Civic Participation

Do you think there can be too much participation in the community? Well according to some there isn’t enough participation going on in our communities at all. Citizen participation may be a process in which people take part voluntary or legally forced to do either alone or in a group. According to our book, communitarian view praises citizen participation not just in the voting but by participating in groups and working with their neighbors to solve the problems of the community. One way to participate is volunteering as civic participation. Civic means working to make a difference in the civic life of the communities through both political and non-political processes. You can volunteer at different places, for instance: children groups, shelters,
They are usually elected in areas that are more educated and diversity populated. There are almost 20 percent of women who are holding political offices. However of the 249 women who have been granted the opportunity to hold such possessions, only four have been African American, one is a Pacific Islander/Asian, and one has been Latino. The women who decided to run for office get more of the neighborhood votes than the males do. (Dye, 1969) The final topic of Chapter 11 is interest groups in community politics. The first thing that was specified was the overall influence ability that interest groups have in different areas of political government. According to the textbook in local politics interest groups are “more obvious.” Therefore the influence of interest groups is more evident verses at national or even state levels. First off, civic association is a type of interest group that by definition means “an organization of citizens that work to filter its own view of the best interest of community.” This is a very popular type of interest group that deals with keeping the city as great as possible. In the larger cities there are usually hundreds of civic associations. There are only a few civil associations the smaller cities. The next interest group is more for those business men who put money into commercial properties or even industrial properties. This group is called the taxpayer group. The taxpayer group usually supports the idea of the least possible amount of taxes as well as the least possible amount of government services and activities. The third type of interest groups is the environmental and growth management groups. While the title may seem to insinuate the growth of the community that is the complete opposite of what this group really does. They actually are against any type of highway construction, tree cutting, noise and pollution, increased traffic, and other things of the