Rethinking political interest and its role in political participation.

Abstract

Political interest pops up as a powerful explanator in many models of political behavior and attitudes. Researchers have found political interest plays a key role in most types of participatory acts (Verba, Nie, and Kim 1978; Milbrath and Goel, 1977) and is the <italic>strongest</italic> predictor of voting, even taking into account related attitudes such as partisan strength or efficacy (Verba, Scholzman, and Brady, 1995). Yet, political interest as a concept and its proper operationalization have not been fully explored and defined. In this dissertation, I develop and test a theory of political interest as a multidimensional concept. This theory incorporates conceptualizations of interest drawn from work in both psychology and political science, as well as interpretive analyses of conversations with a wide cross-section of individuals. Through semiotic and rhetorical analysis of a series of in-depth interviews, I examine the meanings embedded within the notion of political interest. From this analysis emerge three distinct dimensions underlying the general concept: interest as a taste for politics, interest as oversight of the government and elected officials, and interest as a sense of personal stake. I then test an expanded battery of survey items that tap into these three dimensions using a nationwide telephone survey. Analysis of this survey data demonstrates that by breaking down political interest into component parts, we can better understand how various types of political behavior---including voting, volunteering, contributing, and contacting---are related to different aspects of political interest. I also examine how differences among men and women in sense of taste and of stake in politics result in gender differences in a variety of political activities. Finally, I use a survey-embedded experiment look at how political context---specifically, campaign messages---can induce changes in feelings of political interest. Variations in political interest are important because they lead people to act in the political arena in meaningful ways, such as voting or not voting, following the news or tuning it out, discussing the latest issues with friends or avoiding the subject altogether. This dissertation introduces a more nuanced understanding and measurement of political interest that provides new insights into the relationship between interest and participation.