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Since Robert Dahl coined the concept polyarchy, several attempts were made to develop indices that aim to measure citizens' political participation in a given polity. The present paper evaluates these efforts and shows that most of them equal the mentioned dimension to the extension of suffrage. This considerably 'thin' notion of participation has been criticized and was later enriched by other elements, most notably measures of voter turnout. With the growing number of works that catalogue and examine different processes of direct democracy, it is possible to further improve these indicators. This paper is an initial attempt to build an index that takes into consideration voter turnout and processes of direct democracy in an assessment of political participation.

Political participation rates have declined steadily in Mexico since the 1990s. The decline has been most severe among the poor, producing a stratified pattern that more and more mirrors Mexico's severe socioeconomic inequalities. Poverty of Democracy examines the political marginalization of Mexico's poor despite their key role in the struggle for democracy. Claudio A. Holzner uses case study evidence drawn from eight years of fieldwork in Oaxaca, and from national surveys to show how the institutionalization of a free-market democracy created a political system that discourages the political participation of Mexico's poor by limiting their access to politicians at the local and national level. Though clean elections bolster political activity, Holzner shows that at the local level, and particularly in Mexico's poorest regions, deeply rooted enclaves of authoritarianism and clientelism still constrict people's political opportunities. To explain this phenomenon, Holzner develops an institutional theory in which party systems, state-society linkages, and public policies are the key determinants of citizen political activity. These institutions shape patterns of political participation by conferring and distributing resources, motivating or discouraging an interest in politics, and by affecting the incentives citizens from different income groups have for targeting the state with political activity. Holzner's study sheds light on a disturbing trend in Latin America (and globally), in which neoliberal systems exacerbate political and economic disparities and create institutions that translate economic inequalities into political ones.

Can a more collaborative form of public management correct for the historical link between social and economic status (SES) and political participation? New initiatives to involve the citizen directly in public decision making - citizen governance - aim to include a wider representation of groups in society because they draw from service users and seek to recruit hard-to-reach groups. To test the claim that citizen governance may be more representative than other acts of political participation, this essay reports data from the 2005 English and Welsh Citizenship Survey. Using descriptive statistics and regression analysis, it finds evidence that citizen governance is more representative than civic activities, especially for young people and ethnic minority communities. Policy makers can fine-tune their interventions to reach underrepresented groups without believing the citizen governance is a panacea for long-running biases in civic participation. © 2009 The American Society for Public Administration.

In 1948, V. O. Key demonstrated how racial context influences political attitudes and behavior in the South. In more recent studies, racial linked fate and racial discrimination have been identified as powerful predictors of minority political behavior. What remains unexplored in the literature is whether race-based predictors such as these vary as a direct function of racial context and, as a result, increases or decreases political participation. Past research has focused on the singular effects of racial linked fate or discrimination but has yet to examine its potential interactive effects with racial context. To assess these potentially interactive effects, this article focuses on Asian Americans living within two distinct racial contexts: Hawaii and the mainland states of California, New York, and Illinois. Although there is no effect on Asian American voting behavior, results indicate significant interactive effects of race-based predictors and racial context on Asian American nonvoting participation.

In the newly independent states of southern Africa, many r's have taken advantage of the pol'al opportunities granted them in just a little more than the last decade & are now exercising pol'al responsibilities equivalent to those of F's in the developed nations. The UN has contributed to this process by its impact on the constitutions of these countries & by its assistance to F's through its various agencies. In 29 nations south of the Sahara, F's exercise their constitutional rights of suffrage. In many of these countries, F's are playing a responsible role in gov, judicial, & diplomatic affairs. Eg, in Liberia, where F's first received suffrage & the right to hold pol'al office in the 1940's, they are active in all branches & levels of gov & in the diplomatic service. F's in southern Africa exhibit great interest in pol'al matters, & their increasing abilities contribute much to the development of their nations. HA.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). ; We investigate whether and how informal political talk on digital media contributes to citizens' political participation with unique surveys based on samples representative of Internet users in seven Western democracies. We show that political talk on both social networking sites and mobile instant messaging platforms is positively associated with institutional and extra-institutional political participation. However, the relationship between talk on social networking sites and both types of participation is significantly stronger in established democracies (Denmark, France, United Kingdom, and United States) than in "third wave" democracies (Greece, Poland, and Spain). By contrast, the strength of the relationship between political talk on mobile instant messaging platforms and participation is not significantly different when comparing established and more recent democracies. These findings suggest that informal political talk on digital platforms can contribute to citizens' participatory repertoires and that different institutional settings, in combination with different technological affordances, play an important role in shaping these patterns.

Recent decades in Jordan have witnessed considerable changes in women's roles in the political sphere and in the community. Jordan has passed, modified, or adopted legislation that fosters the rights of women and the abolition of discrimination against them. Women experienced real visibility in higher leadership positions with 10.8% in the lower house and 11.7% in the senate. Yet, while women earn higher levels of education, their participation in the labor market is relatively low, and those who want to join the labor force meet higher levels of unemployment. Although women have made real progress in the public sphere, their participation is still modest and needs to be fostered and enhanced. More needs to be done to educate Jordanian women on political participation, and on overcoming various obstacles that hinder their efforts towards more visible and effective roles.

Political parties are often construed as playing an imperative role in democratic systems. However, what happens inside a party once people have joined as members and during their continued engagement is underexplored in research. This paper investigates the organisation of party education within political parties in Sweden and how political participation may be fostered. The vantage point is the institutional level in the party organisation when designing education and providing learning opportunities for party members. The empirical material consists of interviews with central representatives from all eight parties represented in the national parliament following the elections in 2018. This collected material has been analysed using concepts from the community of practice framework. The results indicate attempts by the parties to affect both individual members and local party branches through the organisation of party education.

Women political participation in Nigeria has been peripheral. This is despite arguments by some scholars that women like men are free to take active part in politics. Men through maintaining cultural stereotypes and socialization processes have confined women to the private spheres while they predominate in the public sphere. The consequence is that women shy away from operating in the public sphere including in politics. This is despite government's commitment towards redressing gender inequality in Nigerian politics. The wide disparity between men and women in electoral offices has contumaciously remained apparent. However, some Non -Governmental Organizations have endeavored to contribute their own quota towards improvement of women political participation. This study therefore examined the role of NGOs in enhancing women political participation. The study explored both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary data were obtained through key informant interviews from the operators of these NGOs and interviews of beneficiaries of their services. It had a sample size of 30. Akure, the capital of Ondo state in Nigeria was purposively selected as a case study state because most of the NGOs are active there being the capital of Ondo State. Country Women Association of Nigeria (COWAN) and National Council of Women Society (NCWS) were purposively selected. This is because these two NGOs are very prominent in Akure, Ondo State. This study concludes that NGOs have impacted positively on women political participation and it recommends that NGOs should devise means of changing their leaders or management. The founder should not continue to be the leader who takes major decision until he/she dies. This is because this may not encourage innovative new ideas to be injected into the organization. NGOs should also allow people in the rural areas to feel their impact instead of operating mostly in the urban areas.

This article explores the role of feminism in the struggle for equal participation of women and men in politics. Women make up half of the world's population. Their participation in political life should reflect this and with political decisions being shared between genders. But the reality in the modern world shows that in politics, where power is concentrated, women are less represented particularly at top of the hierarchical structures. Feminism as a social movement has diminished gender "blindness" in politics, demanding equal rights for women and pushing for gender integration at almost all levels, up to the highest positions of power. If we make a review of the phases through which the creation of the social conditions for equal access of men and women to the key domains throughout history, especially in the European and Macedonian society, to the new concept of equal opportunities, one can conclude that it should have passed many centuries and patience, but above all persistence, until significant progress has been made, which is visible only in the last few decades. But even that "success" is not at a satisfactory level, nor at least not in practice.

Recently, there has been a focus on religion as an essential catalyst for political participation & renewed civic engagement. Various claims share the common assumption that religion promotes the essential components of political participation including motivation, recruitment, & ability. Using survey data from the 2000 National Election Study, we examine the processes that link the structural & cognitive dimensions of religion with political discussion networks, mass media use, & various indicators of democratic citizenship, including political participation. Our results show that current claims related to religion may be oversold. Specifically, we find that the cognitive dimension of religion leads to several negative effects on aspects of democratic citizenship. Our results also indicate that the structural effects of religion are limited, compared to secular networks, which provide an ideal setting for citizens to gain & exchange information, increase feelings of efficacy, & -- most importantly -- engage in various forms of participation. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 65 References. Adapted from the source document.