ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at change in three kinds of citizen involvement—electoral behavior, community participation, and activism. It examines behavioral characteristics of associational life—resource dedication and constraints, membership, civic participation, political and social activism, voluntarism and charitable giving, and informal association. The nature of associational life is partly predicated upon available time and money. Clearly, informal voluntary association absorbs a significant part of leisure time spent with others. The resource with a remarkable impact on the nature of the associational life of Americans is transportation technology. Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the United States seemed to have much higher rates of voluntary association than England and his own country of France. The convenience of the automobile, applied to associational life, converges with a tradition of embracing opportunities to move out and onwards. And it converges with a tendency of Americans to form attachments for multitudinous reasons, tailored by choice and pragmatic factors.
