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In recent years, the study of political participation has benefited from growing attention to the study of social networks. Historically, most explanations for political participation have focused on characteristics of individuals. Although these individual-level correlates do a "pretty good" job of predicting who participates, incorporating social networks deepens our understanding of the factors that lead people to express voice in the democratic process. Even though the participation literature has long been split between scholars who favor a focus on individuals and others who emphasize social networks, the two approaches need not be in tension. Instead, they complement one another. The individualistic factors known to correlate with participation-including education, religious attendance, political knowledge, political conviction, and civic duty-all have a social dimension. Adapted from the source document.

This article contributes to existing explanations of political participation by proposing that citizens' attitudes towards risk predict participation. I argue that people who are risk accepting participate in political life because politics offers novelty and excitement. Analyses of two independent Internet surveys establish a positive, significant relationship between risk attitudes and general political participation. The analyses also suggest that the relationship between risk attitudes and action varies with the political act: people who are more risk accepting are more likely to participate in general political acts, but they are no more or less likely to turn out in elections. Further analyses suggest that two key mechanisms—novelty seeking and excitement seeking—underlie the relationship between risk attitudes and political participation.

The signs are abundant that many of the institutions and processes of American politics are becoming increasingly direct. As communication technologies erode the mediating roles played by secondary leadership, citizens and public officials interact directly with each other more intensively and more frequently.As this gale has moved through our political system, different scholars have noted their own particular "straw in the wind." By far the most attention has been given to the declining capacity of party as a mechanism mediating between voters and office holders (Polsby, 1983; Kirkpatrick, 1978). A different viewpoint comes from Samuel Kernell, who has revised Richard Neustadt's work on the presidency by arguing that presidential power is increasingly secured and exercised through public opinion influence (Kernell, 1986). Those who have studied the activities of incumbent Congressmen and Senators note that they have also extended their direct contact with constituents: not only have the flows of mail into and out of congressional offices increased markedly over the past two decades, but the establishment of C-Span has brought congressional business into literally millions of homes (Abramson, Arterton, and Orren, 1988). Moreover, in a constant search for new ways of contacting citizens, congressmen are in the forefront of experimentation with cable television, satellites, VCRs and computer communications (Arterton, 1987).