The democratic engagement of Britain's ethnic minorities

Democratic engagement is a multi-faceted phenomenon that embraces citizens' involvement with electoral politics, their participation in ‘conventional’ extra-parliamentary political activity, their satisfaction with democracy and trust in state institutions, and their rejection of the use of violence for political ends. Evidence from the 2010 BES and EMBES shows that there are important variations in patterns of democratic engagement across Britain's different ethnic-minority groups and across generations. Overall, ethnic-minority engagement is at a similar level to and moved by the same general factors that influence the political dispositions of whites. However, minority democratic engagement is also strongly affected by a set of distinctive ethnic-minority perceptions and experiences, associated particularly with discrimination and patterns of minority and majority cultural engagement. Second-generation minorities who grew up in Britain are less, rather than more, likely to be engaged

Voting Characteristics of Individuals With Traumatic Brain Injury

Voting is the foundation of democracy. Limited data exist about voting characteristics of individuals with neurologic impairment including those living with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). To statistically examine voting characteristics using a convenience sample of registered voters with TBI during elections held in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina—2007, 2008. Data were collected on 51 participants with TBI during May 2007, 2008 general, and 2008 Presidential Election. (i) There was a significant difference between the Competence Assessment Tool for Voting (CAT‐V) total score of participants with TBI who voted and the CAT‐V total score of participants with TBI who did not vote and the CAT‐V total score predicted voting; (ii) the age of the participants with TBI was predictive of voting; and (iii) being married was inversely related to voting. We find that there is variation in voting even among this small sample interviewed for the present study, and that the variation is predictable. Those with the highest CAT‐Vs are most likely to vote. In addition, we find that traditional predictors of voting simply are not predictors among this TBI group, and even one, whether the person is married, has a negative effect on voting

Vol. 16(2): Replication Data for "Representation in an era of political and economic inequality: How and when citizen engagement matters"

ABSTRACT: Does political participation make a difference for policy responsiveness, or is affluence what matters most? To examine whether participation beyond voting matters for policy representation, we analyze congruence between citizens’ policy preferences and their representatives’ roll call votes using data from the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. For the main policy issue for which citizens’ political engagement beyond voting enhances congruence—namely, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010—we then investigate whether this effect holds when taking citizens’ income into account. The findings show that for the ACA, constituents’ participation beyond voting is associated with increased congruence with their representatives at all levels of income, and that those with less income who are politically active beyond voting experience the largest increase in congruence. However, our findings also show that the potential of political participation and income to enhance congruence is restricted to co-partisans, and to highly partisan and salient issues