Why do some people involve themselves in politics and others not? Which issues are they concerned with? What do they get out of it? Answering such questions is fundamental to understanding political life and the workings of liberal democracies. This book presents the results of one of the most extensive surveys ever undertaken on the levels and patterns of political involvement in Britain. It is based on the findings of a sample survey of nearly 1,600 people across England, Scotland and Wales as well as a further 1,600 men and women and nearly 300 leaders in six specially selected and contrasting communities. These people were asked about the extent to which they had taken political action, particularly at a local level, and the authors found higher levels of participation than previous research has revealed. They analyse these findings in terms of age, gender, social class and education and look at the reactions of local leaders to the efforts people make to influence them.

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WHEREVER ONE TAKES A POSITION IN THE GREAT DEBATE between representative and participatory democrats it is clear that no democracy can function without the involvement of its citizens. What is at issue is the extent and nature of the citizen participation which is thought to be required if a democracy is to be worthy of its name. Whilst this is a fundamentally normative issue, the protagonists on both sides regularly cite evidence as to actual levels of participation and draw inferences from that evidence in support of their contentions.On the one side are those who assert that in Britain ‘some of the spectators have begun to descend on to the field’; on the other are those who say that ‘the “grass roots” of politics seem shrivelled and starved of the nourishment of participation by the citizens’. For this reason, as Jane Mansbridge has said, ‘field studies of what happens to various ideals when people try to live by them could prove useful in clarifying a wide range of normative questions.

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