Patterns of Participation: Investigating the Relationship Between “Conventional” and “Unconventional” Political Engagement

Research into political engagement is currently divided into two literatures: research on “conventional” and “unconventional” participation (Milbrath, 1965; McFarland and Thomas, 1996; Goldstone, 2003; Heaney and Rohas, 2006). Downward trends in “conventional” political engagement have been attributed to staff-run advocacy organizations that encourage members to contribute money but not engage otherwise (Skocpol and Fiorina, 1999; Fisher, 2006), and a decrease in civic participation overall (Putnam, 2000). In documenting the rise of social movements, researchers note spillover into domestic political participation with a surge in national protests or “unconventional” participation (Finkel and Opp, 1991; Putnam, 2000; Schussman and Soule, 2005). In this paper, I explore whether the simultaneous increase in protest and decrease in conventional participation changes the patterns in which Americans participate in politics. By examining conventional political engagement in the light of protest activities, I demonstrate that protest fits neatly into an entailment model of political participation. The method is based on extraction of patterns of participation, conditioning on the marginal participation in political activities. The findings show that the patterns of engagement of protesters have changed from 1976 to 2000, 2004, and 2008, with protest becoming more normalized over time but the other relationships remaining constant.