Contemporary Political Participation and its Countervailing Effects on Civic Culture

Citizen participation stands as a pillar of democracy, embodying principles of popular sovereignty, government accountability, and public trust. This compiled volume expands our understanding of the many varied contemporary forms of political participation and unpacks the implications of contemporary civic engagement on civic culture. The motivating factors for and effects of political participation are complex. The ways in which humans use the varying avenues and opportunities to engage with the government have been complicated by the increasing ubiquity of social media. Under certain conditions, citizen participation may serve to increase trust in public institutions, with implications for civil service, courts, police, the military, and other public services. While at other times, modern political participation may create a countervailing influence on productive civic engagement and civic culture. Although technological advances of the twenty-first century have lowered some of the barriers to political engagement, they have also facilitated new ways of spreading disinformation and simplified messaging. This edited volume will be of interest to anyone who cares about political participation and the efficacy of civic engagement in the information age. In addition, this book would be of interest in many interdisciplinary courses from the social sciences and would facilitate discussions surrounding the varied ways that citizens can use political participation in democracies around the world to engage with democratic government and the impacts this has on social capital and civic culture.

Alexandra Cockerham is an Associate Teaching Professor at Florida State University in the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences program. She is the Director of the Public Policy Certificate, and her teaching interests center on Public Policy, American Politics, quantitative methods, and Political Institutions. Recently, her research has focused on public policy, with an eye towards the American criminal justice system. Dr. Cockerham has published in the Juvenile and Family Court Journal, State and Local Government Review, The Florida Political Chronicle, and Presidential Studies Quarterly. She was also recently awarded a grant by the North Carolina Department of Public Safety that examined the effect of teen court programs on youth recidivism, a project that combined data analysis, community surveys, and program evaluation.

James Cockerham, Ph.D., serves as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Public Safety and Security at Florida State University. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Public Administration from Florida State University and a B.S. in Criminology, also from FSU. His teaching and research interests lie at the intersection of public administration, criminal justice, and public policy, with a particular focus on civic engagement, organizational behavior, and the role of institutions in shaping public life. Before joining Florida State, Dr. Cockerham was Department Chair of Health Science and Public Service and Program Director of Public Administration at Montreat College. Dr. Cockerham has published in the Juvenile and Family Court Journal, The Florida Political Chronicle, the Christian Business Academy Review, and co-authored several policy reports for the Florida Legislature. He was also recently the Principal Investigator on a grant funded by the North Carolina Department of Public Safety that examined the effect of teen court programs on youth recidivism, a project that combined data analysis, community surveys, and program evaluation.

government accountability, public trust, civic engagement, Twitter, disinformation, simplified messaging, citizen participation, grassroots participation, police accountability, law enforcement transparency, jury nullification, participatory democracy, citizen activism, Conspiracy expression, civil society, Rwanda, post-conflict democracy