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Printer-Friendly ModeSurvey explores political disparity
January 31, 2005 —
Despite the huge snowstorms that hit the East Coast last weekend, SVSU welcomed Boston College Professor Kay Schlozman as part of the Honors Program Lecture Series. Harvard Professor Sidney Verba would have joined Schlozman, but Verba was caught in the snowy conditions and was unable to fly out.
Their lecture was entitled, What Do We Want? Political Equality. When Are We Going to Get It? Never. and outlined their studies on the aspects of civic participation in the United States.
Schlozman and Verba have been working together for many years, researching to pinpoint the general extent to which a person's societal class affects their political participation. The pair along with many other distinguished scholars have performed and analyzed the most comprehensive study regarding civic participation in history. The studys findings were conveyed to the SVSU audience through a detailed lecture, which helped to give not only an overview, but also a walk-through of the conclusions from Verba and Schlozmans studies.
Schlozman began the lecture by describing the reality of political inequality in the United States. Although, as Schlozman pointed out, our Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address describe the equality Americans share regarding government participation, in reality equal amounts of participation across the social board has never been seen in the United States. Schlozman described how the inequality of the citizen voice is why citizens are not well represented in most aspects of government, and how it is merely the rich and the radicals whose voices get heard loud and clear by our representatives.
Schlozman went on to outline the conclusions drawn from the findings. The first question that Schlozman addressed was to what extent political participation is class biased. To be able to fully understand the findings, Schlozman discussed the basic types of political participation, which include working the polls, communicating or working with an official, giving money, participating in a march or demonstration, being a volunteer for a board, being part of an organization with political stances or having informal political discussions with peers. These activities seem to be prevalent in the lives of those of the upper economic classes. Schlozman and her colleagues believe that this is due to the fact that those with more income can not only give more money to political causes, but also have at least some spare time to spend participating in government.
Civic Participation
Next, on the topic of class-based civic participation, Schlozman described the evidence of other factors that effect participation in society. Politicians tend to be contacted by those who have the money to catch their attention and win over their limited time. Due to these people being around 10 percent of the American citizenry, this gives politicians a skewed look at where the money and time of the government should be going. Schlozman used the example that the upper classes tend to feel that the poor are being helped too much and that the amount of public service programs should be diminished, while the lower classes feel that the government is not helping their cause out enough and that more public service programs, such as healthcare and low-income housing, should be created. Schlozman said it is these upper classes that have the most influence and are creating an inequality in the amount of communication from the whole range of societal classes in the U.S.
The second question Schlozman addressed was how political participation has changed within the last twenty years. Schlozman referenced a book called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert Putnam. In this book, Putnam describes how there has been an overall decline in political participation over the past twenty years. These changes do not necessarily show whether the equality or inequality of the participation has changed, but it made the scholars curious to find out. They found that the lower the social class of a person, the less likely they were to participate in political activities. Regarding the number of activities a person participates in each year, the average ratio is five upper class people to one lower class person. In this area, the findings of societal class link on participation carry through the years even though declining numbers of citizens overall are participating less.
Generation to generation
Third, Schlozman related to what extent political participation is transmitted from generation to generation. The studies found that the biggest link between political activity across generations is the education level of the parents of the current and past generations of citizens. It seems to be common that the higher the education of the parents, the more engaged politically the child will be throughout their lifetime. This can be explained by looking at the influence that intelligent parents have on the learning atmosphere of their home. Schlozman said that the relative education that is gained from educated parents, includes a childs own educational goals, the careers that child explores and the amount of money that child makes. Also, parents who are well educated tend to have better jobs, which is shown to increase the amount of participation a citizen has in the government. Therefore, parents who are well educated tend to have children who are well educated as well and who follow in the political activist footsteps of their parents. Schlozman presented the statistic that 25 percent of ones chance of being involved in government is related to the educational opportunities given and/or stressed by ones parents.
Mobilization
Schlozmans fourth question asked what the processes of mobilization are that help to keep political participation inequality present. The studies showed that inequality remains unchanging in civic participation due to the fact that rational prospectors looking for recruits for campaign help or financing look for the people who are already known to help civic causes on a regular basis. These people tend to be rich and normally white citizens who have contributed money or services in the past due to their generally known status in a community. This creates a problem because the other classes, races and ethnicities are left out of the recruitment process, therefore eliminating a huge percentage of the American population from thinking about becoming involved in their civic duties. The only way in which these recruitment trends could be changed, Schlozman added, would be to have mass social movements to get those of a wide class base to become mobilized to begin participating in their government.
Governmental structure
Fifth, Schlozman introduced how the structures of the government affect the inequality in political participation. The largest influence is that of the two-party system in the U.S. The more liberal citizens of ordinary American life tend to be more mobilized, while the process of recruitment of help and money for government causes is not expanding to more groups or types of people. The parties overall tend to focus on getting the support of the affluent in society to get the most money and time the fastest, which leaves out those whose opinion is needed to be voiced the most in Schlozmans opinion.
The second institution that contributes to stratifying civic participation is the union system. Unions bring disadvantaged groups into full political life and help members develop political skills, request involvement in civic activities and give them exposure to political discussion. However, the number of citizens who are members of unions is declining and the percentage of those members gaining benefits from their membership is down as well. Those involved in labor unions tends to revolve around those of the working class and not necessarily the lowest or highest classes of society, which in turn helps to create an inequality in participation more apparent.
Schlozman finished her talk by explaining the reasons why people should care about the amount of civil participation in government. She said political participation helps to make communities better to live in because it helps to make sure that all collective goals of a populace are met and that a community of people is encouraged to form. Also, Schlozman noted that political participation can help the individual as well by helping them to become more independent in their thinking, more responsible in their actions, educate them about policies, people and communication and help people to pursue their interests and use their skills. Schlozman and Verba expressed their wish for people to understand and appreciate the role that unequal citizen participation in government relates to the social trends and political institutions that are in place in the United States.
For more information regarding the studies of Professor Schlozman and Professor Verba, go to www.bc.edu and search for Kay Schlozman. On her faculty Web site there is a link to her curriculum vitae that shows a list of all of her and her colleagues published work.