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What affects who participates in politics? In most studies of political behaviour it is found that individuals with higher education participate to a larger extent in political activities than individuals with lower education. According to conventional wisdom, education is supposed to increases civic skills and political knowledge that functions as the causal mechanisms triggering participation. However, recently a number of studies have started dealing with the question of whether education is a direct cause for political participation or merely works as a proxy for other factors, such as pre-adult socialization or social network centrality. This review article provides an introduction and critical discussion of this debate.

University of Maryland, Baltimore. Nursing. Ph.D. 2008 ; Background. The study of nursing political participation is important because nurses need to develop skills required to move nursing's political agenda's forward. Nursing is 2.9 million strong but lacks the voice to take charge of its destiny. Nursing has the potential to be a powerful force in setting the agenda for health care reform. The purpose for this study was to evaluate political participation of nurses across all levels of education, to determine how nurses define political participation, identify the factors that motivate/hinder activity, and establish the stage of political development for the sample. Methods. The study utilized a cross sectional mail survey design to measure political participation at the individual nurse's level. The sample was surveyed utilizing the 2004 modification of Hanley's (1983, 1987) Political Participation tool. Open-ended questions were added to the survey to obtain the meaning of political action, note the prompts for action, and if not active to suggest what could be done to increase participation. Through analysis of both the qualitative and quantitative data, the researcher was able to evaluate the sample's level of political development as identified by Cohen et al. (1996). Findings. Nurses possessing advanced degrees were more politically active with respect to campaigning activities. Participatory, involved, informed, voting and effecting changes were the major themes derived from the qualitative data. Multiple linear regression was utilized to identify factors contributing to political activity. Organizational membership, age, political attitudes, and family background variables were found to be significantly and independently associated with nurses' political activity. Analysis of the sample's stage of political development demonstrated that the sample is in the initial stages of political development. Conclusions. This study explored political participation of nurses across all levels of education with ...

Wood and Flinders re-center political participation on the
idea of "nexus politics." The effort is laudable because it contributes to other
ongoing efforts at broadening our understanding of the nature of 'political'
participation. Unfortunately, in our view, the authors misspecify new forms
of political participation that have emerged by: (1) failing to take Henrik
Bang's work seriously; (2) focusing exclusively on motivation/intention, so
that an action is "political," only if the person acting sees it as "political"; (3)
seeing all political participation as necessarily oppositional.

In this paper, I propose that depression is a political phenomenon insofar as it has political sources and consequences. I then investigate one aspect of this argument—whether depression reduces participation. I hypothesize that individuals with depression lack the motivation and physical capacity to vote and engage in other forms of political participation due to somatic problems and feelings of hopelessness and apathy. Moreover, I examine how depression in adolescence can have downstream consequences for participation in young adulthood. The analyses, using both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, show that voter turnout and other forms of participation decrease as the severity of depressed mood increases. These findings are discussed in light of disability rights and potential efforts to boost participation among this group.

This essay identifies and discusses the factors and forces arising from finance that influence peoples' political participation. It does so at two levels: (1) micro-economic or individual and (2) macro-economic and social. We find that both factors and forces at work are significantly adverse to political participation at all levels. The prime intermediate factor here is economic inequality, which is the subject of a companion essay published earlier.

Lawyers probably hold public office & engage in political activity more than members of any other single occupational group. Examined is the hypothesis that, in Ur areas, individual practitioners are more active politically than lawyers in large law firms. The purpose is to employ explicitly political variables, notably political party identification, to determine the influence of structural legal variables on lawyers' political activity. The data were collected in a mail survey of lawyers in Wichita, Kan during the spring of 1974. Of 708 lawyers surveyed, 351 (49.6%) returned usable questionnaires. A political activity index was constructed from seven items drawn from L. Milbrath, Political Participation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965). Lawyers with firms of fewer than five members were classified with solo lawyers; those with firms of eleven or more members, as large firm lawyers. Analysis of the data reveals that political activity and type of practice are related, but political party identification qualifies the relationship. Only for Republicans are type of practice & political activity related at an acceptable level of statistical significance. Political independents are not very politically active, regardless of practice situation. Democratic attorneys in all practice situations exhibit a relatively high propensity to engage in political activity. Democratic lawyers have greater opportunities for participation &/or are more likely to be co-opted into politics than are Republican attorneys. The type of practice, however, seems to affect lawyers' propensities to engage in specific types of political activity, even when party is held constant. Attorneys in small firms or solo practice exhibit a strong tendency to seek & hold office; large firm lawyers tend to restrict their political activities to such other forms of participation as making campaign contributions. The type of legal practice may also help explain the amount of interest lawyers have in politics. Republican solo & small firm lawyers express as much interest in politics as do their Democratic counterparts, but Democrats in small firms are much more likely to be highly active in politics. Legal practice may help inspire political interest or ambition, but the pool of potential leaders available to the parties may influence political participation. 2 Tables. Modified AA.

Delayed gratification is associated with myriad desirable outcomes—like eating right and saving money. In this article, I explore whether it also increases political participation. To this end, I provide an explicit decision-theoretic framework, which predicts that less patient individuals are less willing to vote and to donate; these forms of participation are costly before Election Day, but their rewards are partially delayed. I then discuss how to elicit individual time preferences with real monetary incentives. In the empirical analysis, I provide evidence from a representative U.S. survey showing that monetary discount rates predict turnout and donations. Though mostly correlational and exploratory, these findings hold when controlling for a host of potential confounds. Overall, my results indicate that impatient types are less likely to prepare for and ultimately participate in elections. This sheds light on when and how deep psychological traits constrain political decisions involving a trade-off over time.

The stereotype of the politically ignorant and apathetic Asian American continues to be widespread. However, Asian Americans are in fact politically involved and active. This study examines Asian American political involvement through partisanship, policy/candidate preferences, and political participation in different forms (voting, protesting, and organizing). Additionally, the study examines the differences in political involvement of Asian Americans as a general racial group versus the different ethnic subgroups within the Asian race. We found that there are differences in amounts of political involvement based on different ethnic subgroups, showing that future analysis of Asian American political involvement should look at the different ethnic subgroups within the race rather than generalizing the data for all Asian Americans. It also shows that certain ethnic groups are more politically involved and/or have different preferences than other ethnic groups due to the diversity of experiences and backgrounds within the subgroups of the Asian race.

Analysis of complementary data sets, a 1965–1973 panel study of young adults and their parents and the 1956–1976 Michigan presidential election series, shows that the late 1960s and early 1970s were a deviant period where participation in American politics was concerned. During this time, the young were more active politically than their elders, substantially increasing their participation from previous years, and Americans on the ideological left participated more than those at other positions along the ideological continuum. While this surge of left-wing activism was not restricted to the young, it probably accounts for the relative participation advantage enjoyed by the young. These findings challenge the "conventional wisdom" about patterns of participation in America. They are best explained by recognizing that the opportunities for political action among the American citizenry are not fixed, but instead vary with changes in the political stimuli across different periods.

The legal right of American Indian tribes to self-government still exists in principle, but during the last hundred years, it has been ignored or in fringed upon by regulation or local interpretation to such an extent, especially since the Civil War, that the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 which meant to restore self-government in local affairs seemed unrealistic to many Indian tribes. Since 1950, government interference in tribal affairs has again increased, both at the national and state levels. The participation of Indians in political life is growing. Over 32,000 were in the armed services during the last World War. As citizens, since 1924 they are increasingly participating in local and national elections.—Ed.