is found to be an important predictor of contracting, but the positive relationship between socioeconomic status and contacting remains when efficacy is controlled.
When citizens contact local government agencies, they generally attempt to influence service delivery decisions made by these bureaucracies. This paper examines the nature of citizen contacts, and the results of such contacts, with respect to the enforcement of environmental ordinances in Detroit, Michigan. We first examine the mechanisms responsible for the generation of citizen contacts. Assuming relations among citizen awareness, service need, and social well-being, we derive a downward-opening parabola as appropriate for describing the relationship between social well-being and propensity to contact a service agency. Using data on citizen contacts from City of Detroit agencies merged with census data, we find the expected relationship in evidence. We find that the Environmental Enforcement Division generally responds to citizen contacts, but the quality of the response varies with social characteristics of neighborhoods.
Citizen-initiated contacts with government agencies are now recognized as an increasingly important form of political participation, yet a form not as easily explained as are most traditional forms of political participation. This report attempts to explain those contacts through an analysis of survey data on contacts with ten departments of municipal government in Cincinnati, Ohio. The research first tested the prevailing theories of contacts, the traditional "socioeconomic model" and the newer parabolic model, and found both wanting. The research then developed a new "clientele participation" model, which argued that contacts are a function primarily of the individual's perceived needs for an agency's services and secondarily of the socioeconomic model, presumably the general political attitudes and information that also affect traditional forms of political participation. This model proves to be a much better predictor of the Cincinnati contacts than is either the socioeconomic model alone or the parabolic model.