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Learning for Active Mainstream Political Party Participation
Janet W.Youngblood, Ed.D.(c)
AEGIS Program/Teachers College
Columbia University
The purpose of this study is to acquire greater insight into those
learning contexts and processes that contribute to the initiation,
maintenance and support of mainstream political party participation by
citizens in the United States. Through a better understanding of the
learning of active mainstream political participation, perhaps educators
and others in the United States can design more successful and effective
educational strategies to support broader mainstream democratic
participation. This study will be a replication in part of the ETGACE study,
using similar methodology (Life History/Biography) as well as the
transitional learning framework, but with a quota sample specific to the
United States’ issues of political party participation. This study is a
dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctoral
degree at Teachers College/Columbia University.
Introduction
In the United States there is a serious “democratic deficit” as
measured by all forms of participation. This situation has been
problematic since the end of the 19th Century (Piven and Cloward ,2000),
but has become even more of a problem toward the close of the 20th
Century. In the United States as in other democracies worldwide, the
citizen most likely to be participating in mainstream political party
activity is older, richer, better educated and wealthier than average. One
significant difference in the United States, however, is that the overall
level of participation is very low compared to other democratic societies
with which the United States is usually compared. United States citizen
participation in mainstream political parties is unpredictably low, even
among the older, better-educated, richer, more religious citizen.
During the last three decades, many barriers to voter registration
have fallen and there is a larger population of eligible voters, but the
participation rate has steadily declined. In the most recent presidential
election only 43% of those eligible to vote participated. Since 1970, for
example, the participation rate of eligible citizens in political party
campaigning has fallen 50%, and the decline of voting has dropped 25%
to new lows (Putnam, 2001).
The concern is that this decline in citizen involvement puts
democracy at risk (Ansolabehere et al, 1995). Because Adult Education
has always viewed education for democratic participation as a central
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purpose, this decline in all forms of participation is of serious concern to
adult educators.
With respect to political participation there is a range of behaviors.
In the United States there is concern that Americans distrust politics and
politicians. Craig Rimmerman, in “The New Citizenship” (1998) looks at
the question, “How does a polity strike a balance between the varieties of
political participation engaged in by its citizens and residents?” As
American’s display increasing civic indifference and civic disengagement,
some Americans still opt for alternative methods of participation, such as
protest politics. Rimmerman (1998) argues that alternative forms of
political participation can ultimately threaten overall system stability. In
addition, others such as Bellah (1996) and Piven and Cloward (2000)
believe the United States is no longer a democracy but an oligarchy with
the parties and the candidates representing an economic elite.
Nevertheless, in theory at least the United States is a democratic system
with open political parties and low barriers to participation in those
parties (Democratic or Republican or Independent). Why don’t more
citizens engage in the existing mainstream political system? Why do they
look for new forms of citizenship while the mainstream political process
of citizenship languishes?
In order to explore this question, this study is looking at those
citizens who have not opted for alternative forms of citizenship, but who
have remained actively engaged in what, for all intents and purposes, is
still the foundation of democratic process in the United States—the two
major parties and the fast growing challenge of the Independent party.
This study will look at those individuals who have remained active in
mainstream politics.
The “hierarchy of political involvement” that is sketched by Lester
Milbrath in “Political Participation” (1965) is useful to define the “active
participant. ” This hierarchy of political involvement has three main
categories: 1) Spectator Activities, 2) Transitional Activities, and 3)
Gladiatorial Activities. This hierarchy is based on an active/inactive
dimension. Those engaging in spectator activities participate passively in
the political process and don’t engage in political acts identified in the
two other levels of the hierarchy. Here is the hierarchy:
Gladiatorial Activities
 Holding public and party office
 Being a candidate for office
 Soliciting political funds
 Attending a caucus or strategy meeting
 Becoming an active member in a political party
 Contributing time in a political campaign
Transitional Activities
 Attending a political meeting or rally
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
Making a monetary contribution to a party or
candidate
 Contacting a public official or a political leader
Spectator Activities
 Wearing a button or putting a sticker on the car
 Attempting to talk another into voting a certain way
 Initiating a political discussion
 Voting
 Exposing oneself to political stimuli
For this study, an “active participant” is one who participates in
the activities that are gladiatorial and/or transitional and does so within
the Republican, Democratic or Independent Party. The individual
actively engages in activities such as voter registration drives, electoral
campaigning for a candidate, or as an active member of the local party
organization, attending regular party meetings, assisting the party
organization, the activities listed as gladiatorial as well as those activities
that require slightly less involvement but which show a commitment to
the party which are listed as transitional. It is someone who has sought
public office at the local level, or someone who has run for a state or
national office as a nominee of that party. In general the study seeks to
understand those who have remained actively engaged in the
Democratic, Republican, or Independent party within the last seven
years, even if at some point during that time they stopped participating.
The purpose of this study is to better understand how individuals
learned their mainstream political identity in the United States. If this
process were better understood perhaps adult educators and others
could develop more successful and credible educational materials and
strategies to help to maintain active mainstream party participation in
the United States citizenry at large. The literature suggests
(Schuessler,2000) that partisanship reflects personal decisions and
choices. Being a political partisan is similar to choosing to buy a
particular car or to wear a particular outfit. Individuals must have
personal identification with what the party represents, or a strategy for
identifying with the party.
The literature supports the belief that participating actively in
electoral processes requires as well a repertoire of attitudes, skills and
behavioral patterns that are learned from experience. The individual
needs to feel embedded in a network, connected to others who share
common beliefs and attitudes. The individual needs to develop
competencies in group interactions and to have these competencies
validated in group activities.
In the literature there are special concerns raised about the
environment for informal learning in the United States brought about by
the influence of mass media. The media is seriously interfering with the
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development of social connectedness, with the development of individual
feelings of political efficacy and competency.
In the United States in contrast to Europe, the primary vehicle for
politics is the television. Studies in the United States indicate that
negative television campaign advertisements have had a pronounced
effect over time of shrinking as well as polarizing the American electorate
(Ansolabehere, et al, 1995). This is due in large part to the fact that
Americans no longer identify strongly with any of the mainstream
political parties or their issues. Non-partisan or weakly partisan voters
are very likely not to vote at all after watching a negative television
advertisement (Ansolabehere, et al, 1995).
In fact, there is evidence that the parties are aware of this and
purposely use negative campaign techniques (attack ads) to make the
less strongly partisan voter stay home on Election Day. This results in
the situation such as occurred in Ronald Reagan’s election of 1980.
Reagan could win an election in the teeth of public opposition to his
programmatic goals for the country, and this was simply because the
“electorate” no longer represented the public. “ Polls at the time showed
that voters tilted toward Reagan by 52 percent over Carter’s 38 percent.
But nonvoters, who were nearly as numerous, tilted toward Carter by 51
percent over 37 percent. In a close study of that election, Petrocik
concluded that the ‘margin for Ronald Reagan in 1980 was made
possible by a failure of prospective Carter voters to turn out on Election
Day.’” (Piven, et al,p.11)
In a society in which the primary political vehicle is television it is
very important to have a strong partisan identification or one will be
driven from the electorate, or so the studies show (Ansolabehere et al,
1995).
In the recent contested election in Florida between Bush and Gore,
the margin of victory was smaller than the margin of error in the voting
system. As the electorate shrinks and voter turnout shrinks, in spite of a
larger eligible cohort of registered voters, smaller and smaller numbers of
citizens actually elect the winner.
Ansolabhere and Iyengar(1995) in their study of negative
advertising and political campaigns concluded that political parties may
soon have so few participants that their legitimacy will be threatened.
However, so far this has not meant that the system of gaining political
power and position through the mainstream political parties has been
changed. This is due in large part to the fact that State law controls
political process in the United States. To remedy electoral problems,
every State in the Union would need to modify election law. This has
proven to be next to impossible, so those who are mainstream party
candidates continue to win political power and incumbents are returned
to office even as the absolute number of people who elected them
shrinks.
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Theoretical Framework
Because of the nature of individualization in the “risk
society”(Beck, 1992) of contemporary culture in the United States, it is
necessary to explore active mainstream political party participation using
a research design that incorporates the understanding that active
political participation is learned rather than taught, and is not learned
once and for all but is learned over and over again in changing
circumstances. Each person learns his/her own citizenship.
The ETGACE life history methodology and transitional learning
conceptual framework will be replicated in this study because it provides
an excellent model with which to explore the problem of learning
mainstream political party participation in the United States. It is
anticipated that replication of the ETGACE study with an active
Gladiatorial or Transitional mainstream political party sample will enable
fruitful cross-cultural comparisons and greater understanding of the
political socialization process and how it is embedded in cultural
experiential learning.
The research questions this study seeks to answer are:
1. Who participates in mainstream political activity?
 How is their activity shaped by the context in which they
live?
 What do they see as important to be effective?
 What is the articulation of their sense of personal
responsibility?
 What is their sense of personal identity with respect to
mainstream political activity?
2. How do those who participate in mainstream political activity learn
effectiveness, responsibility and personal identity in that activity?
 Has it been supported by formal, non-formal, informal
modes of education? [Coombs, 1985)
 What is the specific contribution of experiential learning?
 Is there a connection with learning in other domains of
life (community life, private life or work life)?
 Were there specific transition moments in their life, and,
if so, what was the nature of these critical incidents?
The ETGACE study found that there is a way to describe the
relationship of aspects of personal responsibility, identity and
effectiveness to situated learning. The inter-relationship is captured in
the following diagram:
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Diagram of Situated Learning as Context
Responsibility
Situated
Effectiveness
Learning
Identity
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Methodology and Quota Sample
This proposed research will employ a qualitative-interpretive
biographical research design and is a replication in part of the life history
portion of the ETGACE (2001) study. Personal attributes that were
shown to be key in that study were the individuals’ reported sense of
responsibility, identity and effectiveness. Their study showed that the
learning in domains (home, work, etc.) and modes (formal, non-formal
and informal) was too static a model to capture the shifting identity of
the active citizen. To correct for this, they used an additional framework
that was descriptive, heuristic and explanatory. This framework is
identified as “transitional learning” and is a result of work being done by
Stroobants, Jans and Wildemeersh (2001) based on the theories of
biographical and transitional learning of Alheit (1992). This framework
combined theories from experiential learning (Kolb, 1984; Jarvis, 1987)
with biographical learning (Alheit, 1992), and transitional learning
(Stroobants, Jans and Wildemeersch, 2001).
The research proposed here uses that transitional learning
framework and focuses on the dimension of situated learning from
experience to explore the main research questions. This was shown to
be an effective strategy for understanding what maintains active
citizenship in the conclusions of the ETGACE study. Maintaining active
mainstream party participation in the United States is a similar research
problem and it is anticipated that this contextual framework will be
successful with this sample.
The population of the sample will consist of 18 people purposely
selected because of age, education level and mainstream political party
experience. Half of the sample will be 45 years and older and half will be
from age 15 to 44. Six of the sample will be Democrats, six Republicans
and six Independents. Within the age cohort, three who are over age 44
will be selected so that one has a bachelors degree or above, one has
some college but no degree and one has only a High School education or
below. In each party, three under age 44 will be sorted according to
amount of education.
The people to be interviewed will fit the profile of a “Gladiator” or
“Transitional” political participant based on the Milbrath scale described
in the introduction. Each interview will be tape-recorded and
transcribed. In addition, a short demographic sheet will be completed to
use for primary contact information (name, address, telephone, email,
fax) and background information such as level of education, age, and
Political party affiliation and type of political activity. This demographic
sheet will capture information such as religious affiliation and frequency
of participation, income level, and age cohort and education level. This
information has been shown to be important in other studies about voter
participation.
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The strategy for data analysis will be an open coding system of the
transcribed interview that will be comprised of key words, themes and
concepts that relate to the person’s personal political identity, sense of
political responsibility and feelings of political effectiveness as described
in the life history interview. These concepts will be used to develop a
profile of the individual. In addition, the context of the development of
personal identity, sense of responsibility and feelings of effectiveness will
be captured in the first coding of the Profile
The second review of the Profile will focus on the other
characteristics of the sample population, which are shown to be
important in the literature, those being for this study the age of the
participant and his/her education and income level.
The framework for analysis for the transcribed interview for
composing the Profile is the transitional learning framework. There are
four concepts in that framework developed at the conclusion of the
ETGACE life history analysis that will frame the learning process for
active mainstream party participation in this study. They are: Context,
Connection, Challenge and Capacity. In ETGACE these four dimensions
were distinguished in the learning process for active citizenship. Context
is the unique situation of the citizen and the socio-cultural environment
of the country; Connection is the individual citizen’s reconstruction of
personal, meaningful connections to his/her society; Challenge is the
response of the individual to experiences that call for a new repertoire of
responses; Capacity for active citizenship develops in the course of this
process. All of this occurs within the late modern world of both a
continually transforming and transformed context.
A clearer understanding of the learning of mainstream political
party participation in the United States may be possible from this
analysis and new methods for encouraging and initiating it might be
developed.
Practical Perspective
I currently am an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Suffolk
Community College in New York in addition to working as a Department
Administrator at Stony Brook University. My Bachelors Degree was in
English Literature with a minor in Political Science at Reed College, in
Oregon. I pursued a Ph.D. in English literature and was not able to
complete the program due to family responsibilities, so I matriculated at
the Masters Degree level after completing all course work for the Ph.D.
In addition I have completed an MBA in Business Management and,
before enrolling in the doctoral program at Teachers College/Columbia
University, regularly taught a course in Mass Media in the evening
college.
While teaching this course I became interested in the issue of
active electoral participation because so many of the adults in the classes
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over the years were not at all interested in political participation. In
student essays, the following quote was typical when the essay topic was
about political participation:
“I am registered to vote, but I generally don’t except for presidential
elections. I accept that politics is a part of every society, but I don’t
really care to get involved. For honest people that do get involved,
they either get crushed by the democratic machine or are forced to
lie, cheat and seem generally distasteful to survive. It is not
possible for one person to represent an entire state full of different
ideas: people can’t even agree within a family. This means that for
someone to be liked, they have to lie to everyone. I accept that every
politician had to lie, cheat and squash someone else’s reputation in
order to get to where they are. Voting for me is attempting to choose
the lesser evil, which in some cases just means the voice or face I
can tolerate more often in evening news sound bites. I don’t want to
be part of the government, which means I have to choose someone to
do it for me. I don’t have to like it, but I don’t really have the right to
complain unless I have a better idea, and I just don’t. I don’t
participate because I don’t like the system, but I’m too lazy and too
comfortable to do anything about it.” (Anonymous student essay,
2000)
The class size was usually twenty-five students and it was typical
for most of the students never to have registered to vote, nor attended
any political party meeting, even though the age range, ethnicity and
gender of the classes was diverse. Of those who were active, the
primary political party represented was the “Independent” party. In
terms of political effectiveness, registration and voting as an Independent
in the United States electoral system is problematic. As viewed by Blais
(2000) rational choice theory, Independent votes do not affect electoral
outcomes, that is, in the United States the candidates for that party are
rarely, if ever, elected. The country has a strong two-party system and
the Independent party has a marginal impact in most elections.
Another aspect that emerged in my practice setting was that few if
any of the students knew about the organization of the political parties.
They did not know where the parties held their meetings; they did not
know if the party meetings were conducted according to rules and
regulations; they were not familiar with how nominees for national
offices, such as President, are found, etc… One of the assignments that
were voluntary for extra credit was for the student to locate a political
party meeting of choice and to attend it and to report back to the group
about the experience. Some who did this reported that the people at the
party meeting were surprised to see them, were not very friendly, seemed
to be old friends and generally were not very interested in the idea of a
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new member. Some of the students, when they understood that these
local gatherings are the grass roots of our democracy, were incensed. As
one student put it, “I can easily find out what movies are playing and
what is on TV or the price of bananas, but I have to hunt for the time,
place and location of my political party meeting!”
It was clear in this setting that mainstream political participation
for these individuals was something of a mystery, even though they
understood in general the structure of government, i.e., the “checks and
balances” etc. set up by the founders between the Executive, Legislative
and Judicial branches. For those who did register, usually as
Independents, they had never been to a local meeting of that party. It
seemed that electoral participation had assumed more than a political
purpose for these students. My interest grew in attempting to research
the significance adults were attaching to electoral participation and nonparticipation in the current environment of a media-dominated culture.
As part of the Mass Media curriculum, I developed a sequence in
which books published from quantitative research on the influence of
Mass Media on voting behavior were discussed.
The evidence in these books, that the media in the United States,
due to a preponderance of negative campaign advertising (attack ads)
was having a profound influence on the nature as well as the amount of
voter participation, especially intrigued me (Ansolabehere, 1995).
Because Adult education in the United States has always held
education for democratic participation as one of its primary goals, I
concluded that the decline of electoral participation in general, and the
rise of an increasingly significant group of non-partisan Independent
registrants would be an important topic for adult education research. As
this thought developed, the focus for the current research proposal was
formulated. The decision was made to try to study what maintains active
mainstream political party participation in the United States in hopes
that understanding this would enable adult educators and others to
develop more successful strategies and interventions for the support of
mainstream democratic participation in the United States.
The findings of this study could have implications for the field of
Adult Education and Political Sociology and might assist those seeking to
support emerging democratic systems.
If we could have greater
insight into the learning processes involved in developing into an
individual who will actively participate in the United State’s mainstream
political system, we might be able to develop more credible and effective
educational strategies and policies to help initiate and maintain
participation by all citizens. This might enable us to overcome the
Oligarchic nature of the current United States system, and to return to
representative democratic governance.
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