Citizenship and Civic Engagement: Attitudes and Behaviour in Britain
| Author | Paul Whiteley,Patrick Seyd,Charles Pattie |
| Published date | 01 October 2003 |
| Date | 01 October 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9248.00435 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Citizenship and Civic Engagement:
Attitudes and Behaviour in Britain
Charles Pattie and Patrick Seyd
University of Sheffield
Paul Whiteley
University of Essex
Analysis of patterns of participation revealed three dimensions of civic activism in modern Britain:
individualistic activism; contact activism; and collective activism. Three alternative theories of par-
ticipation were examined to account for these dimensions: general incentives; social capital; and
civic voluntarism. None proved sufficient in itself to account for civic activism in modern Britain:
each provided only part of the explanation.
Citizenship is a central political concept (for example Almond and Verba, 1963;
van Gunsteren, 1998; Norris, 1999; Pharr and Putnam, 2000). It is also increas-
ingly an object of policy concern. Since the early 1990s, electoral turnout has fallen
in several major states (Pattie and Johnston, 2001; Johnston, 2001; Gray and Caul,
2000; but see Burden, 2000; McDonald and Popkin, 2001). At only 59 percent,
turnout at the 2001 British general election was the lowest since 1918. For some,
there is a looming crisis of democratic accountability, as the public abandons
conventional electoral politics (but see Heath and Taylor, 1999; Pattie and
Johnston, 2001). At the same time, the social capital literature has suggested a cor-
relation between active community life and good government (for example
Putnam, 1993; Whiteley, 2000). Even here, however, there are signs of crisis: asso-
ciational life may be in decline (Putnam, 1995, 2000; but see Norris, 1995; Hall,
1999). Citizenship is important. But existing studies are generally undertaken from
just one theoretical perspective (for example Verba and Nie, 1972; Verba et al.,
1995; Parry et al., 1992).
Theories of Civic Engagement
We examined three alternative theories of civic behaviour: rational choice, social
capital and civic voluntarism.
Rational Choice
In the rational choice model, economically rational actors maximise their benefits
from any activity while minimising their costs (Downs, 1957). Civic engagement
occurs where the costs of involvement are low and the benefits of successful action
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2003 VOL 51, 443–468
© Political Studies Association, 2003.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
444 CHARLES PATTIE, PATRICK SEYD, PAUL WHITELEY
are high. But if the costs outweigh the likely advantages, no rational actor will
engage.
However, the logic of the rational choice model can lead to paradoxical conclu-
sions, such as Downs’s voting paradox. Most elections are decided by more than
one or two votes. Rational actors discount potential benefits by their personal effi-
cacy in achieving them. The chances that any one voter’s participation will be
crucial to the outcome are minuscule. But the less likely it is that one rational
actor’s participation will be crucial to the outcome, the less likely that individual
is to participate at all. But in a truly rational electorate, all should abstain. Para-
doxically, the logic of collective action, far from encouraging civic engagement,
would seem to result in paralysis.
Why should rational actors participate at all? Riker and Ordeshook (1968) added
non-collective benefits, such as personal satisfaction derived from participating in
civic life. However, this does not fit easily within the rational choice framework
(Mueller, 1987, 1989; Brennan and Lomasky, 1993; Aldrich, 1993; Overbye, 1995).
More consistent with the rational choice model, Olson (1965) differentiated
between collective and selective benefits. Collective benefits are available to all,
whether or not they participate in ensuring the good is provided, whereas selec-
tive benefits are restricted to those who participate. For Olson, participation only
occurs if some of the benefits of participation could be restricted to those who play
an active part and denied to those who free-ride. Hence, cause groups will try to
offer privatised incentives for members. Actors are more likely to participate if they
receive more benefits, whether collective (accruing to all, irrespective of whether
they participate) or selective (available only to those who participate), and they
become less likely to participate as the costs increase.
Whiteley and Seyd have recently outlined a ‘general incentives’ rational action
model that includes a wider range of incentives as part of the decision-making cri-
teria, combining both rational choice and socio-psychological models of participa-
tion (Seyd and Whiteley, 1992; Whiteley et al., 1994; Whiteley and Seyd, 1996,
1998). In this model, participation is a function not only of costs and benefits, but
also of people’s expressive attachments: those who feel strongly attached to a group
should be more likely to act on its behalf than those who do not share that attach-
ment. A sense of duty (referred to here as ‘system benefits’) can encourage civic
engagement. Selective benefits are broken down into three elements: process ben-
efits (those people receive as a result of participation in the political process);
outcome benefits (privatised advantages accruing as a result of action, such as per-
sonally achieving relatively high office); and group benefits (privatised advantages
accruing to groups people are concerned about). And people are likely to be influ-
enced by the social norms of those they live among: the more that friends and
family think participation is a waste of time, the less likely people should be to par-
ticipate. The ‘general incentives’ model can be outlined in the following terms:1
where A is activism, p is efficacy, B is collective benefits, C is cost, S is selective
benefits, SY is system benefits, SN is social norms for participation and EX is expres-
sive motives for participation.
ApBCSSYSNEX=+-++ + +
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