ABSTRACT
This chapter examines four broad categories of political and civic participation: voting, conventional political activity, non-conventional political activity, and civic engagement. It presents a summary of some of the main empirical findings concerning political and civic participation that have emerged from the secondary analysis of survey data sets that was undertaken as part of the Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation, PIDOP project. The chapter focuses on the results from two studies; further information about both of these studies, together with the results of additional analyses, are reported in full in Brunton-Smith. The first study summarised here used multilevel models to explore the macro socio-political influences on citizen's levels of participation and engagement. The second study used latent class analysis to explore the patterns of participation across European citizens, identifying a number of distinct types of participant, defined by the combination of forms of participation that they engage in.
