New forms of political participation: Searching for expert citizens and everyday makers

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 247-272

  Li, Yaojun ^a   Marsh, David ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 48849112383     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123408000136     Document Type: Article

References (115)

1. In Britain, for example, the turnout in the 2001 general election was 59 per cent, 12 percentage points lower than in 1997 and 25 points lower than the post-war high of 84 per cent in 1950. It did rise in the 2005 election, but only to 61 per cent. In relation to young people, the picture was even more disturbing: MORI's figures suggest that the turnout rate for 18-24 year-olds dropped from 39 per cent in 2001 to 37 per cent in 2005, see 〈www.mori.com/polls/2005/election-aggregate.shtml〉. In a similar vein, the combined membership of British political parties is little more than a half that of the largest British interest group, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, see D. Marsh T. O'Toole and S. Jones, Young People and Politics in the UK (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), p. 2.
2. See, for example, M. Henn, M. Weinstein and D. Wring, 'A Generation Apart? Youth and Political Participation in Britain', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 4 (2002), 167-92.
3. C. Pattie, P. Seyd and P. Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain: Values, Participation and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
4. and P. Norris, The Demographic Phoenix (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
5. Marsh, O'Toole and Jones, Young People and Politics in the UK, develop four criticisms of the existing literature on political participation and only partially exempt Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley from the first and fourth of these. They contend that the literature (i) operates with a narrow definition of politics; (ii) imposes this narrow definition of politics on respondents; (iii) sees apathy as participation's main, if not only, 'other', when many citizens are not apathetic, but rather alienated from formal politics; and (iv) imposes a particular, largely top-down, view of citizenship and democracy on respondents which many do not accept.
6. See also T. O'Toole, D. Marsh and S. Jones, 'Political Literacy Cuts Both Ways: The Politics of Non-Participation Among Young People', Political Quarterly, 74 (2003), 349-60.
7. They make only one reference to Marsh, O'Toole and Jones's work, but almost wilfully misunderstand it. See Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain, p. 76, fn. 1,
8. and for a reply, see Marsh, O'Toole and Jones, Young People and Politics, pp. 24-5.
9. See, among others, H. Bang and E. Sorensen, 'The Everyday Maker: Building Social rather than Political Capital', in P. Dekker and E. Uslaner, eds, Social Capital and Participation in Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 148-61;
10. H. Bang, 'A New Ruler Makes a New Citizen: Cultural Governance and Everyday Making', in H. Bang, ed., Governance as Social and Political Communication (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 241-66;
11. H. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens: Building Political not Social Capital' (unpublished paper, ANU School of Social Science, 2004);
12. H. Bang, 'Among Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', in J. Newman, ed., Remaking Governance: Peoples, Politics and the Public Sphere (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2005), pp. 159-79.
13. This is not to say that it has received no attention. Rather, it has been seized upon by authors from various countries and disciplines who are concerned with broader issues of governance. See, for example: M. Bevir, 'Government and Interpretation: What are the Implications of Postfoundationalism?' Public Administration, 82 (2004), 605-25;
14. M. Bevir and R. Rhodes, 'Studying British Government: Reconstructing the Research Agenda', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1 (1999), 215-39;
15. M. Blanc and J. Beaumont, 'Local Democracy within European Urban Development Programmes', Social and Economic Geography, 96 (2005), 409-20;
16. P. Bogason and J. Musso, 'The Democratic Prospects of Network Governance', American Review of Public Administration, 36 (2006), 3-18;
17. R. Edmondson, 'Social Capital:AStrategy for Enhancing Health?' Social Science and Medicine, 57 (2003), 1723-33;
18. F. Forno and L. Ceccarini, 'From the Street to the Shops: The Rise of New Forms of Political Actions in Italy', South European Society& Politics, 11 (2006), 197-222;
19. P. Mouritsen, 'What's the Civil in Civil Society? Robert Putnam, Italy and the Republican Tradition', Political Studies, 51 (2003), 650-68;
20. R. Rhodes, 'Putting People Back into Networks', Australian Journal of Political Science, 37 (2002), 399-416;
21. H. Tapio and K. Auli, 'Preconditions of Democratic e-governance? A Critical Approach', in Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko and Antti Kasvio, eds, e-City. Analysing Efforts to Generate Local Dynamism in the City of Tampere (Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2005), pp. 409-48;
22. and L. Torpe, 'Social Capital in Denmark: A Deviant Case?' Scandinavian Political Studies, 26 (2003), 27-48.
23. Here, Bang may be unfair to the best rational choice theorists, who do deal more effectively with the free rider problem, but we would argue that his critique does apply to Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley.
24. Marsh, O'Toole and Jones, Young People and Politics.
25. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', p. 1.
26. Robert Putnam, 'Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital', Journal of Democracy, 6 (1995), 65-78;
27. 'Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America', PS: Political Science and Politics, 28 (2005), 664-83;
28. 'The Strange Disappearance of Civic America', American Prospect, 24 (1996), 34-48;
29. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
30. Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain, chap. 3, especially Table 2.3, p. 81.
31. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', p. 3.
32. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', p. 3.
33. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', p. 4.
34. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', p. 4.
35. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', p. 24.
36. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', p. 28.
37. Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens', p. 26.
38. Marsh, O'Toole and Jones, Young People and Politics, pp. 46-51, 93-5, 101-10 and 215-17.
39. See Marsh, O'Toole and Jones, Young People and Politics.
40. A. Heath and S. Cheung, 'Ethnic Minority Disadvantage in the Labour Market: Britain', in A. Heath and S. Cheung, eds, Ethnic Differences Across Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
41. E. Fahmy, 'Ethnicity, Citizenship and Political Participation in Britain: Findings from the 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey' (University of Bristol: Citizenship and Attitudes to Government in Britain: Project Working Paper 3, 2004).
42. Much research has shown significant differences in various important aspects of life chances between ethnic groups. See, for example, V. Karn, ed., Ethnicity in the 1991 Census (London: The Stationery Office, 1997);
43. F. Carmichael and R. Woods, 'Ethnic Penalties in Unemployment and Occupational Attainment: Evidence for Britain', International Review of Applied Economics, 14 (2000), 71-98;
44. A. White, Social Focus in Brief: Ethnicity (London: Office for National Statistics, 2002);
45. Y. Li, 'Social Capital, Ethnicity and the Labour Market', Proceedings on Engaging Community 〈http://engagingcommunities2005.org/abstracts/Li- Yaojun-final.pdf,2005〉;
46. Y. Li, 'Samples of Anonymised Records (SARs) from the UK Censuses: A Unique Source for Social Science Research', Sociology, 38 (2004), 553-72.
47. See, for instance, A. Heath, R. Jowell and J. Curtice, How Britain Votes (Oxford: Pergamon, 1985);
48. A. Heath, R. Jowell and J. Curtice, The Rise of New Labour: Party Politics and Voter Choices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
49. R. Andersen and A. Heath, 'Class Matters: The Persisting Effects of Contextual Social Class on Individual Voting in Britain, 1964-97', European Sociological Review, 18 (2002), 125-38;
50. J. Goldthorpe, 'Class and Politics in Advanced Industrial Societies', in D. Lee and B. Turner, eds, Conflict about Class: Debating Inequality in Late Industrialism (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 196-208;
51. G. Evans, ed., The End of Class Politics? Class Voting in Comparative Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
52. J. Pakulski and M. Waters, The Death of Class (London: Sage, 1996);
53. U. Beck and E. Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love (Cambridge: Polity, 1995).
54. See Marsh, O'Toole and Jones, Young People and Politics, chap 5.
55. Reported in Bang and Sorensen, 'The Everyday Maker', and Bang, 'Everyday Makers and Expert Citizens'.
56. Marsh, O'Toole and Jones, Young People and Politics, chap 4.
57. We shall use the terms 'Britain' and 'British' as shorthand in the following discussion, although we do not necessarily mean that the patterns revealed in the data can be generalized to Scotland. For a similar practice, see J. Goldthorpe (with C. Llewellyn and C. Payne), Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
58. More details of the survey, including the questionnaire, coding and weighting schemes, can be found at 〈http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/ findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=4754#doc〉. See also C. Attwood, G. Singh, D. Prime, R. Creasey and others, 2001 Home Office Citizenship Survey: People, Families and Communities (London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, 2003).
59. P. Hall, 'Social Capital in Britain', British Journal of Political Science, 29 (1999), 417-61;
60. P. Paxton, 'Is Social Capital Declining in the United States? A Multiple Indicator Assessment', American Journal of Sociology, 105 (1999), 88-127,
61. and 'Social Capital and Democracy: An Interdependent Relationship', American Sociological Review, 67 (2002), 254-77;
62. Putnam, Bowling Alone;
63. Y. Li, M. Savage and A. Pickles, 'Social Capital and Social Exclusion in England and Wales (1972-1999)', British Journal of Sociology, 54 (2003), 497-526;
64. Y. Li, A. Pickles and M. Savage, 'Social Capital and Social Trust in Britain', European Sociological Review, 21 (2005), 109-23;
65. Y. Li 'Social Capital, Social Exclusion and Public Health', in A. Scriven and G. Sebastian, eds, Public Health: Social Context and Action (London: Sage, 2007).
66. There is no unanimous agreement on the terminology of these variables. For instance, 'sex' can be regarded as a demographic or a social attribute. Similarly, ethnicity and religion can be viewed as cultural or demographic. Education is sometimes used as an indicator of cultural capital (A. Sullivan, 'Cultural Capital and Educational Attainment', Sociology, 35 (2001), 893-912)
67. and sometimes as part of social stratification factors (T. Chan and J. Goldthorpe, 'The Social Stratification of Theatre, Dance and Cinema Attendance', Cultural Trends, 14 (2005), 193-212). We do not wish to get embroiled into any terminological debates and we just use these terms in the conventional sense.
68. Fahmy, 'Ethnicity, Citizenship and Political Participation in Britain'.
69. Putnam, Bowling Alone.
70. There is no data on voting, but as far as Bang is concerned, Expert Citizens and Everyday Makers are not less likely to vote than other participants. We would also stress here that we do have a narrow definition of standard political participators, but that reflects the existing literature and the whole point about the article is that we also differentiate two other types of participator as the focus of the article, namely, Expert Citizens and Everyday Makers.
71. The four groups of political participants were constructed by using a combination of questions on V3.1f, V3.2b, V3.7 and V5.1 in the 2001 HOCS. The details of the questions are available at 〈http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/ doc/4754/mrdoc/pdf/4754userguide1.pdf〉 (last accessed on 12 October 2006) at pp. 150, 154, 157 and 162 respectively, including detailed definitions and explanations to the interviewers. Because of the space limit, we do not reproduce the details here but interested readers can easily find out. Twenty respondents who gave no valid information to these questions were dropped from analysis.
72. See 〈http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/doc/4754/mrdoc/pdf/ 4754userguide1.pdf〉 p. 148 on trust [V2.5]. Note that trust in employers, the Welsh Assembly and the Greater London Assembly are not analysed. Questions on efficacy are asked in [V2.4], available at p. 147. Again, efficacy on Wales and Greater London are not analysed. Questions on contact and voice are asked in [V2.1a-V2.1c], available at pp. 145-6. Responses in [V2.1a-V2.1c] specific to Wales or London are not analysed. All the explanations to the questions are also available in these pages. The instructions to the respondents and to the interviewers made it clear that these questions are about 'public affairs' and thus contact for personal issues or contact through work is not to be coded.
73. See Appendix 2 (available at 〈http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/staff/yaojun. htm〉) for a brief discussion of the IRT modelling. For a classical account, see F. Lord and M. Novick, Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores (Boston, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968).
74. For a recent definitive account, see A. Skrondal and S. Rabe-Hesketh, Generalized Latent Variable Modeling: Multilevel, Longitudinal, and Structural Equation Models (London: Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2004).
75. See also Li, Pickles and Savage, 'Social Capital and Social Trust', for an application of the IRT modelling to social capital research.
76. See D. Rubin, 'Inference and Missing Data', Biometrika, 63 (1976), 581-92;
77. and B. Muthén, 'Latent Variable Analysis: Growth Mixture Modelling and Related Techniques for Longitudinal Data', in D. Kaplan, ed., Handbook of Quantitative Methodology for the Social Sciences (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2004), pp. 345-68.
78. It is noted here that even though both Attwood et al., Home Office Citizenship Survey, and Fahmy, 'Ethnicity, Citizenship and Political Participation in Britain', use the same data as we do here, there are significant differences between their and our analyses. Attwood et al. were mainly interested in exploring the basic association as revealed in crosstabulations and were not focused on any particular theoretical or sociological theme (see, for instance, their Table 5.2 and associated discussions). Fahmy, as noted earlier, only used a four-way ethnic variable and did not analyse faith groups.
79. Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain.
80. Goldthorpe, Social Mobility.
81. The result confirms the conclusion by Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain, that the middle-aged are more likely to participate, Table 3.4, p. 27.
82. Y. Li, M. Savage and A. Warde, 'Social Stratification' (unpublished paper, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester). There are also data in the HOCS on informal help, namely, unpaid help given to non-relatives in the last twelve months, in [V6.1] 〈http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/doc/4754/ mrdoc/pdf/4754userguide1.pdf〉 at p. 165. Further analysis shows that around 72.4 per cent of the two younger groups gave one kind or another of unpaid informal help to non-relatives, as compared with 56.8 per cent of the oldest group.
83. The conceptual link between marital status and participation lies in the fact that some of the fifteen organizations have a very close bearing on family life. As married people are more likely to have children and to be residentially stable than the never married or the once married, they are more involved in children's education/schools and/or in neighbourhood groups. Further analysis confirms this (details are available on request).
84. 2=10.45 with 1 degree of freedom, p=0.001).
85. Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain, Table 3.4, p. 86 and Table 6.12, p. 182.
86. For instance, further analysis shows that over three quarters of those with degrees are found in the service class, whilst nearly 60 per cent of the least educationally qualified group are in the working class.
87. We also carried out an ordinal logit regression analysis as noted above on the assumption that the four categories take an inherent order such that 'Political Activists' have greater political capital than 'Expert Citizens' who in turn have greater political capital than 'Everyday Makers', etc. The patterns are the same but multinomial logit analysis discloses features not shown in ordinal logit analysis, hence, our preference for the former.
88. This confirms the conclusion of Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain, Table 3.4, p. 86.
89. Even though the coefficient did not reach the significance level (p=0.24), we must remember that there are only fifty-one respondents of Jewish faith in the sample, as shown in Table 1.
90. Using the most recent British Household Panel Survey of 2004, we find 47 per cent of trade-union members are drawn from the service class and only 27 per cent from the working class. For further discussion in this regard, see M. Savage, Y. Li and G. Tampubolon, 'Rethinking the Politics of Social Capital: Challenging Tocquevillian Perspectives', in R. Edwards, J. Franklin and J. Holland, eds, Social Capital: Concepts, Policy and Practice (London: Sage, 2006), pp. 70-94;
91. Hall, 'Social Capital in Britain';
92. Li, Savage and Pickles, 'Social Capital and Social Exclusion';
93. and Y. Li and A. Pollert, The Unorganized Worker in WERS 2004: Socio-demographic Attributes, Workplace Characteristics and Work-life Experience (London: DTI and RSS, 2006).
94. Pakulski and Waters, The Death of Class;
95. A. Elliott and C. Lemert, The New Individualism (London: Routledge, 2006);
96. and D. Denney, Risk and Society (London: Sage, 2005).
97. Paxton, 'Is Social Capital Declining in the United States?' It is noted here that trust in parliament is low. This is probably due to the imprecise wording in the questionnaire on parliament, failing to differentiate parliament as a political institution or as the behaviour of the politicians there. It could also be due to the fact that the two items (Politicians, Parliament) were asked one after another so that the respondents might have quickly associated parliament with people running the parliament whose behaviour as covered in the media frequently fell short of people's expectations of them.
98. We use the term 'efficacy' in the sense of Campbell et al. as 'the feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact upon the political process...It is the feeling that political and social change is possible and that the individual citizen can play a part in bringing about this change.' Cited in Fahmy, 'Ethnicity, Citizenship and Political Participation', p. 9.
99. As the responses to the two efficacy questions were multiple-coded, it is possible to explore the relationship in different ways. We present, in Table 1 of Appendix 1, two sets of such analysis (all appendix tables are available at 〈http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/staff/yaojun.htm〉). In the first set, we report findings on logit regression models for efficacy at the local and the national levels respectively. In the second set, we use multinomial logit analysis with LocN NatN (efficacious at neither local nor national level) as the reference category based on the four-way variable constructed from the two binary-response arrangement as below: (Table Presented). As shown in Appendix Table 1, controlling for all other socio-demographic factors, we find, under the heading of 'Local' for efficacy at the local level, a very clear gradient for the three activist groups (0.584, 0.432 and 0.226 for Political Activists, Expert Citizens and Everyday Makers respectively, all highly significant). Yet, with regard to efficacy at the national level, we do not find significantly higher values for Expert Citizens. One might ponder why this is the case. One reason is that this kind of analysis overlooks the multiple-reply nature of the responses. Looking at the data in the multinomial logit part, we find clear gradients for the three groups with regard to efficacy at both local and national levels, and at the local and yet not at the national levels, but no difference at national but not local levels. Thus, the patterns in the multinomial logit analysis better capture the nature of the relationship between the participant groups.
100. See Table 2 in Appendix 1 for factor loadings on trust and efficacy, and mean standardized scores by the participant groups. The correlation between the two scores is 0.42, significant at the 0.001 level.
101. At the bottom of Table 4, we present information on the improvement of fit of Model 2 over Model 1, and of Model 3 over Model 2. As would be expected, the additional blocks of variables were all statistically significant.
102. Further analysis shows that, as compared with Everyday Makers, Expert Citizens tend to be significantly more trusting and efficacious (p=0.011, 0.003 and 0.096 for trust, and 0.000, 0.000 and 0.000 for efficacy). Although the difference between the two groups in Model 3 for trust is only marginally significant on the conventional criterion, we would argue that it is substantively important, as the model controls for many socio-demographic factors. We thank the Editor and one of our Reviewers for alerting us to the need of conducting analysis on this crucial point.
103. This confirms the results of Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain, Table 2.18, p. 67. Yet, further analysis shows that it is not the youth per se but socio-economic position that is making the difference. Those in the youngest group, who are in the service class or who have university qualifications or who are actively engaged as Political Activists or Expert Citizens, have no less belief in efficacy than their reference groups.
104. Whether education generates the 'Culture of Critical Discourse' or the information-processing capacities is difficult to establish. See A. Gouldner, The Future of the Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (London: Macmillan, 1979),
105. and Chan and Goldthorpe, 'The Social Stratification of Theatre, Dance and Cinema Attendance', for respective arguments. Whatever the mechanisms, it seems reasonable to suggest, as Li, Savage and Pickles ('Social Capital and Social Exclusion') argue in the case of civic engagement, that economic (class) and cultural (education) resources are both important factors for effective political participation.
106. Of course, we accept that it is difficult to establish the causal order without panel data. Using the British Household Panel Survey, Li, Pickles and Savage, 'Social Capital and Social Trust', Table 4, show that informal social capital at Wave 7 had a positive effect upon generalized trust in Wave 10, even when prior levels of trust (measured at Wave 8) were taken into account. While their analysis does not exclude the possibility that people with prior trust were more likely to have higher levels of informal social capital in the first place, it does show that informal social capital helps generate trust.
107. See Table 3 in Appendix 1 for factor loadings on contact and voice, and mean standardized scores by the participant groups.
108. Further analysis shows that Expert Citizens have significantly higher scores in both contact and voice than Everyday Makers in each of the models (p=0.000).
109. Further analysis for interaction effects, with all other variables in the models still controlled for, shows that the younger age groups who were in the service class or who had degree qualifications were no less likely to have made contact or exercised voice than their older counterparts and that minority ethnic groups who were in the service class or in the Political Activist group were more likely to have contacted public officials but less likely to have exercised voices in the interest of public affairs.
110. At a bivariate level, there is no significant association between trust and contact (r=0.006, p=0.443), or between trust and voice (r=0.009, p=0.238), although efficacy is weakly but significantly associated with contact and voice (r=0.142 and r=0.153 respectively, both significant at the 0.001 level).
111. Putnam, Bowling Alone;
112. Hall, 'Social Capital in Britain';
113. Li, Savage and Pickles, 'Social Capital and Social Exclusion';
114. and Li, Pickles and Savage, 'Social Capital and Social Trust'.
115. Li, Pickles and Savage, 'Social Capital and Social Trust', find that the working class have higher levels of neighbourhood attachment than do the service class, one of the types of social capital (the other two being civic engagement and social support). Neighbourhood attachment may be regarded as a form of bonding capital which is less valued in mainstream discussions on social capital or political participation than, say, formal civic engagement. We owe this insight to one of the reviewers of a previous version of this article.