Political Engagement

Abstract

Political engagement is rarely considered to be an aspect of political participation as such. More typically, scholars (such as van Deth 1989: 277) distinguish between political interest or political engagement as a state of mind and political involvement or political participation as behavioral manifestations. Political engagement has frequently been considered the central intervening variable between socioeconomic status (SES) and political participation (Verba and Nie 1972), or at least a supplementary explanatory variable which, alongside political resources (such as skills, time, and money), links the world outside politics with political participation (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995: 272). Besides, it has served as measure of a ‘natural’ inequality in political participation that may be modified by institutional factors such as class-mobilizing organizations (Verba, Nie and Kim 1978).KeywordsWelfare StatePolitical ParticipationPolitical InterestScandinavian CountryPolitical EngagementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.