State Political Participation in United States

State Political Participation: Election Law, Electoral Competition, and Inequality

Caroline Tolbert and William W. Franko, in the chapter “State Political Participation: Election Law, Electoral Competition, and Inequality” of the Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government, offers some insight and critically assesses the situation and current state of scholarship on the topic. The following is a summary:In this article the authors explore the literature on political participation in the states and argue that research on state political participation has provided the most theoretical and empirical innovation gains for the overall study of participation in the past few decades. The authors focus on the impact of political institutions (election laws), political environments (electoral competition), and inequality in participation rates, or class bias, across the states. Future research directions are explored and the authors emphasize on some of the ways that the American states matter for participation in our democracy

Further Reading

• “State Political Participation: Election Law, Electoral Competition, and Inequality”, The Oxford Handbook of American Politics