april clark thesis

Chapter 1: American Government and Civic Engagement

Engagement in a Democracy

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the importance of citizen engagement in a democracy
• Describe the main ways Americans can influence and become engaged in government
• Discuss factors that may affect people’s willingness to become engaged in government

Participation in government matters. Although people may not get all that they want, they can achieve many goals and improve their lives through civic engagement. According to the pluralist theory, government cannot function without active participation by at least some citizens. Even if we believe the elite make political decisions, participation in government through the act of voting can change who the members of the elite are.

WHY GET INVOLVED?

Are fewer people today active in politics than in the past? Political scientist Robert Putnam has argued that civic engagement is declining; although many Americans may report belonging to groups, these groups are usually large, impersonal ones with thousands of members. People who join groups such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace may share certain values and ideals with other members of the group, but they do not actually interact with these other members. These organizations are different from the types of groups Americans used to belong to, like church groups or bowling leagues. Although people are still interested in volunteering and working for the public good, they are more interested in either working individually or joining large organizations where they have little opportunity to interact with others. Putnam considers a number of explanations for this decline in small group membership, including increased participation by women in the workforce, a decrease in the number of marriages and an increase in divorces, and the effect of technological developments, such as the internet, that separate people by allowing them to feel connected to others without having to spend time in their presence. [1]

Putnam argues that a decline in social capital —”the collective value of all ‘social networks’ [those whom people know] and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other”—accompanies this decline in membership in small, interactive groups. [2] Included in social capital are such things as networks of individuals, a sense that one is part of an entity larger than oneself, concern for the collective good and a willingness to help others, and the ability to trust others and to work with them to find solutions to problems. This, in turn, has hurt people’s willingness and ability to engage in representative government. If Putnam is correct, this trend is unfortunate, because becoming active in government and community organizations is important for many reasons.

Some have countered Putnam’s thesis and argue that participation is in better shape than what he portrays. Everett Ladd shows many positive trends in social involvement in American communities that serve to soften some of the declines identified by Putnam. For example, while bowling league participation is down, soccer league participation has proliferated. [3] April Clark examines and analyzes a wide variety of social capital data trends and disputes the original thesis of erosion. [4] Others have suggested that technology has increased connectedness, an idea that Putnam himself has critiqued as not as deep as in-person connections. [5]

LINK TO LEARNING

To learn more about political engagement in the United States, read  “The Current State of Civic Engagement in America”  by the Pew Research Center.

Civic engagement can increase the power of ordinary people to influence government actions. Even those without money or connections to important people can influence the policies that affect their lives and change the direction taken by government. U.S. history is filled with examples of people actively challenging the power of elites, gaining rights for themselves, and protecting their interests. For example, slavery was once legal in the United States and large sectors of the U.S. economy were dependent on this forced labor. Slavery was outlawed and blacks were granted citizenship because of the actions of abolitionists. Although some abolitionists were wealthy white men, most were ordinary people, including men and women of both races. White women and blacks were able to actively assist in the campaign to end slavery despite the fact that, with few exceptions, they were unable to vote. Similarly, the right to vote once belonged solely to white men until the Fifteenth Amendment gave the vote to African American men. The Nineteenth Amendment extended the vote to include women, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made exercising the right to vote a reality for African American men and women in the South. None of this would have happened, however, without the efforts of people who marched in protest, participated in boycotts, delivered speeches, wrote letters to politicians, and sometimes risked arrest in order to be heard. The tactics used to influence the government and effect change by abolitionists and members of the women’s rights and African American civil rights movements are still used by many activists today.

The rights gained by these activists and others have dramatically improved the quality of life for many in the United States. Civil rights legislation did not focus solely on the right to vote or to hold public office; it also integrated schools and public accommodations, prohibited discrimination in housing and employment, and increased access to higher education. Activists for women’s rights fought for, and won, greater reproductive freedom for women, better wages, and access to credit. Only a few decades ago, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder, and intercourse between consenting adults of the same sex was illegal in many states. Although legal discrimination against gays and lesbians still remains, consensual intercourse between homosexual adults is no longer illegal anywhere in the United States, and same-sex couples have the right to legally marry.

Activism can improve people’s lives in less dramatic ways as well. Working to make cities clean up vacant lots, destroy or rehabilitate abandoned buildings, build more parks and playgrounds, pass ordinances requiring people to curb their dogs, and ban late-night noise greatly affects people’s quality of life. The actions of individual Americans can make their own lives better and improve their neighbors’ lives as well.

Representative democracy cannot work effectively without the participation of informed citizens, however. Engaged citizens familiarize themselves with the most important issues confronting the country and with the plans different candidates have for dealing with those issues. Then they vote for the candidates they believe will be best suited to the job, and they may join others to raise funds or campaign for those they support. They inform their representatives how they feel about important issues. Through these efforts and others, engaged citizens let their representatives know what they want and thus influence policy. Only then can government actions accurately reflect the interests and concerns of the majority. Even people who believe the elite rule government should recognize that it is easier for them to do so if ordinary people make no effort to participate in public life.

PATHWAYS TO ENGAGEMENT

People can become civically engaged in many ways, either as individuals or as members of groups. Some forms of individual engagement require very little effort. One of the simplest ways is to stay informed about debates and events in the community, in the state, and in the nation. Awareness is the first step toward engagement. News is available from a variety of reputable sources, such as newspapers like the New York Times ; national news shows, including those offered by the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio; and reputable internet sites.

Visit Avaaz and Change.org for more information on current political issues.

Another form of individual engagement is to write or email political representatives. Filing a complaint with the city council is another avenue of engagement. City officials cannot fix problems if they do not know anything is wrong to begin with. Responding to public opinion polls, actively contributing to a political blog, or starting a new blog are all examples of different ways to be involved.

One of the most basic ways to engage with government as an individual is to vote. Individual votes do matter. City council members, mayors, state legislators, governors, and members of Congress are all chosen by popular vote. Although the president of the United States is not chosen directly by popular vote but by a group called the Electoral College, the votes of individuals in their home states determine how the Electoral College ultimately votes. Registering to vote beforehand is necessary in most states, but it is usually a simple process, and many states allow registration online. (We discuss voter registration and voter turnout in more depth in a later chapter.)

Voting, however, is not the only form of political engagement in which people may participate. Individuals can engage by attending political rallies, donating money to campaigns, and signing petitions. Starting a petition of one’s own is relatively easy, and some websites that encourage people to become involved in political activism provide petitions that can be circulated through email. Taking part in a poll or survey is another simple way to make your voice heard.

Votes for Eighteen-Year-Olds

Young Americans are often reluctant to become involved in traditional forms of political activity. They may believe politicians are not interested in what they have to say, or they may feel their votes do not matter. However, this attitude has not always prevailed. Indeed, today’s college students can vote because of the activism of college students in the 1960s. Most states at that time required citizens to be twenty-one years of age before they could vote in national elections. This angered many young people, especially young men who could be drafted to fight the war in Vietnam. They argued that it was unfair to deny eighteen-year-olds the right to vote for the people who had the power to send them to war. As a result, the <strong”>Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age in national elections to eighteen, was ratified by the states and went into effect in 1971.

Are you engaged in or at least informed about actions of the federal or local government? Are you registered to vote? How would you feel if you were not allowed to vote until age twenty-one?

Some people prefer to work with groups when participating in political activities or performing service to the community. Group activities can be as simple as hosting a book club or discussion group to talk about politics. Coffee Party USA provides an online forum for people from a variety of political perspectives to discuss issues that are of concern to them. People who wish to be more active often work for political campaigns. Engaging in fundraising efforts, handing out bumper stickers and campaign buttons, helping people register to vote, and driving voters to the polls on Election Day are all important activities that anyone can engage in. Individual citizens can also join interest groups that promote the causes they favor.

GET CONNECTED!

Getting Involved

In many ways, the pluralists were right. There is plenty of room for average citizens to become active in government, whether it is through a city council subcommittee or another type of local organization. Civic organizations always need volunteers, sometimes for only a short while and sometimes for much longer.

For example, Common Cause is a non-partisan organization that seeks to hold government accountable for its actions. It calls for campaign finance reform and paper verification of votes registered on electronic voting machines. Voters would then receive proof that the machine recorded their actual vote. This would help to detect faulty machines that were inaccurately tabulating votes or election fraud. Therefore, one could be sure that election results were reliable and that the winning candidate had in fact received the votes counted in their favor. Common Cause has also advocated that the Electoral College be done away with and that presidential elections be decided solely on the basis of the popular vote.

Follow-up activity: Choose one of the following websites to connect with organizations and interest groups in need of help:

• Common Cause ;
• Friends of the Earth which mobilizes people to protect the natural environment;
• Grassroots International which works for global justice;
• The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget which seeks to inform the public on issues with fiscal impact and favors smaller budget deficits; or
• Eagle Forum which supports greater restrictions on immigration and fewer restrictions on home schooling.

Political activity is not the only form of engagement, and many people today seek other opportunities to become involved. This is particularly true of young Americans. Although young people today often shy away from participating in traditional political activities, they do express deep concern for their communities and seek out volunteer opportunities. [6]

Although they may not realize it, becoming active in the community and engaging in a wide variety of community-based volunteer efforts are important forms of civic engagement and help government do its job. The demands on government are great, and funds do not always exist to enable it to undertake all the projects it may deem necessary. Even when there are sufficient funds, politicians have differing ideas regarding how much government should do and what areas it should be active in. Volunteers and community organizations help fill the gaps. Examples of community action include tending a community garden, building a house for Habitat for Humanity, cleaning up trash in a vacant lot, volunteering to deliver meals to the elderly, and tutoring children in after-school programs.

Some people prefer even more active and direct forms of engagement such as protest marches and demonstrations, including civil disobedience. Such tactics were used successfully in the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and remain effective today. Likewise, the sit-ins (and sleep-ins and pray-ins) staged by African American civil rights activists, which they employed successfully to desegregate lunch counters, motels, and churches, have been adopted today by movements such as Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street. Other tactics, such as boycotting businesses of whose policies the activists disapproved, are also still common. Along with boycotts, there are now “buycotts,” in which consumers purchase goods and services from companies that give extensively to charity, help the communities in which they are located, or take steps to protect the environment.

Many ordinary people have become political activists. Read  “19 Young Activists Changing America”  to learn about people who are working to make people’s lives better.

INSIDER PERSPECTIVE

Ritchie Torres

In 2013, at the age of twenty-five, Ritchie Torres became the youngest member of the New York City Council and the first gay council member to represent the Bronx. Torres became interested in social justice early in his life. He was raised in poverty in the Bronx by his mother and a stepfather who left the family when Torres was twelve. The mold in his family’s public housing apartment caused him to suffer from asthma as a child, and he spent time in the hospital on more than one occasion because of it. His mother’s complaints to the New York City Housing Authority were largely ignored. In high school, Torres decided to become a lawyer, participated in mock trials, and met a young and aspiring local politician named James Vacca. After graduation, he volunteered to campaign for Vacca in his run for a seat on the City Council. After Vacca was elected, he hired Torres to serve as his housing director to reach out to the community on Vacca’s behalf. While doing so, Torres took pictures of the poor conditions in public housing and collected complaints from residents. In 2013, Torres ran for a seat on the City Council himself and won. He remains committed to improving housing for the poor. [7]

Why don’t more young people run for local office as Torres did? What changes might they effect in their communities if they were elected to a government position?

FACTORS OF ENGAGEMENT

Many Americans engage in political activity on a regular basis. A survey conducted in 2018 revealed that almost 70 percent of American adults had participated in some type of political action in the past five years. These activities included largely non-personal activities that did not require a great deal of interaction with others, such as signing petitions, expressing opinions on social media, contacting elected representatives, or contributing money to campaigns. During the same period, approximately 30 percent of people attended a local government meeting or a political rally or event, while 16 percent worked or volunteered for a campaign. [8]

Americans aged 18–29 were less likely to become involved in traditional forms of political activity than older Americans. A 2018 poll of more than two thousand young adults by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics revealed that only 24 percent claimed to be politically engaged, and fewer than 35 percent said that they had voted in a primary. Only 9 percent said that they had gone to a political demonstration, rally, or march. [9] However, in the 2018 midterm elections, an estimated 31 percent of Americans under thirty turned out to vote, the highest level of young adult engagement in decades. [10]

Why are younger Americans less likely to become involved in traditional political organizations? One answer may be that as American politics become more partisan in nature, young people turn away. Committed partisanship , which is the tendency to identify with and to support (often blindly) a particular political party, alienates some Americans who feel that elected representatives should vote in support of the nation’s best interests instead of voting in the way their party wishes them to. When elected officials ignore all factors other than their party’s position on a particular issue, some voters become disheartened while others may become polarized. However, a recent study reveals that it is a distrust of the opposing party and not an ideological commitment to their own party that is at the heart of most partisanship among voters. [11]

Young Americans are particularly likely to be put off by partisan politics. More Americans under the age of thirty now identify themselves as Independents instead of Democrats or Republicans. Instead of identifying with a particular political party, young Americans are increasingly concerned about specific issues, such as same-sex marriage. [12] People whose votes are determined based on single issues are unlikely to vote according to party affiliation.

The other factor involved in low youth voter turnout in the past was that younger Americans did not feel that candidates generally tackle issues relevant to their lives. When younger voters cannot relate to the issues put forth in a campaign, such as entitlements for seniors, they lose interest. This dynamic changed somewhat in 2016 as Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders made college costs an issue, even promising free college tuition for undergraduates at public institutions. Senator Sanders enjoyed intense support on college campuses across the United States. After his nomination campaign failed, this young voter enthusiasm faded. Despite the fact that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton eventually took up the free tuition issue, young people did not flock to her as well as they had to Sanders. In the general election, won by Republican nominee Donald Trump, turnout was down and Clinton received a smaller proportion of the youth vote than President Obama had in 2012. [13]

While some Americans disapprove of partisanship in general, others are put off by the ideology —established beliefs and ideals that help shape political policy—of one of the major parties. This is especially true among the young. As some members of the Republican Party have become more ideologically conservative (e.g., opposing same-sex marriage, legalization of certain drugs, immigration reform, gun control, separation of church and state, and access to abortion), those young people who do identify with one of the major parties have in recent years tended to favor the Democratic Party. [14] Of the Americans under age thirty who were surveyed by Harvard in 2015, more tended to hold a favorable opinion of Democrats in Congress than of Republicans, and 56 percent reported that they wanted the Democrats to win the presidency in 2016. Even those young Americans who identify themselves as Republicans are more liberal on certain issues, such as being supportive of same-sex marriage and immigration reform, than are older Republicans. The young Republicans also may be more willing to see similarities between themselves and Democrats. [15] Once again, support for the views of a particular party does not necessarily mean that someone will vote for members of that party.

Other factors may keep even those college students who do wish to vote away from the polls. Because many young Americans attend colleges and universities outside of their home states, they may find it difficult to register to vote. In places where a state-issued ID is required, students may not have one or may be denied one if they cannot prove that they paid in-state tuition rates. [16]

The likelihood that people will become active in politics also depends not only on age but on such factors as wealth and education. In a 2006 poll, the percentage of people who reported that they were regular voters grew as levels of income and education increased. [17] Political involvement also depends on how strongly people feel about current political issues. Unfortunately, public opinion polls, which politicians may rely on when formulating policy or deciding how to vote on issues, capture only people’s latent preferences or beliefs. Latent preferences are not deeply held and do not remain the same over time. They may not even represent a person’s true feelings, since they may be formed on the spot when someone is asked a question about which he or she has no real opinion. Indeed, voting itself may reflect merely a latent preference because even people who do not feel strongly about a particular political candidate or issue vote. On the other hand, intense preferences are based on strong feelings regarding an issue that someone adheres to over time. People with intense preferences tend to become more engaged in politics; they are more likely to donate time and money to campaigns or to attend political rallies. The more money that one has and the more highly educated one is, the more likely that he or she will form intense preferences and take political action. [18]

CHAPTER REVIEW

See the Chapter 1.3 Review for a summary of this section, the key vocabulary , and some review questions to check your knowledge.

• Robert D. Putnam. 2001. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 75. ↵
• ———. 1995. "Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy 6: 66–67, 69; "About Social Capital," https://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/saguaro/about-social-capital (May 2, 2016). ↵
• Everett Ladd. The Ladd Report. http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/first/l/ladd-report.html ↵
• April Clark. "Rethinking the Decline in Social Capital." American Politics Research. April 29, 2014. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1532673X14531071 ↵
• Emily Badger. "The Terrible Loneliness of Growing Up Poor in Robert Putnam's America." The Washington Post. March 6, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/06/the-terrible-loneliness-of-growing-up-poor-in-robert-putnams-america/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.32998051b18a ↵
• Jared Keller. 4 May 2015. "Young Americans are Opting Out of Politics, but Not Because They’re Cynical," http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/young-people-are-not-so-politically-inclined . ↵
• Winston Ross, "Ritchie Torres: Gay, Hispanic and Powerful," Newsweek, 25 January 2015. ↵
• Pew Research Center. 26 April 2018. "Political Engagement, Knowledge, and the Midterms." http://www.people-press.org/2018/04/26/10-political-engagement-knowledge-and-the-midterms/ . ↵
• Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. 17 October 2018. Survey of Young Americans’ Attitudes toward Politics and Public Service. https://iop.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/content/Harvard-IOP-Fall-2018-poll-toplines.pdf . ↵
• Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). 7 November 2018. "Young People Dramatically Increase Their Turnout to 31%, Shape 2018 Midterm Elections." CIRCLE. https://civicyouth.org/young-people-dramatically-increase-their-turnout-31-percent-shape-2018-midterm-elections/ . ↵
• Marc Hetherington and Thomas Rudolph, "Why Don’t Americans Trust the Government?" The Washington Post, 30 January 2014. ↵
• Keller, "Young Americans are Opting Out." ↵
• Tami Luhby and Jennifer Agiesta. 8 November 2016. "Exit Polls: Clinton Fails to Energize African-Americans, Latinos and the Young, http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/08/politics/first-exit-polls-2016/ . ↵
• Harvard Institute of Politics, "No Front-Runner among Prospective Republican Candidates," http://iop.harvard.edu/no-front-runner-among-prospective-republican-candidates-hillary-clinton-control-democratic-primary (May 2, 2016). ↵
• Jocelyn Kiley and Michael Dimock. 25 September 2014. "The GOP’s Millennial Problem Runs Deep," http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/25/the-gops-millennial-problem-runs-deep/ . ↵
• "Keeping Students from the Polls," New York Times, 26 December 2011. ↵
• 18 October 2006. "Who Votes, Who Doesn’t, and Why," http://www.people-press.org/2006/10/18/who-votes-who-doesnt-and-why/ . ↵
• Jonathan M. Ladd. 11 September 2015. "Don’t Worry about Special Interests," https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2015/9/11/9279615/economic-inequality-special-interests . ↵

connections with others and the willingness to interact and aid them

strong support, or even blind allegiance, for a particular political party

the beliefs and ideals that help to shape political opinion and eventually policy

beliefs and preferences people are not deeply committed to and that change over time

beliefs and preferences based on strong feelings regarding an issue that someone adheres to over time

American Government (2e - Second Edition) Copyright © 2019 by OpenStax and Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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July 20th, 2015

Why we need to think again about the decline in social capital..

2 comments | 1 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

In the last 20 years, concerns about a decline in social capital in American society and the accompanying detrimental effects on civic culture, have spawned immense concern and debate . Social capital refers to the connections among individuals, and the social networks and norms of reciprocity that arise from them. The political, civic, and economic benefits of social capital for a functioning democracy are well documented and thus, a decline in American society is cause for concern. Indeed, societies high in social capital show greater levels of civic engagement and participation in politics.

In explaining social capital trends, much research has pointed to changes across time period and/or across birth cohorts; though much scholarship about the reasons for the decline generally suggest that a cohort shift stemming from the replacement of exceptionally trusting generations of older Americans by the far less trusting Baby Boomers and more recent generations explains the national deterioration in social capital. The generational cohort theory was popularized in the 1990s by political scientist Robert Putnam, who argued that individuals born before 1930, those who experienced the Great Depression and World War II, are more trusting and civic-minded, and then rather abruptly each subsequent generation that reached adulthood since (as a result of their formative experiences – take your pick: Vietnam, Watergate, the coarsening of the popular culture, television, suburbanization), are less likely to be civically engaged, volunteer time, donate money or contribute to the production of social capital.

At the same time, there are also good reasons to expect social capital levels in the United States to change over time because individuals change their minds, reflecting the impact of events and movements in the external world (i.e. time-period effects). Of course, important moments in history (e.g., 9/11, Vietnam, Watergate, etc.), and external events and conditions (such as economic downturns and rising crime rates) can affect social capital levels across all ages and all generations. For instance, some scholars have argued there was a resurgence in Americans’ social trust levels in reaction to the tragedy of September 11 th as citizens banded together whereas others attribute the decline in generalized trust and optimism in the U.S. to rising levels of economic inequality.

In recent research , I analyze data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults conducted from 1972-2012, to demonstrate how social capital levels are changing across time and birth cohorts. I use three indicators that are characteristic of the aspects of social capital: informal associations with friends, family, and neighbors, formal participation in a number of different types of voluntary organization (i.e. civic participation), and generalized trust. The analysis reveals two essential points in the debate about the alleged decline of social capital and civic engagement in the United States. First, the evidence does not support a wholesale downward trend in social capital. Although other research point to a general erosion of social and civic life, the findings here demonstrate that not all expressions of social and civic life are declining.

In fact, my study finds little change in either informal social interactions or formal organized engagements. The greatest indication of a fall in social capital can be found in the trust component. Thus, while much scholarly discussion has assumed that all forms of social capital are on the decline, my research does not support this conclusion. Rather, these findings suggest that the degree of erosion in social connectedness and civic engagement in the U.S. has generally been overstated.

Not only is there no evidence of an across-cohort decline in social capital, but rather I find support for a modest cohort-based increase – beginning with individuals born in the mid-1960s – for spending time with relatives. More importantly, given the prominence of the generational replacement argument for declining trust in the social capital literature (i.e. successive generations have been less trustful), I find little evidence to support a negative cohort effect once various social and demographic factors are accounted for in the analyses (Figure 1). Thus, the disparate empirical results in the erosion literature are likely due to the failure to simultaneously account for the effects of key social capital predictors (e.g. differences in educational attainment, race, religious tradition preference, etc.) while also estimating period and cohort effects. Thus, my conclusion for why social capital declined in the U.S. differs from Putnam’s and others who have argued that up to half of the decline in generalized trust was due to the aging of the civic generation.

Figure 1 – Generalized Trust by Cohort

By contrast, my results indicate that a much stronger case can be made for period-based changes in social capital. Again, the trust component stands out, with the most obvious erosion occurring here (Figure 2). The time trends point to a considerable and gradual decline that is in sync with a pattern that scholars have observed – during the 1980s, a period effect decreased the commitment of the American public in general to trust others. The patterns do not support a resurgence in social trust levels from Americans banding together in reaction to the September 11 th tragedy. Rather, the trends in trust have gone on as if 9/11 did not matter.

Figure 2 – Generalized Trust by Period

My findings also point to a possible solution for the depletion, and underscore the particularly important role the state can play in the creation and maintenance of social capital. In particular, rising inequality is positively associated with socializing with family and friends uncovering a greater tendency for spending time with one’s inner circle during times of heightened financial insecurity. By contrast, income inequality is negatively correlated with socializing with neighbors, joining voluntary organizations, and trust in others, revealing the countervailing and potentially detrimental influence of higher inequality on social capital.

This is particularly worrisome for the development of social capital since it is generally recognized that social capital is embodied within society and that through interactions with others outside one’s inner circle of family and friends we create and accrue social capital. In other words, it is the activities that represent “bridging” prospects – which are particularly important for the development and maintenance of social capital – that are on the decline. Moreover, since young Americans today are coming of age during a time when their fellow citizens are less likely to associate with or trust others, then cohort replacement may soon lead to a decline in social capital.

This article is based on the paper, ‘ Rethinking the Decline in Social Capital’ , in American Politics Research.

Featured image credit:  Chris Potter (Flickr, CC-BY-2.0 )

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Interesting article and is a fascinating way of looking at Social Capital. I am currently in university and studying Public Health and Epidemiology and social capital caught my attention because of the way my tutor explained it to me in the fact that she was adamant it was declining and detrimental and all that….I then suggested to her that perhaps it wasn’t declining but simply changing and that perhaps the definition and way of determining social capital doesn’t account for the way society has changed and grown. Your article and the the journal it is based off help to support what I am saying. Do you have any more references or articles or research?

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Northern Illinois University Department of Political Science College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

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April Clark

• Voter Behavior and Political Participation
• Political Socialization and Public Opinion
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Overview of Scholarly Activity

April K. Clark is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the director of graduate studies. Dr. Clark also serves as the department’s internship director for undergraduate students. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Santa Barbara, California and her B.A. from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Prior to coming to NIU, Dr. Clark was a research associate at the Pew Research Center (Social and Demographic Trends, and the People and the Press). Her research and teaching interests include political behavior and political institutions, specifically public opinion, voting and political participation and civic engagement. Her published work covers a broad array of topics, including environmentalism, social trust, social capital, political tolerance, corruption and politics and religion.

Her research has appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Huffington Post, NBC.com, and other national and local media outlets. Dr. Clark teaches courses on American politics, political behavior, public opinion, political psychology and research methods.

Publications

2019. "Polarization Politics and Hopes for a Green Agenda in the U.S." with Florian Justwan, Juliet E. Carlisle, and Michael Clark. Environmental Politics (forthcoming). 2019.

"Winners and Losers Reconsidered: Party Support, Character Valence, and Satisfaction with Democracy" with Debra Leiter and Michael Clark. European Political Science Review (forthcoming). 2018.

"Pushing forward a Green Agenda: Cohort and Period Effects on Support for Environmental Funding" with Juliet E. Carlisle. Political Research Quarterly DOI: 10.1177/1065912918817193 (forthcoming). 2018.

"Social Media Echo Chambers and Democratic Dissatisfaction." With Justwan, Florian, Bert Baumgaertner, Juliet Carlisle, and Michael Clark. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties , 28(4): 424-442. 2018.

"Gendered Support for Democratic Values? The Mediating Influence of Psychological Security on Norm Support and Political Tolerance." With Marie Eisenstein. Journal of Religion & Society , 20: 1-24.

2017. Eisenstein, Marie and April K. Clark. "Explaining Differing Democratic Norm Commitment: Rethinking the Religion‐Psychological Security‐Democratic Norm Support Connection Politics and Religion." Politics and Religion , Published online: 08 May 2017. doi: 10.1017/S175504831700030X.

2017. Eisenstein, Marie, April K. Clark, and Ted Jelen. "Political Tolerance and Religion: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis, 1984-2014." Review of Religious Research , Published online: 02 May 2017. doi: 10.1007/s13644-017-0295-4.

2017. Carlisle, Juliette and April K. Clark. "Green for God: The Role of Religion and Environmentalism." Environment and Behavior , Published online: 16 February 2017. doi: 10.1177/0013916517693356.

2016. "Updating the Gender Gap(s): A Multilevel Approach to What Underpins Changing Cultural Attitudes." Politics and Gender, forthcoming - Published online: 04 October 2016, pp. 1-31; doi:10.1017/S1743923X16000520.

2015. "Rethinking the Decline in Social Capital." Special issue marking the 20th anniversary of the publication of Robert Putnam's seminal article "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital." American Politics Research , Vol. 43, No. 4, 569-601.

2014. "Political Tolerance, Psychological Security, and Religion: Disaggregating the Mediating Influence of Psychological Security." With Marie Eisenstein. Politics and Religion , Volume 7(2): 287-317.

2014. "Stability and Change: Intolerance of Communists." With Michael Clark and Marie Eisenstein at Sage Open , Jan.-Mar.: 1-16.

2013. "Interpersonal Trust: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis Revisited." With Marie Eisenstein. Social Science Research 42(2): 361-375 .

2007. Keeter, Scott, Courtney Kennedy, April K. Clark, Trevor Tompson, and Mike Mokrzycki. "What's Missing from National RDD Surveys? The Impact of the Growing Cell-Only Population." Public Opinion Quarterly , 71(5):772-792.

Book Chapters

2017. Clark, April K. "Measuring Corruption: Transparency International's "Corruption Perceptions Index"" in Corruption, Discretion, and Accountability: Consequences for U.S. Politics , eds. Cara Rabe-Hemp and Nancy Lind. United Kingdom: Emerald Insight Publishers.

2015. Eisenstein, Marie and April K. Clark, "Heterogeneous Religion Measures and Political Tolerance Outcomes," in Carriers of the Creed? Religion and Political Tolerance in the U.S. , ed. Paul Djupe. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

2009. Streb, Matthew J. and April K. Clark, "The Public and Political Corruption," in Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Myers, eds. Corruption and American Politics : Cambria Press.

2008. Dimock, Michael, April K. Clark, and Juliana Menasce Horowitz. "Campaign Dynamics and the Swing Vote in the 2004 Election." In The Swing Voters in American Politics , ed. William G. Mayer. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The tasks of the proletariat in the present revolution, [a.k.a. the april theses].

Published: April 7, 1917 in Pravda No. 26.   Signed: N. Lenin . Published according to the newspaper text. Source: Lenin’s Collected Works , Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 24 , pp. 19-26. Translated: Isaacs Bernard Transcription: Zodiac HTML Markup: B. Baggins Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2005), marx.org (1997), marxists.org (1999). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

This article contains Lenin’s famous April Theses read by him at two meetings of the All-Russia Conference of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, on April 4, 1917.

[Introduction]

I did not arrive in Petrograd until the night of April 3, and therefore at the meeting on April 4, I could, of course, deliver the report on the tasks of the revolutionary proletariat only on my own behalf, and with reservations as to insufficient preparation.

The only thing I could do to make things easier for myself—and for honest opponents—was to prepare the theses in writing . I read them out, and gave the text to Comrade Tsereteli . I read them twice very slowly: first at a meeting of Bolsheviks and then at a meeting of both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks .

I publish these personal theses of mine with only the briefest explanatory notes, which were developed in far greater detail in the report.

1) In our attitude towards the war , which under the new [provisional] government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia’s part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible.

The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defencism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests.

In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, to explain the inseparable connection existing between capital and the imperialist war, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace, a peace not imposed by violence.

The most widespread campaign for this view must be organised in the army at the front.

Fraternisation.

2) The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution—which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie—to its second stage , which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants.

This transition is characterised, on the one hand, by a maximum of legally recognised rights (Russia is now the freest of all the belligerent countries in the world); on the other, by the absence of violence towards the masses, and, finally, by their unreasoning trust in the government of capitalists, those worst enemies of peace and socialism.

This peculiar situation demands of us an ability to adapt ourselves to the special conditions of Party work among unprecedentedly large masses of proletarians who have just awakened to political life.

3) No support for the Provisional Government ; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding “demand” that this government, a government of capitalists, should cease to be an imperialist government.

4) Recognition of the fact that in most of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies our Party is in a minority, so far a small minority, as against a bloc of all the petty-bourgeois opportunist elements, from the Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries down to the Organising Committee ( Chkheidze , Tsereteli , etc.), Steklov, etc., etc., who have yielded to the influence of the bourgeoisie and spread that influence among the proletariat.

The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.

As long as we are in the minority we carry on the work of criticising and exposing errors and at the same time we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, so that the people may overcome their mistakes by experience.

5) Not a parliamentary republic—to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies would be a retrograde step—but a republic of Soviets of Workers’, Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom.

Abolition of the police, the army and the bureaucracy. [1]

The salaries of all officials, all of whom are elective and displaceable at any time, not to exceed the average wage of a competent worker.

6) The weight of emphasis in the agrarian programme to be shifted to the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies.

Confiscation of all landed estates.

Nationalisation of all lands in the country, the land to be disposed of by the local Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The organisation of separate Soviets of Deputies of Poor Peasants. The setting up of a model farm on each of the large estates (ranging in size from 100 to 300 dessiatines , according to local and other conditions, and to the decisions of the local bodies) under the control of the Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies and for the public account.

7) The immediate union of all banks in the country into a single national bank, and the institution of control over it by the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.

8) It is not our immediate task to “introduce” socialism, but only to bring social production and the distribution of products at once under the control of the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies.

9) Party tasks:

(a) Immediate convocation of a Party congress;

(b) Alteration of the Party Programme, mainly:

(1) On the question of imperialism and the imperialist war,

(2) On our attitude towards the state and our demand for a “commune state” [2] ;

(3) Amendment of our out-of-date minimum programme;

(c) Change of the Party’s name. [3]

10. A new International.

We must take the initiative in creating a revolutionary International, an International against the social-chauvinists and against the “Centre”. [4]

In order that the reader may understand why I had especially to emphasise as a rare exception the “case” of honest opponents, I invite him to compare the above theses with the following objection by Mr. Goldenberg: Lenin, he said, “has planted the banner of civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy” (quoted in No. 5 of Mr. Plekhanov ’s Yedinstvo ).

Isn’t it a gem?

I write, announce and elaborately explain: “In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism ... in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them....”

Yet the bourgeois gentlemen who call themselves Social-Democrats, who do not belong either to the broad sections or to the mass believers in defencism, with serene brow present my views thus: “The banner[!] of civil war” (of which there is not a word in the theses and not a word in my speech!) has been planted(!) “in the midst [!!] of revolutionary democracy...”.

What does this mean? In what way does this differ from riot-inciting agitation, from Russkaya Volya ?

I write, announce and elaborately explain: “The Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and therefore our task is to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses.”

Yet opponents of a certain brand present my views as a call to “civil war in the midst of revolutionary democracy”!

I attacked the Provisional Government for not having appointed an early date or any date at all, for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly , and for confining itself to promises. I argued that without the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies the convocation of the Constituent Assembly is not guaranteed and its success is impossible.

And the view is attributed to me that I am opposed to the speedy convocation of the Constituent Assembly!

I would call this “raving”, had not decades of political struggle taught me to regard honesty in opponents as a rare exception.

Mr. Plekhanov in his paper called my speech “raving”. Very good, Mr. Plekhanov! But look how awkward, uncouth and slow-witted you are in your polemics. If I delivered a raving speech for two hours, how is it that an audience of hundreds tolerated this “raving”? Further, why does your paper devote a whole column to an account of the “raving”? Inconsistent, highly inconsistent!

It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain, to recall what Marx and Engels said in 1871, 1872 and 1875 about the experience of the Paris Commune and about the kind of state the proletariat needs. [See: The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme ]

Ex-Marxist Mr. Plekhanov evidently does not care to recall Marxism.

I quoted the words of Rosa Luxemburg , who on August 4, 1914 , called German Social-Democracy a “stinking corpse”. And the Plekhanovs, Goldenbergs and Co. feel “offended”. On whose behalf? On behalf of the German chauvinists, because they were called chauvinists!

They have got themselves in a mess, these poor Russian social-chauvinists—socialists in word and chauvinists in deed.

[1] [1] --> i.e. the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the whole people.— Lenin

[2] [2] --> i.e., a state of which the Paris Commune was the prototype.— Lenin

[3] [3] --> Instead of “Social-Democracy”, whose official leaders throughout the world have betrayed socialism and deserted to the bourgeoisie (the “defencists” and the vacillating “Kautskyites”), we must call ourselves the Communist Party .— Lenin

[4] [4] --> The “ Centre ” in the international Social-Democratic movement is the trend which vacillates between the chauvinists (=“defencists”) and internationalists, i.e., Kautsky and Co. in Germany, Longuet and Co. in France, Chkheidze and Co. in Russia, Turati and Co. in Italy, MacDonald and Co. in Britain, etc.— Lenin

HIST362: Modern Revolutions (2022.A.01)

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Workers of the world, unite, search form, april theses: lenin’s fundamental role in the russian revolution.

Submitted by World Revolution on 2 April, 2007 - 17:08

It is 90 years since the start of the Russian revolution. More particularly, this month sees the 90th anniversary of the ‘April Theses’, announced by Lenin on his return from exile, and calling for the overthrow of Kerensky’s ‘Provisional Government’ as a first step towards the international proletarian revolution. In highlighting Lenin’s crucial role in the revolution, we are not subscribing to the ‘great man’ theory of history, but showing that the revolutionary positions he was able to defend with such clarity at that moment were an expression of something much deeper – the awakening of an entire social class to the concrete possibility of emancipating itself from capitalism and imperialist war. The following article was originally published in World Revolution 203, April 1997. It can be read in conjunction with a more developed study of the April Theses now republished on our website, ‘ The April Theses: signpost to the proletarian revolution ’.

On 4 April 1917 Lenin returned from his exile in Switzerland, arrived in Petrograd and addressed himself directly to the workers and soldiers who crowded the station in these terms: “Dear comrades, soldiers, sailors and work­ers. I am happy to greet in you the victorious Russian revolution, to greet you as the ad­vance guard of the International proletarian army... The Russian revolution achieved by you has opened a new epoch. Long live the worldwide socialist revolution!...” (Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution ). 80 years later the bourgeoisie, its historians and media lackeys, are constantly busy main­taining the worst lies and historic distor­tions on the world proletarian revolution begun in Russia.

The ruling class’ hatred and contempt for the titanic movement of the exploited masses aims to ridicule it and to ‘show’ the futility of the communist project of the working class, its fundamental inability to bring about a new social order for the planet. The collapse of the eastern bloc has revived its class hatred. It has unleashed a gigantic campaign since then to hammer home the obvious defeat of commu­nism, identified with Stalinism, and with that the defeat of marxism, the obsolescence of the class struggle and even the idea of revolution which can only lead to terror and the Gulag. The target of this foul propaganda is the political organisation, the incarnation of the vast insurrectionary movement of 1917, the Bolshevik Party, which constantly draws all the vindictiveness of the defenders of the bourgeoisie. For all these apologists for the capitalist order, including the anarchists, whatever their apparent disagreements, it is a question of showing that Lenin and the Bol­sheviks were a band of power-hungry fanatics who did everything they could to usurp the democratic acquisitions of the February 1917 revolution (see ‘February 1917’ WR 202) and plunge Russia and the world into one of the most disastrous experiences in history.

Faced with all these unbelievable calumnies against Bolshevism, it falls to revolutionaries to re-establish the truth and reaffirm the essential point concerning the Bolshevik Party: it was not a product of Russian barbarism or backwardness, nor of deformed anarcho-ter­rorism, nor of the absolute concern for power by its leaders. Bolshevism was, in the first place, a product of the world proletariat, linked to a marxist tradition, the vanguard of the international movement to end all exploi­tation and oppression. To this end the state­ment of positions Lenin brought out on his return to Russia, known as the April Theses, gives us an excellent point of departure to refute all the various untruths on the Bolshe­vik Party, its nature, its role and its links with the proletarian masses.

The conditions of struggle on Lenin’s return to Russia in April 1917

In the previous article ( WR 202) we recalled that the working class in Russia had well and truly opened the way to the world communist revolution with the events of February 1917, overturning Tsarism, organising in soviets and showing a growing radicalisation. The insurrection resulted in a situation of dual power. The official power was the bourgeois ‘Provisional Government’, initially lead by the liberals but which later gained a more ‘socialist’ hue under the direction of Kerensky. On the other hand effective power already lay, as was well understood, in the hands of the soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. Without soviet authorisation the government had little hope of imposing its directives on the workers and soldiers. But the working class had not yet acquired the necessary political maturity to take all the power. In spite of their more and more radical actions and attitudes, the majority of the working class and behind them the peasant masses, were held back by illusions in the nature of the bourgeoisie, and by the idea that only a bourgeois democratic revolution was on the agenda in Russia. The predominance of these ideas among the masses was reflected in the domination of the soviets by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries who did everything they could to make the soviets impotent in the face of the newly installed bourgeois regime. These parties, which had gone over, or were in the process of going over, to the bourgeoisie, tried by all means to subordinate the growing revolution­ary movement to the aims of the Provisional Government, especially in relation to the im­perialist war. In this situation, so full of dangers and promises, the Bolsheviks, who had directed the internationalist opposition to the war, were themselves in almost complete confusion at that moment, politically disorien­tated. So, “ In the ‘manifesto’ of the Bolshevik Central Committee, drawn up just after the victory of the insurrection, we read that ‘the workers of the shops and factories, and likewise the mutinied troops, must immediately elect their representatives to the Provisional Revolutionary Government’... They behaved not like the representatives of a proletarian party preparing an independent struggle for power, but like the left wing of a democracy ” ( Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution , vol. 1, chapter XV , p.271, 1967 Sphere edi­tion). Worse still, when Stalin and Kamenev took the direction of the party in March, they moved it even further to the right. Pravda, the official organ of the party, openly adopted a defencist position on the war: “Our slogan is not the meaningless ‘down with war’... every man remains at his fighting post.” (Trotsky, p.275). The flagrant abandonment of Lenin’s position on the transformation of the imperi­alist war into a civil war caused resistance and even anger in the party and among the work­ers of Petrograd, the heart of the proletariat. But these most radical elements were not capable of offering a clear programmatic alternative to this turn to the right. The party was then drawn towards compromise and treason, under the influence of the fog of democratic euphoria which appeared after the February revolt.

The political rearmament of the Party

It fell to Lenin, then, after his return from abroad, to politically rearm the party and to put forward the decisive importance of the revolutionary direction through the April Theses: “Lenin’s theses produced the effect of an exploding bomb” (Trotsky, p. 295). The old party programme had become null and void, situated far behind the spontaneous action of the masses. The slogan to which the “Old Bolsheviks” were attached, the “demo­cratic dictatorship of workers and peasants” was henceforth an obsolete formula as Lenin put forward: “ The revolutionary democratic revolution of the proletariat and the peasants has already been achieved... ” (Lenin, Letters on tactics ). However, “ The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution - which, owing to the insufficient class consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie - to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants. ” (Point 2 of the April Theses). Lenin was one of the first to grasp the revolutionary significance of the soviet as an organ of proletarian political power. Once again Lenin gave a lesson on the marxist method, in showing that marxism was the complete opposite of a dead dogma but a living scientific theory which must be con­stantly verified in the laboratory of social movements.

Similarly, faced with the Menshevik posi­tion according to which backward Russia was not yet ripe for socialism, Lenin argued as a true internationalist that the immediate task was not to introduce socialism in Russia (Thesis 8). If Russia, in itself, was not ready for socialism, the imperialist war had demon­strated that world capitalism as a whole was truly over-ripe. For Lenin, as for all the authentic internationalists then, the interna­tional revolution was not just a pious wish but a concrete perspective developed from the international proletarian revolt against the war - the strikes in Britain and Germany, the political demonstrations, the mutinies and fraternisations in the armed forces of several countries, and certainly the growing revolu­tionary flood in Russia itself, which revealed it. This is where the appeal for the creation of a new International at the end of the Theses came from. This perspective was going to be completely confirmed after the October insur­rection by the extension of the revolutionary wave to Italy, Hungary, Austria and above all Germany.

This new definition of the proletariat’s tasks also brought another conception of the role and function of the party. There also the “Old Bolsheviks” like Kamenev were at first re­volted by Lenin’s vision, his idea of the soviets taking power on the one hand and on the other his insistence on the class autonomy of the proletariat against the bourgeois government and the imperialist war, even if that would mean remaining for awhile in the minority and not as Kamenev would like: “ remaining with the masses of the revolutionary proletariat ”. Kamenev used the conception of “ a mass party ” to oppose Lenin’s conception of a party of determined revolutionaries, with a clear programme, united, centralised, minoritarian, capable of resisting the siren calls of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie and illusions existing in the working class. This conception of the party has nothing to do with the Blanquist terrorist sect, that Lenin was accused of putting forward, nor even with the anarchist concep­tion submitting to the spontaneity of the masses. On the contrary there was the recognition that in a period of massive revolutionary turbu­lence, of the development of consciousness in the class, the party can no longer organise nor plan to mobilise the masses in the way of the conspiratorial associations of the 19th century. But that made the role of the party more essential than ever. Lenin came back to the vision that Rosa Luxemburg developed in her authoritative analysis of the mass strike in the period of decadence: “ If we now leave the pedantic scheme of demonstrative mass strikes artificially brought about by order of the par­ties and trade unions, and turn to the living picture of a peoples’ movement arising with elemental energy... it becomes obvious that the task of social democracy does not consist in the technical preparation and direction of mass strikes, but first and foremost in the political leadership of the whole movement. ” (Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Un­ions ). All Lenin’s energy was going to be orientated towards the necessity of convincing the party of the new tasks which fell to it, in relation to the working class, the central axis of which is the development of class conscious­ness. Thesis 4 posed this clearly: “ The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolu­tionary government and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation espe­cially adapted to the practical needs of the masses… we preach the necessity of transferring the entire state power to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies. ” So this approach, this will to defend clear and precise class principles, going against the current and being in a minority, has nothing to do with purism or sectarianism. On the contrary they were based on a comprehension of the real movement which was unfolding in the class at each moment, on the capacity to give a voice and direction to the most radical elements within the proletariat. The insurrection was impossible as long as the Bolshevik’s revolutionary positions, positions maturing through­out the revolutionary process in Russia, had not consciously won over the soviets. We are a very long way from the bourgeois obscenities on the supposed putschist attitude of the Bolsheviks! As Lenin still affirmed: “ We are not charlatans. We must base ourselves only on the consciousness of the masses ” (Lenin’s second speech on his arrival in Petrograd, cited in Trotsky, p. 293).

Lenin’s mastery of the marxist method, seeing beyond the surface and appearances of events, allowed him in company with the best elements of the party, to discern the real dynamic of the movement which was un­folding before their eyes and to meet the profound desires of the masses and give them the theoretical resources to defend their positions and clarify their actions. They were also enabled to orientate them­selves against the bourgeoisie by seeing and frustrating the traps which the latter tried to set for the proletariat, as during the July days in 1917. That’s why, contrary to the Mensheviks of this time and their numerous anarchist, social democratic and councilist successors, who caricature to excess certain real errors by Lenin [1] in order to reject the proletarian character of the October 1917 revolution, we reaffirm the fundamental role played by Lenin in the rectification of the Bolshevik Party, without which the prole­tariat would not have been able to take power in October 1917. Lenin’s life-long struggle to build the revolutionary organisation is a his­toric acquisition of the workers’ movement. It has left revolutionaries today an indispensa­ble basis to build the class party, allowing them to understand what their role must be in the class as a whole. The victorious insurrec­tion of October 1917 validates Lenin’s view. The isolation of the revolution after the defeat of the revolutionary attempts in other coun­tries of Europe stopped the international dy­namic of the revolution which would have been the sole guarantee of a local victory in Russia. The soviet state encouraged the ad­vent of Stalinism, the veritable executioner of the revolution and of the Bolsheviks.

What remains essential is that during the rising tide of the revolution in Russia, the Lenin of the April Theses was never an isolated prophet, nor was he holding himself above the vulgar masses, but he was the clearest voice of the most revolutionary tendency within the proletariat, a voice which showed the way which lead to the victory of October 1917. “ In Russia the prob­lem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future every­where belongs to ‘Bolshevism’. ” (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution ). SB, March 2007.

[1] Among these great play is made by the councilists on the theory of ‘consciousness brought from outside’ developed in ‘What is to be done?’. Well, afterwards, Lenin recognised this error and amply proved in practice that he had acquired a correct vision of the process of the development of consciousness in the work­ing class.

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Coastal Sketch: April Clark Strikes A Balance

11/09/2016 by Brad Rich

SWANSBORO — April Clark, an entrepreneur and member of the North Carolina Coastal Federation Board of Directors, has mastered the enviable task of working for a living, having fun and doing good things for her community and its environment.

And it all came about, not so much by design, but by, well, if not happenstance, maybe intuition. Or maybe necessity. Or some combination of all that. But it happened.

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Clark, who owns and operates Second Wind Yoga and Eco-Tours in Swansboro, was born in West Virginia, but grew up nearby, in Jacksonville. Her father was in the Marine Corps, and she went to Jacksonville High School and graduated in 1980. It was a pretty normal Onslow County life.

But eventually, April’s father got transferred to Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, and she discovered waters that were, well, nothing like she’d seen back home. It’s not that the waters of Onslow were filthy, it’s just that those Cuban waters, the Caribbean, were so … unspoiled, so clear. You could dive and see all that was around you, April recalls, and it was unforgettable, when she started diving, there and in south Florida. By her early 20s, she was a certified diving instructor, though she never did it for a living. She did, however, use the skill to clean boat hulls. That, she recalls, was hard work. But the job, and diving in general, were eye-openers.

“It was so quiet, and you could see all of the life on such a micro-level,” she said. “It gave you such an appreciation for what was there, for what so many other people don’t get a chance to see. You don’t forget that.” She also visited the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, which, again, offered unspoiled views of marine life.

Clark eventually returned to North Carolina and earned her college degree from East Carolina through Mount Olive, and got a master’s degree from UNC-Wilmington. Her master’s thesis was on the present and future of a coastal North Carolina town: namely, Swansboro.

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Clark concedes she drifted a bit, having fun, living the party life, and eventually found her way into corporate sales, working for 16 years for U.S. Cellular and other tech firms. It was a turning point. The pressure of the corporate life convinced her she needed stress relief, a whole lot of it, and she found in it in yoga. She took to yoga like a fish in water, learned it, mastered it and learned to teach it.

Later, when Clark got laid off from U.S. Cellular, she received a severance package, and she used that money to start Second Wind, with a few kayaks to rent and the idea that kayaking and yoga somehow fit. Second Wind was both literal and figurative.

“It made sense to me,” she says now, looking back. “There was something about being out on the water, floating, sometimes calmly, but getting exercise, and being in the natural environment, and combining that with yoga, that just felt right.”

Slowly but surely, that combo led her into activism. She saw trash in the water during the paddles she led, and started picking it up and encouraging others to do so. It became part and parcel of Second Wind. It fit, especially for someone who’d always prided herself on fitness and a holistic lifestyle. She was also a big believer in collaborative work, which she believed, and still believes, creates synergy; as such, her first partner in her work was the North Carolina Coastal Federation, working on fundraising events. Talk to her long enough and you’ll hear lots of talk about collaboration and synergy.

Clark also credits her work with the Swansboro Rotary Club for her success in both business and activism; Rotary’s motto is “Service above self,” and she believes in that wholeheartedly. Rotary also is great for networking, and while some might think of the organization as conservative and almost totally business oriented, she’s managed to get Rotary clubs in the area involved in cleanups of area waterways, getting members to hit the water in kayaks to pick up trash. It is service, she says, and they get that.

It was, after all, a natural extension of both her personal and business life. Kayakers want clean waterways, and yoga practitioners in general celebrate and honor their surroundings; they want to be a positive part of the web of life.

“I love having the ability to offer something unique to our customers, to let them know that while they are kayaking or canoeing, they can do something good for the community,” she said. “And there’s just something beautiful about being able to do yoga on an island in the middle of a clean waterway. It’s a way to de-stress and do some good at the same time, to leave the area better than you found it. We’ve found that it works well together.”

The whole business has worked out far better than Clark expected, but it’s been and still is a challenge, as for all. Many other kayak tour businesses have opened in the area since she started Second Wind, and she works hard to stay ahead of the curve, expanding into massage and wellness programs, offering Tibetan singing bowl performances and different kinds of yoga – including yoga on stand-up paddleboards – to keep folks coming back to learn and participate in new things, and in environmental efforts.

She’s also expanded her role in the community, joining the board of directors of the White Oak-New Riverkeeper Association, again, primarily in the role of a fundraiser, but also giving advice and helping in other areas, as needed. For the past few years, she’s led a New Year’s Day “polar plunge,” in which folks donate a small fee to kayak from Swansboro out to Pelican Island, maybe do some yoga there, then dive into the cold waters, albeit briefly. And maybe take home some trash. It is fun, but purposeful.

Her fundraising efforts have helped raise awareness of the riverkeeper association, which has been around for about eight years but hit troubled financial times and went for a few years without a waterkeeper until hiring Nicole Triplett in October 2015. The association is still struggling a bit, and Clark wants to help, but she thinks it has a great chance for a solid future, thanks to collaboration and synergy, those two words she likes a lot and values greatly.

The federation and riverkeeper association, she said, are not and should not be, competitors for resources and volunteers, but should and do complement each other. Riverkeeper groups, she said, are historically a bit more outspoken and at least, in public, more aggressive, more willing to use tough words and hard-hitting, confrontational tactics against polluters.

There are essential roles, Clark said, for the behind-the-scenes, often bureaucratic work that groups like the federation do – commenting on projects, lobbying in the legislature and in Congress and obtaining grants for things like natural shorelines and land purchases for conservation – and for the in-the-water, nitty-gritty, sometimes confrontational work that the riverkeepers’ groups do. Sometimes, of course, the roles overlap. And there again is that word she likes: synergy.

Clark thinks the federation and others involved in the environmental efforts along North Carolina’s long and varied coastline have made a huge difference and will continue to so. Sometimes, she said, progress is more measureable by what hasn’t happened – intense development in areas where it’s not appropriate – but there are also hopeful signs of proactive measures, such as increased use of natural living shorelines to protect against erosion instead of bulkheads, which destroy habitat for shellfish and other marine life.

“I feel like we are all, together, making a difference,” she said. “There a lot of people involved who work well together, and I think play an important and effective role in educating the public on what needs to be done and how they can be involved.”

She tries to incorporate those educational efforts into her business, and recalled a recent conversation with a woman – a conservative one might normally not expect to be receptive to environmental messages – while teaching yoga at the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce.

“We were talking about the emphasis Brazil put on climate change during the (opening ceremonies) for the Olympics this year,” she said. “She said she didn’t believe in that. But we talked about the fact that things are changing, species are disappearing, habitat is disappearing. She said she’d look at it again.”

Clark said, that’s how environmental efforts grow, and how they become more effective over time: Getting a person, or a few people, at a time, to look at things from a different perspective.

But as a business owner in a small town, Clark knows there’s a balancing act necessary to foster environmental protection and improvement and economic success – livelihoods – for those who live in the small coastal towns. And she thinks the federation has, and is doing, a great job in fostering that balance, convincing developers, whenever possible, to do things that might cost more in the short term, but might save money and effort in the long term, and in between preserve the environment that draws folks to the coast in the first place.

The success of her business, she said, is proof that there are jobs to be created, money to be made, in enterprises that don’t hurt, and in fact, help, the ecosystems around them. She started in 2010 with about 10 rental kayaks and now has 30, plus 10 stand-up paddleboards. It’s not unusual for almost all of them to be in the water.

She’s also proud that her town, Swansboro, has become more environmentally friendly in recent years, changing its unified development ordinance to more carefully address stormwater management and even implementing a stormwater management fee to help pay for improvements where needed, both for flood control and pollution abatement.

Swansboro, she said, is not unlike many of North Carolina’s coastal towns. Faced with tough economic times, it’s in a bit of a tug-of-war between those who think the environment can be sacrificed, at least somewhat, for jobs, and those who think that protecting and enhancing the environment is the key to maintaining jobs and creating new ones in an area dependent upon those who arrive looking for clean waters on which to fish and play.

“We as a community have to decide what we want to be, like so many others do,” Clark said. “Where is the balance? I’m willing to do my part, to call my town commissioners, to write letters and to use some of the money I earn. It’s very important to me.”

About Brad Rich

Brad Rich is a reporter for the Carteret County News-Times in Morehead City. He has written about fishery and environmental issues along the central North Carolina coast for 35 years. He lives in Hubert with his wife, Gwen.

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Clark honors college menu, clark honors college, chc will host three-minute thesis competition in april.

In April, the Clark Honors College will hold its inaugural Three-Minute Thesis competition, allowing anyone who is defending a thesis in winter or spring 2023 to participate and win cash prizes.

Known as 3MT, the idea came out of the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2008. Since then, the competition has been adopted by institutions in 85 countries—including the University of Oregon’s Graduate School.

CHC students who sign up will have three minutes to verbally present the idea behind their thesis and research, including the use of one slide. If enough students sign up, there will be preliminary rounds held on April 4-5. The main competition will take place on April 20 at Chapman Hall from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The competition will be judged by an assortment of Honors College faculty, alumni, and members of the greater UO community. All participants will receive feedback on their presentations, which will identify strengths of the presentation and areas for improvement. Snacks will be provided.

Christy McElroy, CHC’s budget and data analyst, has played a role in launching the competition. Students who are thinking of applying shouldn’t feel intimidated, she says.

“We know how hard students at the Honors College are working,” she says. “The whole thing is designed not to be a high-pressure situation. It’s meant to be useful, and it’s meant to be fun.” To participate, students need to submit a 150-word summary of their thesis to Miriam Jordan by March 24.

Why Participate? It will help your thesis presentation.

When McElroy’s son was a CHC student and going through the thesis process, he would often describe the status of his research to his sister and McElroy, she recalls. He majored in both physics and math.

McElroy told him that “if you can’t tell us about what you’re doing in language that we can understand, what you’re doing is lost.”

Solving that dilemma is at the core of the Three-Minute Thesis competition, giving students a chance to practice explaining their research to people outside their chosen fields. The panel of judges will consist of people from a range of different backgrounds and expertise. Students who participate in 3MT have the opportunity to practice presentation skills.

As someone who regularly works with budgets, McElroy knows students have plenty of expenses. The competition “could end up putting some money in students’ pockets,” she says of the prize winners. The top three presentations—and an audience favorite—will receive a prize.

The first-place winner will get $500; second place takes home $250; third place is $125; and the “People’s Choice” award is $75.

According to Jordan, the CHC academic and thesis programs manager, students typically spend three terms planning, researching, and writing their theses. The new competition is one opportunity for students to share their months of hard work with the community, she says.

In her years working with students, Jordan has seen theses that range from physics to dance. She’s eager to see the array of different topics at the competition. A videographer will be present at the competition finals to record presentations. Winners will be featured on the Honors College website.

- Story by Elizabeth Yost and Keyry Hernandez, Clark Honors College Communications

- Photo by Ilka Sankari, Clark Honors College Communications

Engagement in a Democracy

Lumen Learning and OpenStax

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the importance of citizen engagement in a democracy
• Describe the main ways Americans can influence and become engaged in government
• Discuss factors that may affect people’s willingness to become engaged in government

Participation in government matters. Although people may not get all that they want, they can achieve many goals and improve their lives through civic engagement. According to the pluralist theory, government cannot function without active participation by at least some citizens. Even if we believe the elite make political decisions, participation in government through the act of voting can change who the members of the elite are.

WHY GET INVOLVED?

Are fewer people today active in politics than in the past? Political scientist Robert Putnam has argued that civic engagement is declining; although many Americans may report belonging to groups, these groups are usually large, impersonal ones with thousands of members. People who join groups such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace may share certain values and ideals with other members of the group, but they do not actually interact with these other members. These organizations are different from the types of groups Americans used to belong to, like church groups or bowling leagues. Although people are still interested in volunteering and working for the public good, they are more interested in either working individually or joining large organizations where they have little opportunity to interact with others. Putnam considers a number of explanations for this decline in small group membership, including increased participation by women in the workforce, a decrease in the number of marriages and an increase in divorces, and the effect of technological developments, such as the internet, that separate people by allowing them to feel connected to others without having to spend time in their presence. [1]

Putnam argues that a decline in social capital —“the collective value of all ‘social networks’ [those whom people know] and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other”—accompanies this decline in membership in small, interactive groups. [2] Included in social capital are such things as networks of individuals, a sense that one is part of an entity larger than oneself, concern for the collective good and a willingness to help others, and the ability to trust others and to work with them to find solutions to problems. This, in turn, has hurt people’s willingness and ability to engage in representative government. If Putnam is correct, this trend is unfortunate, because becoming active in government and community organizations is important for many reasons.

Some have countered Putnam’s thesis and argue that participation is in better shape than what he portrays. Everett Ladd shows many positive trends in social involvement in American communities that serve to soften some of the declines identified by Putnam. For example, while bowling league participation is down, soccer league participation has proliferated. [3] April Clark examines and analyzes a wide variety of social capital data trends and disputes the original thesis of erosion. [4] Others have suggested that technology has increased connectedness, an idea that Putnam himself has critiqued as not as deep as in-person connections. [5] In the decades since Putnam has levied his argument that people are becoming less civic engaged, a rise in the intensity of polarization in politics has been observed, and the argument has been made that political engagement has become a substitute for much of the previous civic engagement in the organization of civil society. A national view of all political issues has pervaded many local political issues leading to the simultaneous intensification and disengagement in civil society, perhaps reinforcing the erosion of social capital.

LINK TO LEARNING

Civic engagement can increase the power of ordinary people to influence government actions. Even those without money or connections to important people can influence the policies that affect their lives and change the direction taken by government. U.S. history is filled with examples of people actively challenging the power of elites, gaining rights for themselves, and protecting their interests. For example, slavery was once legal in the United States and large sectors of the U.S. economy were dependent on this forced labor. Slavery was outlawed and enslaved people were granted citizenship because of the actions of abolitionists. Although some abolitionists were wealthy White men, most were ordinary people, including men and women of both races. White women and African Americans were able to actively assist in the campaign to end slavery despite the fact that, with few exceptions, they were unable to vote. Similarly, the right to vote once belonged solely to White men until the Fifteenth Amendment gave the vote to African American men. The Nineteenth Amendment extended the vote to include women, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made exercising the right to vote a reality for Black men and women in the South. None of this would have happened, however, without the efforts of people who marched in protest, participated in boycotts, delivered speeches, wrote letters to politicians, and sometimes risked arrest in order to be heard. The tactics used to influence the government and effect change by abolitionists and members of the women’s rights and African American civil rights movements are still used by many activists today.

The rights gained by these activists and others have dramatically improved the quality of life for many in the United States. Civil rights legislation did not focus solely on the right to vote or to hold public office; it also integrated schools and public accommodations, prohibited discrimination in housing and employment, and increased access to higher education. Activists for women’s rights fought for, and won, greater reproductive freedom for women, better wages, and access to credit. Only a few decades ago, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder, and intercourse between consenting adults of the same sex was illegal in many states. Although legal discrimination against LGBTQ people still remains, consensual intercourse between gay and lesbian adults is no longer illegal anywhere in the United States, same-sex couples have the right to legally marry, and LGBTQ people are better protected against employment discrimination.

Activism can improve people’s lives in less dramatic ways as well. Working to make cities clean up vacant lots, destroy or rehabilitate abandoned buildings, build more parks and playgrounds, pass ordinances requiring people to curb their dogs, and ban late-night noise greatly affects people’s quality of life. The actions of individual Americans can make their own lives better and improve their neighbors’ lives as well.

Representative democracy cannot work effectively without the participation of informed citizens, however. Engaged citizens familiarize themselves with the most important issues confronting the country and with the plans different candidates have for dealing with those issues. Then they vote for the candidates they believe will be best suited to the job, and they may join others to raise funds or campaign for those they support. They inform their representatives of how they feel about important issues. Through these efforts and others, engaged citizens let their representatives know what they want and thus influence policy. Only then can government actions accurately reflect the interests and concerns of the majority. Even people who believe the elite rule government should recognize that it is easier for them to do so if ordinary people make no effort to participate in public life.

PATHWAYS TO ENGAGEMENT

People can become civically engaged in many ways, either as individuals or as members of groups. Some forms of individual engagement require very little effort. One of the simplest ways is to stay informed about debates and events in the community, in the state, and in the nation. Awareness is the first step toward engagement. News is available from a variety of reputable sources, such as newspapers like the New York Times ; national news shows, including those offered by the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio; and reputable internet sites.

Visit Avaaz and Change.org for more information on current political issues.

Another form of individual engagement is to write or email political representatives. Filing a complaint with the city council is another avenue of engagement. City officials cannot fix problems if they do not know anything is wrong to begin with. Responding to public opinion polls, actively contributing to a political blog, or starting a new blog are all examples of different ways to be involved. It is also inescapable that social media engagement has exploded over the last ten years. Moreover, with the self-selection of friend groups and feeds online, bias is mobilized, and we see increasing complaints about fake news.

One of the most basic ways to engage with government as an individual is to vote. Individual votes do matter. City council members, mayors, state legislators, governors, and members of Congress are all chosen by popular vote. Although the president of the United States is not chosen directly by popular vote but by a group called the Electoral College, the votes of individuals in their home states determine how the Electoral College ultimately votes. Registering to vote beforehand is necessary in most states, but it is usually a simple process, and many states allow registration online. (We discuss voter registration and voter turnout in more depth in a later chapter.)

Voting, however, is not the only form of political engagement in which people may participate. Individuals can engage by attending political rallies, donating money to campaigns, and signing petitions. Starting a petition of one’s own is relatively easy, and some websites that encourage people to become involved in political activism provide petitions that can be circulated through email. Taking part in a poll or survey is another simple way to make your voice heard.

Votes for Eighteen-Year-Olds

Young Americans are often reluctant to become involved in traditional forms of political activity. They may believe politicians are not interested in what they have to say, or they may feel their votes do not matter. However, this attitude has not always prevailed. Indeed, today’s college students can vote because of the activism of college students in the 1960s. Most states at that time required citizens to be twenty-one years of age before they could vote in national elections. This angered many young people, especially young men who could be drafted to fight the war in Vietnam. They argued that it was unfair to deny eighteen-year-olds the right to vote for the people who had the power to send them to war. As a result, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age in national elections to eighteen, was ratified by the states and went into effect in 1971.

Are you engaged in or at least informed about actions of the federal or local government? Are you registered to vote? How would you feel if you were not allowed to vote until age twenty-one?

Some people prefer to work with groups when participating in political activities or performing service to the community. Group activities can be as simple as hosting a book club or discussion group to talk about politics. Coffee Party USA provides an online forum for people from a variety of political perspectives to discuss issues that are of concern to them. People who wish to be more active often work for political campaigns. Engaging in fundraising efforts, handing out bumper stickers and campaign buttons, helping people register to vote, and driving voters to the polls on Election Day are all important activities that anyone can engage in. Individual citizens can also join interest groups that promote the causes they favor.

GET CONNECTED!

Getting Involved

In many ways, the pluralists were right. There is plenty of room for average citizens to become active in government, whether it is through a city council subcommittee or another type of local organization. Civic organizations always need volunteers, sometimes for only a short while and sometimes for much longer.

For example, Common Cause is a non-partisan organization that seeks to hold government accountable for its actions. It calls for campaign finance reform and paper verification of votes registered on electronic voting machines. Voters would then receive proof that the machine recorded their actual vote. This would help to detect faulty machines that were inaccurately tabulating votes or election fraud. Therefore, one could be sure that election results were reliable and that the winning candidate had in fact received the votes counted in their favor. Common Cause has also advocated that the Electoral College be done away with and that presidential elections be decided solely on the basis of the popular vote.

Follow-up activity: Choose one of the following websites to connect with organizations and interest groups in need of help:

• Common Cause ;
• Friends of the Earth which mobilizes people to protect the natural environment;
• The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget which seeks to inform the public on issues with fiscal impact and favors smaller budget deficits; or
• Conservative Leaders for Education which supports local control and increased parent choice in education.

Political activity is not the only form of engagement, and many people today seek other opportunities to become involved. This is particularly true of young Americans. Although young people today often shy away from participating in traditional political activities, they do express deep concern for their communities and seek out volunteer opportunities. [6] Although they may not realize it, becoming active in the community and engaging in a wide variety of community-based volunteer efforts are important forms of civic engagement and help government do its job. The demands on government are great, and funds do not always exist to enable it to undertake all the projects it may deem necessary. Even when there are sufficient funds, politicians have differing ideas regarding how much government should do and what areas it should be active in. Volunteers and community organizations help fill the gaps. Examples of community action include tending a community garden, building a house for Habitat for Humanity, cleaning up trash in a vacant lot, volunteering to deliver meals to the elderly, and tutoring children in after-school programs.

Some people prefer even more active and direct forms of engagement such as protest marches and demonstrations, including civil disobedience. Such tactics were used successfully in the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and remain effective today. Likewise, the sit-ins (and sleep-ins and pray-ins) staged by Black civil rights activists, which they employed successfully to desegregate lunch counters, motels, and churches, have been adopted today by movements such as Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street. Other tactics, such as boycotting businesses whose policies the activists disapproved of, are also still common. Along with boycotts, there are now “buycotts,” in which consumers purchase goods and services from companies that give extensively to charity, help the communities in which they are located, or take steps to protect the environment.

INSIDER PERSPECTIVE

Ritchie Torres

In 2013, at the age of twenty-five, Ritchie Torres became the youngest member of the New York City Council and the first gay council member to represent the Bronx. Torres became interested in social justice early in his life. He was raised in poverty in the Bronx by his mother and a stepfather who left the family when Torres was twelve. The mold in his family’s public housing apartment caused him to suffer from asthma as a child, and he spent time in the hospital on more than one occasion because of it. His mother’s complaints to the New York City Housing Authority were largely ignored. In high school, Torres decided to become a lawyer, participated in mock trials, and met a young and aspiring local politician named James Vacca. After graduation, he volunteered to campaign for Vacca in his run for a seat on the City Council. After Vacca was elected, he hired Torres to serve as his housing director to reach out to the community on Vacca’s behalf. While doing so, Torres took pictures of the poor conditions in public housing and collected complaints from residents. In 2013, Torres ran for a seat on the City Council himself and won. In November 2020, Torres was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to represent New York’s 15th congressional district. He and Mondaire Jones, who represents NY 17, are the first openly gay Black men elected to Congress. He remains committed to improving housing for the poor. [7]

Why don’t more young people run for local office as Torres did? What changes might they affect in their communities if they were elected to government positions?

FACTORS OF ENGAGEMENT

Many Americans engage in political activity on a regular basis. A survey conducted in 2018 revealed that almost 70 percent of American adults had participated in some type of political action in the past five years. These activities included largely non-personal activities that did not require a great deal of interaction with others, such as signing petitions, expressing opinions on social media, contacting elected representatives, or contributing money to campaigns. During the same period, approximately 30 percent of people attended a local government meeting or a political rally or event, while 16 percent worked or volunteered for a campaign. [8]

Americans aged 18–29 were less likely to become involved in traditional forms of political activity than older Americans. A 2018 poll of more than two thousand young adults by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics revealed that only 24 percent claimed to be politically engaged, and fewer than 35 percent said that they had voted in a primary. Only 9 percent said that they had gone to a political demonstration, rally, or march. [9] However, in the 2018 midterm elections, an estimated 31 percent of Americans under thirty turned out to vote, the highest level of young adult engagement in decades. [10] In 2020, Harvard’s polling showed significant interest in the 2020 presidential campaign and intent to vote. Post-election analysis by Tuft University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) showed a record youth turnout of 53 percent, which was greater even than the historic turnout in the 2008 contest. The young vote swung heavily toward Biden in swing states. And, yet, young voters again participated at lower rates than did other age groups. [11]

Why are younger Americans less likely to become involved in traditional political organizations? One answer may be that as American politics become more partisan in nature, young people turn away. Committed partisanship , which is the tendency to identify with and to support (often blindly) a particular political party, alienates some Americans who feel that elected representatives should vote in support of the nation’s best interests instead of voting in the way their party wishes them to. When elected officials ignore all factors other than their party’s position on a particular issue, some voters become disheartened while others may become polarized. However, a recent study reveals that it is a distrust of the opposing party and not an ideological commitment to their own party that is at the heart of most partisanship among voters. [12]

Young Americans are particularly likely to be put off by partisan politics. More Americans under the age of thirty now identify themselves as Independents instead of Democrats or Republicans. Instead of identifying with a particular political party, young Americans are increasingly concerned about specific issues, such as same-sex marriage. [13] People whose votes are determined based on single issues are unlikely to vote according to party affiliation.

The other factor involved in low youth voter turnout in the past was that younger Americans did not feel that candidates generally tackle issues relevant to their lives. When younger voters cannot relate to the issues put forth in a campaign, such as entitlements for seniors, they lose interest. This dynamic changed somewhat in 2016 as Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders made college costs an issue, even promising free college tuition for undergraduates at public institutions. Senator Sanders enjoyed intense support on college campuses across the United States. After his nomination campaign failed, this young voter enthusiasm faded. Despite the fact that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton eventually took up the free tuition issue, young people did not flock to her as well as they had to Sanders. In the general election, won by Republican nominee Donald Trump, turnout was down and Clinton received a smaller proportion of the youth vote than President Obama had in 2012. [14] In 2020, youth again felt connected with candidates, and that compelled participation throughout the election year. Sanders again galvanized interest, as did Biden and Harris during the general election phase. Student loan debt was a key campaign issue.

While some Americans disapprove of partisanship in general, others are put off by the ideology —established beliefs and ideals that help shape political policy—of one of the major parties. This is especially true among the young. While ideological polarization has occurred on both sides of the political spectrum, as some members of the Republican Party have become more ideologically conservative (e.g., opposing same-sex marriage, legalization of certain drugs, immigration reform, gun control, separation of church and state, and access to abortion), those young people who do identify with one of the major parties have in recent years tended to favor the Democratic Party. [15] Of the Americans under age thirty who were surveyed by Harvard in 2015, more tended to hold a favorable opinion of Democrats in Congress than of Republicans, and in the 2020 election, 61 percent of younger voters voted for the Democratic ticket. Even those young Americans who identify themselves as Republicans are more liberal on certain issues, such as being supportive of same-sex marriage and immigration reform, than are older Republicans. The young Republicans also may be more willing to see similarities between themselves and Democrats. [16] Once again, support for the views of a particular party does not necessarily mean that someone will vote for members of that party.

Other factors may keep even those college students who do wish to vote away from the polls. Because many young Americans attend colleges and universities outside of their home states, they may find it difficult to register to vote. In places where a state-issued ID is required, students may not have one or may be denied one if they cannot prove that they paid in-state tuition rates. [17]

The likelihood that people will become active in politics also depends not only on age but on such factors as wealth and education. In 2020, as was the case in past elections, the percentage of people who reported that they were regular voters grew as levels of income and education increased. [18] [19] Political involvement also depends on how strongly people feel about current political issues. Unfortunately, public opinion polls, which politicians may rely on when formulating policy or deciding how to vote on issues, capture only people’s latent preferences or beliefs. Latent preferences are not deeply held and do not remain the same over time. They may not even represent a person’s true feelings, since they may be formed on the spot when someone is asked a question about which he or she has no real opinion. Indeed, voting itself may reflect merely a latent preference because even people who do not feel strongly about a particular political candidate or issue vote. On the other hand, intense preferences are based on strong feelings regarding an issue that someone adheres to over time. People with intense preferences tend to become more engaged in politics; they are more likely to donate time and money to campaigns or to attend political rallies. The more money that one has and the more highly educated one is, the more likely that he or she will form intense preferences and take political action. [20]

CHAPTER REVIEW

• Robert D. Putnam. 2001. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 75. ↵
• ———. 1995. "Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy 6: 66–67, 69; "About Social Capital," https://www.hks.harvard.edu/programs/saguaro/about-social-capital (May 2, 2016). ↵
• Everett Ladd. The Ladd Report. http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/first/l/ladd-report.html ↵
• April Clark. "Rethinking the Decline in Social Capital." American Politics Research. April 29, 2014. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1532673X14531071 ↵
• Emily Badger. "The Terrible Loneliness of Growing Up Poor in Robert Putnam's America." The Washington Post. March 6, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/06/the-terrible-loneliness-of-growing-up-poor-in-robert-putnams-america/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.32998051b18a ↵
• Jared Keller. 4 May 2015. "Young Americans are Opting Out of Politics, but Not Because They’re Cynical," http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/young-people-are-not-so-politically-inclined . ↵
• Winston Ross, "Ritchie Torres: Gay, Hispanic and Powerful," Newsweek, 25 January 2015. ↵
• Pew Research Center. 26 April 2018. "Political Engagement, Knowledge, and the Midterms." http://www.people-press.org/2018/04/26/10-political-engagement-knowledge-and-the-midterms/ . ↵
• Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. 17 October 2018. Survey of Young Americans’ Attitudes toward Politics and Public Service. https://iop.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/content/Harvard-IOP-Fall-2018-poll-toplines.pdf . ↵
• Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). 7 November 2018. "Young People Dramatically Increase Their Turnout to 31%, Shape 2018 Midterm Elections." CIRCLE. https://civicyouth.org/young-people-dramatically-increase-their-turnout-31-percent-shape-2018-midterm-elections/ . ↵
• Harvard Institute of Politics. "Survey of Young Americans' Attitudes toward Politics and Public Service 35th Edition: March 8–March 25, 2018." 2018; Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. "Election Week 2020: Young People Increase Turnout, Lead Biden to Victory." 25 November 2020. https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/election-week-2020 . ↵
• Marc Hetherington and Thomas Rudolph, "Why Don’t Americans Trust the Government?" The Washington Post, 30 January 2014. ↵
• Keller, "Young Americans are Opting Out." ↵
• Tami Luhby and Jennifer Agiesta. 8 November 2016. "Exit Polls: Clinton Fails to Energize African-Americans, Latinos and the Young, http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/08/politics/first-exit-polls-2016/ . ↵
• Harvard Institute of Politics, "No Front-Runner among Prospective Republican Candidates," http://iop.harvard.edu/no-front-runner-among-prospective-republican-candidates-hillary-clinton-control-democratic-primary (May 2, 2016). ↵
• Jocelyn Kiley and Michael Dimock. 25 September 2014. "The GOP’s Millennial Problem Runs Deep," http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/25/the-gops-millennial-problem-runs-deep/ . ↵
• "Keeping Students from the Polls," New York Times, 26 December 2011. ↵
• 18 October 2006. “Who Votes, Who Doesn’t, and Why,” http://www.people-press.org/2006/10/18/who-votes-who-doesnt-and-why/ . ↵
• "What Affects Voter Turnout Rates," Fair Vote, https://www.fairvote.org/what_affects_voter_turnout_rates (June 1, 2021). ↵
• Jonathan M. Ladd. 11 September 2015. "Don’t Worry about Special Interests," https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2015/9/11/9279615/economic-inequality-special-interests . ↵

connections with others and the willingness to interact and aid them

strong support, or even blind allegiance, for a particular political party

the beliefs and ideals that help to shape political opinion and eventually policy

beliefs and preferences people are not deeply committed to and that change over time

beliefs and preferences based on strong feelings regarding an issue that someone adheres to over time

Engagement in a Democracy Copyright © 2022 by Lumen Learning and OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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