ABSTRACT
The costs of voting are to a large extent determined by the characteristics of the institutional framework of the public sector and in particular by the length of the election period. The rationale for lobbies, pressure groups, social movements, political mobility, etc., is to be found in the basic characteristics of the institutional framework and in the cost that it imparts to voting. A federal structure also has an influence on the other costs of political participation. While it must be recognized that influencing political parties at many levels of government is costlier than influencing only one, all the other consequences of federalism are to reduce the costs of using the instruments of political participation. Organization and communication cost are certainly not independent of one another, especially in the long run. Indeed, the observable secular decrease in organization costs is to a large extent the product of changes in the technology of communication.
