Why Bother?

Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests

S. Erdem Aytaç, Susan C. Stokes

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781108475228
• eBook ISBN: 9781108683845
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Why do vote-suppression efforts sometimes fail? Why does police repression of demonstrators sometimes turn localized protests into massive, national movements? How do politicians and activists manipulate people's emotions to get them involved? The authors of Why Bother? offer a new theory of why people take part in collective action in politics, and test it in the contexts of voting and protesting. They develop the idea that just as there are costs of participation in politics, there are also costs of abstention - intrinsic and psychological but no less real. That abstention can be psychically costly helps explain real-world patterns that are anomalies for existing theories, such as that sometimes increases in costs of participation are followed by more participation, not less. The book draws on a wealth of survey data, interviews, and experimental results from a range of countries, including the United States, Britain, Brazil, Sweden, and Turkey.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Rethinking Political Participation
• 2 Theories of Voter Participation: A Review and a New Approach
• 3 Testing the Costly Abstention Theory of Turnout
• 4 Theories of Protest Participation: A Review and a New Approach
• 5 Testing the Costly Abstention Theory of Protest Participation
• 6 The Emotional Origins of Collective Action
• 7 Conclusions: Criticisms, Extensions, and Democratic Theory
• Bibliography
• Index