Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics

Rating:
Summary: Understanding participation
Review: This book provides several useful ways to understand the phenomenon of political participation -or the absence of it. Verba and his collaborators examine several variables that encourage people's involvement in politics, showing clearly that if differential rates of political activity reflect not different motivations, but differential resources, democracy is potentially threatened. The book is theoretically and empirically well-grounded -two characteristics of Verba's previous work that appear here again. In spite of being concerned exclusively with the American case, I think it will be a worthy reading for any person interested in politics in other countries, as it was for me.