Teaching Citizenship: Race and the Behavioral Effects of American Civic Education

Author(s):  
Matthew D. Nelsen

Abstract Political scientists have identified how resources, attitudes, and mobilization impact political participation across racial groups. However, the role of civic education has largely been overlooked in shaping these trends. I develop a theory that suggests exposure to civics curricula yields heterogeneous effects on the political participation of youth across racial groups. I test my hypotheses with data from the Black Youth Project's 2005 Youth Culture Survey, supplemented by two original data collections from 2017–2018. I find that civic education courses are associated with higher rates of external efficacy among white youth, but not for black and Latinx youth. Contrastingly, civic education courses appear to increase acts of public voice among black and Latinx respondents, but not for their white peers. Rather than viewing civic education courses as a panacea for low rates of youth political participation, scholars and policymakers should pay closer attention to the ways in which the content of civic education courses contributes to heterogeneous effects across racial and ethnic groups.

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 249
Author(s):  
Kiku Huckle ◽  
Andrea Silva

U.S. immigration policy over the last 100 years has changed the onus of political acculturation from public programs to private groups like churches. After this significant policy change, how do religion, social capital, and nativity intersect in the political mobilization of racial minorities? Furthermore, after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, the country of origin of immigrants shifted from European countries to Latin America and Asia. Scholars have theorized that churches play a pivotal role in the socialization of immigrants by providing a place of belonging and a community willing to teach newcomers about the goings-on of American political society. How have these acculturation policies worked under new immigration populations? Previous scholarly work has connected social capital with churches, though their relationship to political participation has been minimal. We hypothesize that social capital and religious tradition have a multiplicative effect on the participation rates of believers, but that race mitigates that effect. The positioning of racial groups in broader society impacts the significance and role of churches within these communities. We use Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) 2016 data to examine the connection between social capital, religion, and political behavior in a novel attempt to systematically identify the unique role of churches in the mobilization of racial minority communities. We use these results to suggest that the current policies of privatizing political acculturation have had less success with more recent waves of immigrants.


2021 ◽  
Vol VI (I) ◽  
pp. 470-476
Author(s):  
Hazrat Bilal ◽  
Shaista Gohar ◽  
Ayaz Ali Shah

An effort has been made to revisit the political participation of Pakhtun women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa former NWFP. The active role in the politics of Pakhtun women was quite difficult due to socio-cultural constraints. In such circumstances a woman from the elite class emerged on the political scene of NWFP; Begum Zari Sarfaraz who not only participated in the independence movement of Pakistan but also participated in politics after the creation of Pakistan and had rendered great services for women folk as members of national and provincial assemblies. The paper shed light on her opposition to One Unit. The paper also investigates the reason that why she quit politics. There is hardly any literature on the role of Begum Zari Sarfaraz in the politics of Pakistan.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela García-Castañon ◽  
Kiku Huckle ◽  
Hannah L. Walker ◽  
Chinbo Chong

AbstractThis paper examines the effect of institutional contact on political participation among non-White communities. While both formal and informal institutions help shape community citizen participation, their effects vary on the historical inclusion (or exclusion) of certain racial groups. Formal institutions, like political parties, have historically excluded or neglected non-White and immigrant voters. We argue that for the excluded or neglected, non-traditional political institutions, like community based organizations, serve as supplements to facilitate political incorporation and engagement. These informal institutions help develop skills and resources among their constituents, and offer routine opportunities to participate. We use the 2008 Collaborative Multi-racial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) to test the differential effects of self-reported voter mobilization through nonpartisan and partisan institutional contact to explain variations among racial groups by the intensity of contact, occurrence of co-ethnic outreach, and type of institutional mobilization. We find that while contact by a partisan/political institution, like a political party or campaign, has an overall positive effect on political participation for all voters, contact by a nonpartisan/civic or community group is substantively more important for Latino and Asian American voter mobilization. Our analysis therefore offers cohesive evidence of how voters interact with and are affected by mobilization efforts that attends to differences across racial and ethnic boundaries, and variations in institutional contact.


2020 ◽  

In democracy, political participation is seen as the most important way for citizens to communicate information to political decision-makers (Sydney Verba) and the bureaucracy affiliated to them. Protest plays a special role here among the political and cultural varieties of participation, since it can be seen as a symptom of democratic defects or as an expression of a living, transformative democracy. Civic education situates itself in relation to this particular form of expression of political culture in a multidimensional way: it transmits basic democratic values to educational institutions and marks the boundaries of accepted practice of protest quite differently. This can also result in a transformative practice of protest (Banks), which is also discussed in this volume. In it, the authors resurvey the field of political education according to the conditions of the current crisis-ridden transformation in democracy. This anthology was created to document the 2017 Münster Conference of the DVPW-Committee on Political Science and Civic Education.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER W. WIELHOUWER

This research examines the role of the personal contacting activities of the political parties as mobilizing forces in what Verba and Nie termed campaign activities. A reformulated rational choice model is discussed in which parties seek to reduce certain avoidable and unavoidable costs associated with political participation. Using data from the 1952 through 1994 American National Election Studies, it is shown that the party contact has been and continues to be a major factor in mobilizing campaign activists. Its influence is remarkably robust, maintaining statistical and substantive significance even after controlling for other important factors usually associated with political behavior.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jurnal ARISTO ◽  
Muhammad Fadli ◽  
Muh. Kausar Bailusy ◽  
Jayadi Nas ◽  
Achmad Zulfikar

This research aims to illustrate and analyze the role of local elites in increasing voter participation and impact of local elite involvement in North Toraja District Head Vice Regent and Vice Regent 2015 by using qualitative descriptive method. Data were obtained by using interviews as well as literature and document studies.The results indicate that local elites play a role in increasing participation in Pilkada in North Toraja according to their capacity. Local political elites socialize candidate pairs, become campaign teams and volunteer teams of candidates for regent / vice bupati candidates. Religious figures become part of the election organizers and socialize the implementation of Pilkada through religious activities. Adat leaders play a role by utilizing the charisma owned socialize information Pilkada to the community, build communication with the candidate pair then support it in the elections.The involvement of local elites in the implementation of North Sulawesi District Head Vice Regent and Vice Regent 2015 has a significant impact on the political participation of the community. Increasing the political participation of the people in Pilkada is not solely because of the involvement of local elites in disseminating information on Regional Head Election. However, there are other motivating factors that enable the community to actively participate, namely (1) to be given material rewards (including piloting gambling activities) and (2) the religious sentiments of one of the candidate pairs on religious leaders in worship activities.


2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Šerek ◽  
Hana Machackova ◽  
Petr Macek

Abstract. Research on the political behavior of young people often approaches psychological factors such as political efficacy or interest as antecedents of political participation. This study examines whether efficacy and interest are also outcomes of participation and if this effect differs across three types of political participation. Data from a two-wave longitudinal survey of 768 Czech adolescents (aged 14–17 years at Time 1, 54% females) was used. Findings support the proposition that psychological factors are affected by participatory experiences. Cross-lagged models showed longitudinal effects from participation to changes in psychological factors, but not effects in the opposite direction. Protest participation predicted higher interest and internal political efficacy, but lower external political efficacy, volunteering predicted higher external political efficacy, and representational participation had no effects on psychological factors. Overall, our findings point out the formative role of participatory experiences in adolescence and the diverse effects of different types of political participation on political development.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth S. Manley

Chapter 6 addresses the ways in which many Dominican activists interrogated the role of Balaguer’s government in the regulation of individual’s women’s lives and families and challenged many of its violent, dictatorial tendencies. Refuting the regime’s argument for a “revolution without blood,” many women described the government’s agenda to national and inter-American audiences as “blood without revolution” and continued to mobilize within the opposition through the discourse of motherhood and family. However, the chapter also looks at the many cracks developing in the discourse of maternalism that, coupled with an ever-deepening awareness of the tools and tactics of international second-wave feminism, pushed many women to challenge a model of political participation that constructed their roles in the political arena merely as nurturers and caretakers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 251-265
Author(s):  
Dércio Tsandzana

In the last 10 years, studies on political participation through social networks have marked the debate in the field of media studies. In Mozambique, particularly, and in the world, in general, youth represent the galvanizing centre that finds in the use of social networks an almost ideal tool of expression about their frustrations due to their situation of blatant social misery – unemployment and constant life uncertainty to which youth are exposed. With this article, we intend to analyse the role of social networks, specifically Facebook, in the political and social engagement of urban youth in Mozambique, considering a timeline that covers the last four years, 2014 to 2017. As a result, it is concluded that, despite the expansion of social networks in recent years, they cannot yet be considered as spaces for effective political participation by youth, due to the fact that the internet is less comprehensive, on the one hand, and the weak youth interest in political issues in Mozambique, on the other.


2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samsuri Samsuri

 This paper described the role of New Order Regime in Indonesia to build the citizen characters through the educational system. The regime effort to inculcate its interpretation on Pancasila (Five Principles) such as "Pedoman Penghayatan dan Pengamalan Pancasila" (P4). Citizens have been forced to receive and agree what regime intentions on Pancasila. They should be loyal to what regime interests on Pancasila. In the schooling, the New Order Regime has established P4 as core contents of civic virtues to build "good citizen" characters. Some policies in the educational (schooling) system released namely "Pendidikan Moral Pancasila" (Education of Moral Pancasila, PMP) and "Pendidikan Pancasila dan Kewarganegaraan" (Pancasila dan Civic Education, PPKn). This paper seemed the political decision making on how civic virtues have been implemented in the textbooks and two curriculum periods (1984 and 1994). The last, this paper examined the opportunity and prospect the new paradigm of civic education post-1998, i.e. the transitional democracy period after the fall of Suharto as leader profile of the New Order Regime. 


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