Political Action and Social Integration

The author examines the impact of social integration and the social environment on conventional and unconventional modes of political participation. Specifically, he examines the thesis that more social kinds of participation are more strongly affected by the social environment than are more individual kinds of political acts. The author finds that the ex ante categorization of participatory acts into social and individual ones is less helpful for understanding the effects of the social environment than the distinction between conventional, institutionalized acts on one hand and unconventional, uninstitutionalized acts on the other. Conventional activities are more strongly influenced by an individual's exposure to, interaction with, and integration into the community, whereas the social environment is a less important factor for stimulating unconventional political participation.