IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v76y1982i01p94-108_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pathways to Participation

Author

Listed:
  • Beck, Paul Allen
  • Jennings, M. Kent

Abstract

The premise of this article is that adult participation in politics is affected by strong preadult forces in addition to the contemporaneous factors emphasized by recent studies. To test this premise, data are drawn from the 1965–1973 national socialization panel study of young Americans and their parents. Four causal models depicting pathways to participation among young adults are evaluated; each includes civic orientations as intervening variables. Three of the models assess the direct and indirect effects of parental characteristics—socioeconomic status, political activity, and civic orientations. The fourth model assesses the impact of adolescent involvement in high school activities. Taken individually, each pathway is shown to have an effect on adult participation, with parent socioeconomic status and high school activism having the most impact. When the four pathways are combined in a single model to reflect the connections among them, all remain important. The combined model illustrates the importance of a variety of methods of political learning. The combined model also demonstrates the crucial role of civic orientations in converting preadult experiences into later participation. Civic orientations are the primary carriers of preadult political learning. Overall, the results rebut the critics of socialization research who have questioned the existence of a linkage between early learning and adult political behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Beck, Paul Allen & Jennings, M. Kent, 1982. "Pathways to Participation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(1), pages 94-108, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:76:y:1982:i:01:p:94-108_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S000305540018606X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bernard Grofman, 1983. "Models of voter turnout: a brief idiosyncratic review," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(1), pages 55-61, January.
    2. Veselý, Arnošt, 2006. "Reproduction of Social Capital: How Much and What Type of Social Capital Is Transmitted from Parents to Children?," Ratio Working Papers 105, The Ratio Institute.
    3. Brown, Sarah & McHardy, Jolian & Taylor, Karl, 2014. "Intergenerational analysis of social interaction and social skills: An analysis of U.S. and U.K. panel data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 43-54.
    4. Arnaud Chevalier & Orla Doyle, 2012. "Schooling and voter turnout : is there an American exception?," Working Papers 201213, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    5. Bordo, Michael & Istrefi, Klodiana, 2023. "Perceived FOMC: The making of hawks, doves and swingers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 125-143.
    6. Kim, Hyun Ju & Chung, Jae Young, 2020. "Factors affecting youth citizenship in accordance with socioeconomic background," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    7. Kenneth W. Moffett & Laurie L. Rice & Ramana Madupalli, 2014. "Young Voters and War: The Iraq War as a Catalyst for Political Participation," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1419-1443, December.
    8. Kaisa Snellman & Jennifer M. Silva & Carl B. Frederick & Robert D. Putnam, 2015. "The Engagement Gap," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 657(1), pages 194-207, January.
    9. Daniel Miles-Touya & Máximo Rossi, 2015. "Cultural Transmission of Civic Attitudes," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 0715, Department of Economics - dECON.
    10. Marieke Voorpostel & Hilde Coffé, 2015. "The Effect of Parental Separation on Young Adults’ Political and Civic Participation," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 124(1), pages 295-316, October.
    11. Manja Coopmans, 2019. "Dutch Liberation Festivals: A Vehicle to More Politically Active Young Citizens, or Merely the Same Selective Audience?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 142(2), pages 617-643, April.
    12. Anja Neundorf & Kaat Smets & Gema M. García-Albacete, 2014. "Homemade Citizens: The Development of Political Interest during Adolescence and Young Adulthood," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 693, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:76:y:1982:i:01:p:94-108_18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.