Science 24 November 2006:
Vol. 314. no. 5803, pp. 1244 – 1245
Learning to Become a “Good” Citizen
André Blais*
Why We Vote
How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life
by David E. Campbell. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2006. 283 pp. $39.50, £26.95. ISBN 0-691-12525-2.
The principal claim David Campbell advances in Why We Vote is that an internalized sense of civic duty is a crucial factor motivating people to vote and that this sense of duty is nourished in homogeneous communities with strong civic norms. Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame, proposes a dual-motivations theory of public engagement. People become involved to fulfill a sense of duty or to protect their interests. The two motivations exist among different types of people but also sometimes within the same individual. Both affect the decision to vote or not to vote, although sense of duty matters more. Sense of duty dominates in “civic”-minded forms of engagement such as volunteering, whereas interest is prominent in activities such as protest or partisan work.
The author performs a myriad of complementary analyses of voting in U.S. counties or metropolitan areas, which establish the following patterns: (i) There is a u-shaped relationship between community heterogeneity and turnout. People are more likely to vote in both the most politically homogeneous and the most heterogeneous communities (because of their sense of duty in the former, and because of greater competition in the latter). (ii) Volunteerism increases in more homogeneous communities, whereas protest and electoral activism thrive in more heterogeneous settings. (iii) Those with more politically homogeneous social networks are more inclined to vote. (iv) Adolescents who live in more homogeneous counties are more likely to do volunteer work. (iv) Adolescents who volunteer are more inclined to vote when they become adults. (v) The strength of civic norms within one’s high school (the prevalence of the belief that to be a good citizen one must vote) increases the probability that one will vote (and do volunteer work) 15 years later.
In short, Campbell argues that whether one votes or not in an election hinges very much on social norms and most strongly on the feeling that it is a citizen’s moral obligation to vote, and that this norm is usually acquired before adulthood. Sense of civic duty, like all social norms, develops more strongly in homogeneous settings–where people are more likely to arrive at a consensus about what is right and wrong, to recognize the legitimacy of the other members of the community to enforce the norm, and to interact with these other members (this last condition facilitating the actual implementation of the norm).
One of the book’s important findings is that what matters for the development of civic norms is political homogeneity. Previous research has focused on the consequences of economic, racial, or ethnic heterogeneity. Campbell argues that shared political preferences constitute a significant indicator of common ground among people. And indeed he shows that while political homogeneity has powerful effects on public engagement, the impact of social or economic heterogeneity is weak and inconsistent.
–>envision cute pic of kids in classroom – couldn’t download 🙂
This is an impressive study. Each piece of the puzzle is examined rigorously, and specific pieces of evidence are marshaled to support each argument. The empirical tests are compelling. The appropriate control variables are incorporated into the analyses. It is difficult to see how and why the relationships that are uncovered could be spurious. And the author does a wonderful job of linking the various results into a coherent story.
Nonetheless, there remain some ambiguities or inconsistencies. The author starts with a dual-motivations theory, but by the end of the analyses, duty has become the predominant consideration and interest has been relegated to the sidelines. If different types of communities and schools nurture different types of motivations, we should expect civic climate to be positively correlated with volunteering but also to be negatively correlated with other forms of engagement such as electoral activism and political voice. The data Campbell analyzes confirm the former prediction but not the latter (there is no negative correlation with political activism).
I find the book extremely compelling and provocative. The big questions that remain are: How much does sense of duty explain turnout? And how much does political homogeneity explain sense of duty?
Campbell provides some indications as to the answers. Everything else being equal, the probability of voting in 1980 was 10 percentage points higher for someone whose high school civic climate was strongest in 1965 than for someone whose high school civic climate was weakest. The size of the impact is of the same magnitude as the effects of education and parental political involvement. This justifies the claim that sense of civic duty ought to be included in a comprehensive model of turnout. But we still do not have a good grasp of how many people vote primarily because they feel it is their duty to do so.
Campbell finds that the impact of political heterogeneity on youth volunteering is of the same magnitude, again comparable to the effects of parental education and parental volunteering. These results suggest, however, that the family is at least as important as the school and the community in shaping civic norms. This seems to be forgotten by the author, who is perhaps too focused on the debate about the consequences of social heterogeneity. My reading of the evidence is that families shape civic norms at least as much as schools and communities.
Lastly, Why We Vote challenges us to think seriously about the role of schools in society. Schools are meant to produce intelligent citizens but also “responsible” ones. Campbell’s study shows that schools matter. It may not be clear what should and can be done to foster the development of civic norms in the schools. But clearly we must think hard about which aspects of the existing system facilitate or hinder the attainment of that objective.
10.1126/science.1135672
The reviewer is in the Départment de sciences politiques, Université de Montréal, Case Postale 6128, succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7, Canada. E-mail: andre.blais@umontreal.ca
