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Political Participation in Britain: a Research Agenda for a New Study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Geraint Parry  and
George Moyser
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Extract

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING, THE THEME OF POLITICAL PARTICIpation and the set of issues connected with it are as old as politics itself, because they touch on some of the most central and perennial questions of political life – who decides, where are the boundaries of community and citizenship to be drawn, who benefits, how will decisions be made? However, beyond this, participation has from time to time become a particularly central and salient issue in British politics. In the seventeenth century the issues revolved around the ‘claims of the gentry and merchant classes to play a larger part in the making of government policy’. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the issue moved on to representation of the nonropertied classes – the town worker, the rural worker and Etterly universal suffrage.

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1984 , pp. 68 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1984

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References

1 Thomas, Keith, ‘The United Kingdom’, in Grew, R. (ed.), Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1978, Ch. 2, p. 66 Google Scholar. This essay provides an excellent synopsis of the historical record concerning political participation in Britain and its association with other dimensions of political modernization.

2 The most recent legislation, reducing the voting age for all males and females alike to 18, was passed in 1970.

3 Amongst the politicians, see Owen, D., Face the Future, London, Jonathan Cape, 1981 Google Scholar, and Benn, T., Arguments for Socialism, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1980 Google Scholar. The scholars include Pateman, C., Participation and Democratic Theory, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Parry, G. (ed.), Participation in Politics, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1972 Google Scholar.

4 On these various topics see Gwyn, W. and Rose, R. (eds.), Britain: Progress and Decline, London, Macmillan, 1980 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hain, P. (ed.) Community Politics, London, Calder, 1976 Google Scholar; Scarman, Lord, The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders, London, Penguin, 1981.Google Scholar

5 In addition to those noted previously, see also Beer, S., Britain Against Itself, London, Faber, 1982 Google Scholar; Kolinsky, M. (ed.), Divided Loyalties, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1978 Google Scholar and Crouch, C. (ed.), State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism, London, Croom Helm, 1979.Google Scholar

6 See, in order of reference, Almond, G. and Verba, S., The Civic Culture, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1963 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marsh, A., Protest and Political Consciousness, London, Sage, 1977 Google Scholar; Barnes, S. and Kaase, M., Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies, London, Sage, 1979 Google Scholar; Hampton, W., Democracy and Community: A Study of Politics in Sheffield, London, Oxford University Press, 1970 Google Scholar; Sarlvik, B. and Crewe, I., Decade of Dealignment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983 Google Scholar; Moyser, G., ‘Modes of Mass Political Participation in Britain’, E. C. P. R. Joint Sessions Workshops, Florence, 1980.Google Scholar

7 By present‐day standards for the funding of social scientific research in Britain this characterization would seem justified.

8 G. Parry (ed.), Participation in Politics, op. cit., p. 5.

9 See, for example the first edition of Milbrath, L., Political Participation, Chicago, Rand McNally, 1965, pp. 19 and 22Google Scholar; for Britain, see Rose, R., Politics in England, 3rd, ed., Boston, Little Brown, 1980, p. 177.Google Scholar

10 See Verba, S. and Nie, N., Participation in America, New York, Harper Row, 1972, esp. Ch. 3.Google Scholar

11 Ibid, p. 3.

12 As will be indicated below, Verba and Nie take a rather narrow and different attitude towards participation in pressure groups. Only in their later work is organization given much greater emphasis. See Verba, S., Nie, N. and Kim, J-O., Participation and Political Equality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978.Google Scholar

13 For some limited information on the inter‐relationship of these two see Barnes and Kaase, op. cit., Ch. 3.

14 Wolin, S., Politics and Vision, London, Allen and Unwin, 1961.Google Scholar

15 Repass, D., ‘Issue Salience and Party Choice’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 65, No. 2, 06 1971, pp. 389–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 See Brody, R. and Sniderman, P., ‘From Life Space to Polling Place’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1977, pp. 337–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Verba and Nie, op cit., p. 182, fn. 4.

18 See Rusk, J., ‘Political Participation in America: A Review Essay’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 70, No. 2, 06 1976, p. 584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 See Middlemass, K., Politics in Industrial Society: The Experience of the British System since 1911, London, André Deutsch, 1979 Google Scholar.

20 See Barnes and Kaase, op. cit., and Muller, E., ‘An Explanatory Model for Differing Types of Participation’, European Journal for Political Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1982, pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 For a discussion of ‘discretionary politics’ in this sense, see Anderson, J. E., Public Policy Making, London, Nelson, 1975, esp. Chs. 4 and 5Google Scholar.

22 See G. Parry (ed.), Participation in Politics, op. cit., and by the same author, ‘Participation and Political Styles’, in Chapman, B. and Potter, A. (eds.), W. J. M. M.: Political Questions, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1974.Google Scholar

23 Verba and Nie, op. cit, p. 102.

24 Barnes and Kaase, op. cit., p. 39.

25 Barnes and Kaase, op. cit., p. 84.

26 See Goodin, R. and Dryzek, J., ‘Rational Participation: The Politics of Relative Power’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 10, No. 3, 1980, pp. 273–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a review of some of the difficulties of the rational choice approach, and of some suggested resolutions, see W. Peak, ‘Conceptualizations of Political Participation: A critical Examination of the Rational Participation Literature’, American Political Science Association Meeting, Chicago, 1983.

27 Ibid, p. 278.

28 See Korpi, W., ‘Conflict Power and Relative Deprivation’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 68, No. 4, 1974, pp. 1569–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Muller, E., Aggressive Political Participation, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1979 Google Scholar. For a development of his model see his ‘An Explanatory Model…’, op. cit., 1982.

30 See Plant, R., ‘Community: Concept, Conception and Ideology’, Politics and Society, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1978, pp. 79–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Williams, R., Keywords, London, Fontana, 1976, p. 66.Google Scholar

32 For an excellent discussion and empirical study of these points see Mansbridge, J., Beyond Adversary Democracy, New York, Basic Books, 1980 Google Scholar.

33 See W. Hampton, op. cit., 1970.

34 See C. Pateman, op. cit., 1970 and G. Parry, op. cit., 1972.

35 For a sympathetic discussion of these and other problems facing the educative model see Pedersen, J. T., ‘On the Educational Function of Political Participation’, Political Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4, 1982, pp. 557–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 See Pizzorno, A., ‘An Introduction to the Theory of Political Participation’, Social Science Information, Vol. 9, No. 5, 1970, pp. 29–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 On this particular aspect see also Hansen, S. B., ‘Participation Political Structure and Concurrence’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 69, No. 4, 12 1975, pp. 1181–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 For a description of one major national elite survey, as an indicator of the possibilities along these lines (and the commensurate resources required) see U. Hoffmann‐Lange, ‘Theoretical and Empirical Problems in the Definition and Selection of National Elites’, European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions, Aarhus, 1982.

39 As we explain more fully below, in the section on research design, the study will be conducted not only at the national level by means of a mass sample survey, but also amongst a small number of specially selected local communities in each of which a substantial number of both elite and mass interviews will be undertaken. For an extended discussion of the relative merits of our design as against that of Verba and Nie, see G. Parry and G. Moyser, ‘Political Participation and Community in Britain: Conceptual and Methodological Issues’, American Political Science Association, Annual Meeting, Chicago, 1983, esp. pp. 20–31. Research Report No. 1, Manchester British Political Partition Study.

40 For a discussion of concurrence, see Hansen, S. op. cit., 1975, and, by the same author, ‘Linkage Models, Issues and Community Politics’, American Politics Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1978, pp. 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For further somewhat contradictory findings, see Hill, K. et al., ‘Mass Participation, Electoral Competitiveness and Issue‐Attitude Agreement Between Congressmen and Their Constituents’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1979, pp. 507–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 See S. Hansen, op. cit., 1975, p. 1185, fn. 36.

42 Ibid, pp. 1197–8.

43 See Newton, K., Second City Politics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1976 Google Scholar.

44 We have also in mind here the whole issue of elite autonomy and constraint recently revived by, amongst others, Field, G. and Higley, J., in Elitism, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.Google Scholar

45 See Hart, V., Distrust and Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978.Google Scholar

46 See Parry, G., ‘Pluralism, Participation and Knowledge’, in Wootton, G. and Ehrlich, S., (eds.), The Faces of Pluralism, Farnborough, Gower, 1980, pp. 46–64.Google Scholar

47 See Barnes and Kaase, op. cit., pp. 160–3.

48 See Uhlaner, C. J., ‘The Consistency of Individual Political Participation Across Governmental Levels in Canada’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1982, pp. 298–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 See Przeworski, A. and Teune, H., The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry, London, Wiley-Interscience, 1970, esp. Ch. 6.Google Scholar

50 See G. Parry and G. Moyser, op. cit., 1983.

51 See, for example, Higley, J. and Moore, G., ‘Elite Integration in The United States and Australia’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 75, No. 2, 1981, pp. 581–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 U. Hoffmann‐Lange, op. cit.