POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

Political behavior can be defined as actions taken by ordinary citizens with political motivations or goals, which can directly or indirectly influence political outcomes. It subsumes all the activities that ordinary citizens engage in and have a link with the democratic process, from reading the politics section of the newspaper to engaging in several forms of political participation. Indeed, within the study of political behavior, political participation is a key research subject, with the specialized literature often establishing a distinction between conventional and unconventional political participation. One of the most conventional forms of political participation in representative democracies, is, of course, voting in elections and referenda, but there are several other forms, such as partaking in political campaign actions or events, making financial contributions to parties and candidates, participating in demonstrations, signing petitions, or contacting elected officials or other political elite members. Within this type of political participation, we can identify elite-supportive or institutionalized participation (those actions that include interacting or collaborating with political elites) and expressive, elite-challenging forms of participation (those that follow uncooperative paths). Instead, unconventional participation includes, for instance, boycotting specific products or brands for political reasons, as well as more extreme actions such as occupy factories or buildings, blocking highways or railroads and damaging public buildings or spaces. A great deal of the research on political behavior has focused on voting, trying to, on the one hand, pinpoint the factors leading citizens to decide on turning out to vote vs. abstaining, and, on the other, shed light on how people decide which party or candidate they will support with their vote. Instead, research on other forms of political behavior has tried to understand both the factors underlying the propensity to engage in several forms of participation and the relationship between different types of participation (showing, for example, that in several contexts younger cohorts of citizens are more likely to engage in forms of elite-challenging and unconventional political participation than to vote).

Bartels, Larry M. 2000. “Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952-1996.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (1): 35–50. https://doi.org/10.2307/2669291.

Beeghley, Leonard. 1986. “Social Class and Political Participation: A Review and an Explanation.” Sociological Forum 1 (3): 496–513.

Blais, André. 2006. “What Affects Voter Turnout?” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (1): 111–25. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.070204.105121.

Brady, Henry E., Sidney Verba, and Kay Lehman Schlozman. 1995. “Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation.” The American Political Science Review 89 (2): 271–94. https://doi.org/10.2307/2082425.

Campbel, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes. 1980. The American Voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Coffé, Hilde, and Catherine Bolzendahl. 2010. “Same Game, Different Rules? Gender Differences in Political Participation.” Sex Roles 62 (5–6): 318–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-009-9729-y.

Dalton, Russell. 2008. “Citizenship Norms and the Expansion Of Political Participation.” Political Studies 56 (February): 76–98. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00718.x.

Dalton, Russell J. 2000. “Citizen Attitudes and Political Behavior.” Comparative Political Studies 33 (6–7): 912–40. https://doi.org/10.1177/001041400003300609.

Gallego, Aina. 2007. “Unequal Political Participation in Europe.” International Journal of Sociology 37 (4): 10–25.

Mannarini, Terri, Monica Legittimo, and Cosimo Talò. 2008. “Determinants of Social and Political Participation among Youth: A Preliminary Study.” Psicologìa Polìtica 36 (January): 95–117.

Mayer, Alexander K. 2011. “Does Education Increase Political Participation?” The Journal of Politics 73 (3): 633–45. https://doi.org/10.1017/s002238161100034x.

Meer, Tom W. G. van der, Jan W. van Deth, and Peer L. H. Scheepers. 2009. “The Politicized Participant: Ideology and Political Action in 20 Democracies.” Comparative Political Studies 42 (11): 1426–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414009332136.

Memoli, Vincenzo. 2016. “Unconventional Participation in Time of Crisis: How Ideology Shapes Citizens’ Political Actions.” Partecipazione e Conflitto 9 (1): 127–51.

Norris, Pippa, and Robert E. Goodin. 2007. Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quintelier, Ellen. 2007. “Differences in Political Participation between Young and Old People.” Contemporary Politics 13 (June): 165–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569770701562658.

Stolle, Dietlind, Marc Hooghe, and Michele Micheletti. 2005. “Politics in the Supermarket: Political Consumerism as a Form of Political Participation.” International Political Science Review 26 (3): 245–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512105053784.