City Size and Civic Involvement in Metropolitan America

J. Eric Oliver

American Political Science Review, 2000, vol. 94, issue 2, 361-373

Abstract: Given the coincidence between America's recent migration to smaller, suburban cities and declines in civic participation, Dahl's speculations on the ideal-sized democratic polity have gained more pertinence. I explore the effects of city size on participation in four local civic activities using 1990 data. Controlling for both individual- and city-level characteristics, I find people in larger cities are much less likely to contact officials, attend community or organizational meetings, or vote in local elections. Lower civic participation is attributable partly to differences in social relations and psychological orientation between residents of larger and smaller places. People in big cities are less likely to be recruited for political activity by neighbors and are less interested in local affairs. These differences occur irrespective of the size of the surrounding metropolitan area and demonstrate the importance of municipal institutions for fostering civil society. The implications for studies of participation, suburbanization, and democratic political theory are discussed.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:94:y:2000:i:02:p:361-373_22

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().