Participation and Democracy: Dynamics, Causes ... - Jacobs University

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THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The theoretical framework has three aims. First, the question should be answered how
elite-challenging activities can be anchored in the context of political participation
research. A summarizing overview about the participation concept will be given,
followed by a discussion about the challenges that these new action forms pose to the
traditional concept. In a second step, theories on political participation are examined
with the goal to extract those relevant factors that can help to explain the dynamics,
causes and consequences of elite-challenging activities. Finally, testable hypotheses are
derived from the theoretical approaches and summarized in a concluding chapter.
1. Elite-Challenging Activities as Political Participation
Definitions of political participation that can be found in the literature are numerous, and
philosophers and social scientists have early pointed to the importance of participation
for democracy. Aristotle, for example, argued that man is by nature a political animal
(Kraut 2002: 95) and that participation together with others in shared activities is closely
linked with having a good and happy life. Pericles stressed that a citizen without an
interest in public affairs is a useless character (quoted in Popper 2002: 199). Although
scholars ever since have argued about how much participation of what kind is needed
and desirable in a democracy, there is little disagreement that political participation – in
particular the right to vote in free and fair elections – is included in most definitions and
measurements of democracy, most prominently coined in Dahl’s constituting elements
of polyarchy: competition and participation (Dahl 1971). In a nutshell, “any book about
political participation is also a book about democracy” (Parry, Moyser and Day 1992:
3), with democratic legitimacy being the link between the two.
Broadly speaking, political participation is defined as “the opportunity for large numbers
of citizens to engage in politics” (Abramson 1995: 913), referring to “those action of
private citizens by which they seek to influence or to support government and politics”
(Milbrath and Goel 1977: 2). More concretely, it encompasses “those legal activities by
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