Which of the following activities would be considered a conventional form of participation?

Political participation is any activity that shapes, affects, or involves the political sphere. Political participation ranges from voting to attending a rally to committing an act of terrorism to sending a letter to a representative. Broadly speaking, there are three types of participation:

1. Conventional participation: Activities that we expect of good citizens. For most people, participation occurs every few years at election time. People strongly committed to politics are more likely to participate on a regular basis.

   Example: Conventional political participation includes voting, volunteering for a political campaign, making a campaign donation, belonging to activist groups, and serving in public office.

2. Unconventional participation: Activities that are legal but often considered inappropriate. Young people, students, and those with grave concerns about a regime’s policies are most likely to engage in unconventional participation.

   Example: Unconventional political participation includes signing petitions, supporting boycotts, and staging demonstrations and protests.

3. Illegal participation: activities that break the law. Most of the time, people resort to illegal participation only when legal means have failed to create significant political change.

   Example: Illegal political participation includes political assassination, terrorism, and sabotaging an opponent’s campaign through theft or vandalism.

Why People Participate

Most democratic citizens feel that some level of political participation, particularly conventional participation, is admirable and acceptable. But political participation can be hard: One must find time, and perhaps money, in order to participate. So why do people do it? People participate in politics out of a sense of the following:

• Idealism: Some participate because they believe strongly in a particular idea.
• Responsibility: For many, participation is a responsibility of democratic citizenship.
• Self-interest: A person might work to promote issues and causes that personally profit that person.
• Enjoyment: Some simply enjoy public activity, either because of the activity itself or because of the friends they make while politically engaged.

The Paradox of Participation

Rational choice theorists have argued that participation, particularly voting, is irrational. In a large country, the probability that one’s vote will decide the outcome of an election is microscopic. Because participation has costs (time to vote, effort to learn about the candidates and issues, and so on), the costs of voting outweigh the benefits. In other words, voting does not make sense for people as an activity. Another way to think about this issue is to consider the person who votes because he or she desires to have an impact on the government. If he or she votes out of a sense that the one vote will make a difference, then this person will be sorely disappointed. The truth is that one vote does not make a difference. At the same time, however, if everyone who votes ceased to believe in the power of voting to effect change, then no one would turn out for elections and the democratic process would stop functioning. Political scientists call this phenomenon the paradox of participation.

Nonparticipation

In some countries, large parts of the population do not participate in politics at all. In the United States, for example, only about half of all eligible people vote in presidential elections. Such nonparticipation signifies a number of attitudes:

• Contentment: Lack of participation indicates satisfaction with the status quo—if they were upset about an issue, people would participate.
• Freedom: In a democratic society, people have the freedom to not participate.
• Apathy: Many people do not know much about politics and do not care.
• Alienation: People do not participate because they feel that no one in power listens to their views and that the government is, at best, indifferent to them.

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Rosa Parks with Martin Luther King Jr. in the background. Source: Wikimedia Commons at https://tinyurl.com/b4wuyon.

Students are first asked to access and read the Constitutional Rights Foundation web page titled “Social Protests” at http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/social-protests. This student reading with accompanying questions is a case study of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights protest movements. The reading is available for download at this link and is also included in Appendix I of this module. If laptops aren’t available, students can use their smartphones or the page can be printed and distributed. Students should read the accurate, concise, and objective overview of the protest movement and answer the two accompanying questions at the end of the reading. After completing the reading and questions, students are randomly asked to share their answers aloud. After hearing from two or three students, the teacher should then introduce the two core generalizations of the lesson by offering introductory comments similar to these: 

First, although sometimes people in a democratic republic choose to participate in politics in an unconventional manner, including protesting, boycotting, and refusing to abide by certain laws, most people choose to participate conventionally, by voting, donating money to candidates for political office, or even running for office.

Second, people involved in the civil rights movement often chose the unconventional means of protest (as the students have possibly already discerned) because they were unable to have their voices heard through more conventional means, since as a racial/political minority, particularly in the South, established laws and generally accepted customs of the white majority denied African-Americans conventional access.

As students learn more about conventional and unconventional political participation, they should realize that different situations and individual and group interests mean that there is no standardized formula for choosing or not choosing actions from either or both categories that work in every situation (estimated time, forty minutes).

The Basics of Political Participation: Understanding and Applications

Students then receive the handout “Conventional and Unconventional Political Participation.” The handout clarifies and specifies types of political participation, as well as provides students with scenarios that give them opportunities to apply what they’ve learned. The handout is available for download at this link and is also included in Appendix II of this module. The document breaks down political participation into two categories: (1) conventional participation including voting, donating money, writing letters, joining an interest group, and more; and (2) unconventional participation including protesting, boycotting, rioting, and more. Randomly ask students to read the categories in the handout aloud. 

Students then read the three short scenarios included in the handout and imagine themselves as the individual involved in each scenario: (a student concerned about low voter turnout among young people, a business owner who battles government bureaucracy, and a citizen concerned about poor local governance). They then are asked to choose one or more of the two categories of political participation, as well as specific actions from one or more of the categories they choose, that might assist the individual in changing the problematic situation he/she encounters in each scenario. Students then write brief scenarios of their choices and why they chose to act as they did for each type’s effectiveness.

Next, students will work in groups of four. Predetermined mixed-ability groups work well for this assignment to encourage thoughtful discussion and multiple perspectives. Each group should try to find consensus about what type of action would work best in each scenario. The groups need not produce a document, but they should formally agree upon the best course of action for each scenario. During this process, it is suggested that the teacher circulate in the classroom, checking for understanding, answering any questions that may arise, and trying to help create consensus within each group (estimated time, sixty-five minutes).

Conclusion/Summary

After all groups have shared and discussed their thoughts with each other, the teacher will take up each student’s written responses to the individual writing assignment and then address the class and summarize comments from different groups. Students will have disagreed on many finer points, but have mostly all agreed that some types of actions were required and, further, agreed that each situation called for a different response geared specifically to each scenario. The teacher may summarize the lesson with a brief statement like the following:

As we saw, participation in the civil rights movement took extraordinary courage. Everyday citizens used what little political power they had to fight for the changes that they wanted to see. The citizens who worked with the movement sometimes behaved conventionally by voting or helping political campaigns with time or money, and sometimes they behaved unconventionally through protests, boycotts, or civil disobedience. While most political situations don’t call for the level of effort the civil rights movement did, political participation is still an effective way to try to use the power that you, as a citizen, have in a democracy, whether that’s through the most popular form of participation—voting—or through protest and other less common methods. We may disagree about how to achieve our goals, but we can all agree that we should use our power to represent ourselves politically and that the methods we choose should not cause harm.

Day two: Reinforcement Activity/Summative Assessment

As an introduction to the next day’s lesson concerning voting (turnout, trends, demographics, and laws/amendments that impact voting), students will be prompted to list the two general types of political participation and give two specific examples of each. The assignment will be collected and graded to assess concept attainment in students.

References and Resources

O’Connor, Karen, and Larry Sabato. American Government: Roots and Reform. 10th ed. Hoboken, New Jersey: Pearson, 2009. This source is a textbook that is recommended for AP U.S. government and politics classes. It provides a general overview of government.

Thorson, Esther, et al. “A Hierarchy of Political Participation Activities in Pre-Voting-Age Youth.” University of Missouri, 2010. http://www.newshare.com/mdp/mdp-participation.pdf. This paper from the University of Missouri discusses youth participation in politics. It provides teachers with useful, specific background on political participation as it relates to young people.

“Voter Turnout Demographics." United States Election Project. Last modified 2016. http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics. This source from the University of Florida’s United States Election Project provides current data on turnout rates, trends in voting, and useful graphs to illustrate political participation levels.

http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/social-protests: This resource is used to introduce students to a historical example of unconventional political participation, the civil rights movement. Specific events from the time period are discussed, and students are exposed to many of the strategies that were used.

Matt Logan, “Conventional and Unconventional Political Participation,” May 15, 2017.