Political parties and political volunteering/participation

Abstract

Political volunteering refers to civic engagement, citizen participation, political association and political party involvement, political campaign activity, political meeting attendance, voting, and other participation in conventional political activities (vs. in social movements, activism, protest, other unconventional political activities; see Handbook Chapter 24). We also examine briefly the nature of political parties and political pressure (interest) groups, their internal structures, membership, activities, external relationships and collaboration, and impacts. The S-Theory of Smith (2016c, 2017a, 2017b) is applied as a comprehensive, interdisciplinary model of why people do political volunteering. Related multivariate models like the Civic Voluntarism model of Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) explain much variance in political volunteering/participation. Even in strong democracies there is a tendency for political volunteering to be done mainly by higher status and more educated people.