The Effects of Civic and Political Participation: Addressing Causality Issues

Abstract

According to conventional wisdom, civic and political participation have a number of beneficial outcomes. They make people more trusting, more inclined to subscribe to democratic values, and more inclined to take part in collective action. However, several studies have been published in the past few years that challenge these ideas, especially the extent to which the “effects of participation” are indeed causal. Three important challenges for future research are: (1) to find ways to deal with selection effects, (2) to find ways to deal with reversed causality, and (3) to uncover the mechanisms that connect participation to its outcomes. The availability of improved datasets and new statistical techniques offer opportunities to come to more reliable conclusions about the effects of participation. This panel welcomes papers that address causality issues in the study of participation, which can be accomplished in a number of ways. Although submissions are not restricted to a certain approach, scholars who use panel data in their research are especially encouraged to send in their work.

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