Who Substitutes Service for Politics? Assessing the Roles of Youth and Partisan Alienation in Americans’ Forms of Civic Engagement

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231194641
• Author: Laura S. Antkowiak
• Date: 01 March 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(1) 89–105

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129231194641

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Who Substitutes Service for Politics?

Assessing the Roles of Youth and Partisan

Alienation in Americans’Forms of Civic

Engagement

Laura S. Antkowiak

1



Abstract

Political scientists have long expressed concern about citizens who focus their civic activity on community service,

seemingly treating it as a substitute for political involvement. Proposed explanations for this phenomenon portray it as

popular among young adults. They also speculate that a politics dominated by two ideologically polarized, uncivil, and

chronically gridlocked parties may cause citizens who do not feel they have or want a place on those partisan teams to

avoid the arenas in which they f‌ight. Few large and representative studies, however, examine how citizens allocate their

civic activity between service and political action. Using the 2016 American National Election Study, I f‌ind that signs of

alienation from the country’s major political parties increase the likelihood that citizens limit their activity to service,

making a substitution scenario plausible. More commonly, however, rising partisan alienation predicts a shift in political

involvement from electoral to non-electoral forms. Younger citizens are surprisingly less likely than their elders to

specialize in service.

Keywords

civic engagement, political participation, volunteer service, partisanship, youth

Over two decades of scholarship has noted increasing

diversity and fragmentation in the forms of citizens’civic

involvement, including growing interest in tackling public

problems outside of conventional political channels—if

not outside of politics entirely (e.g., Dalton 2009;Strach

2016;Wuthnow 1998;Youngs 2019;Zukin et al. 2006).

Receiving special attention have been signs gleaned from

trend data, case studies, polls, focus groups, and other

sources that some Americans concentrate their civic work

in ostensibly nonpolitical community service, treating it as

substitute for meaningful political engagement (Rouse

and Ross 2018;Shea 2015;Strama 1998;Theiss-Morse

and Hibbing 2005;Walker 2000). Scholars have pondered

with concern the idea’s implications for democratic health

(Galston and Levine 1998;Shea 2015;Theiss-Morse and

Hibbing 2005) and society’s capacity to address structural

problems that volunteers and civic associations cannot

solve alone (Eliasoph 2013).

Proposed explanations for this phenomenon highlight

generational differences (linking it to the youngest citi-

zens) and alienation from a political sphere perceived to

be dominated by conf‌lict, gridlock, ideological rigidity,

and incivility, especially of a partisan nature (Bennett

1998;Bilous 2014;Chou et al. 2017;Dalton 2020;2009;

Galston and Levine 1998;Loader, Vromen, and Xenos

2014;Macedo et al. 2005;Shea 2015). Surprisingly,

however, very little scholarship has systematically and

empirically investigated why citizens choose the venues

and forms of civic action that they do. Literature also

questions whether youth or others have been withdrawing

from politics in general, or just from electoral politics

(e.g., Dalton 2009).

This paper addresses that gap, using the 2016 Amer-

ican National Election Study (ANES).

1

Its focus is on the

1

University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA

Corresponding Author:

Laura S. Antkowiak, Department of Political Science, University of

Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250,

USA.

Email: lantkowiak@umbc.edu

prevalence and predictors of Americans I call “service

specialists”: people involved in community volunteerism

but no “political”activity beyond voting. In a series of

models, I estimate how age and indicators of alienation

from partisan politics relate to the mixes of political and

nonpolitical activities through which Americans partici-

pate (or not) in civic life. I consider whether these con-

cepts are associated with people’s likelihood of

participating through service rather than politics, and

whether their larger impact is instead on how citizens

work to inf‌luence political outcomes—whether they

contribute more than their vote to the typically partisan

affairs that elections are, or limit their participation to

issue-oriented expressions of voice, such as protesting or

contacting government off‌icials.

If‌ind that in 2016, the share of American adults re-

porting community service but no political action was

relatively small, older, and religiously devout. Youth,

when considering activities other than voting, predicts

higher odds of political participation—even in elections

and campaigns. Several correlates of political participa-

tion, including education and psychological engagement

in politics, predict service over disengagement. But as

citizen distance from the country’s two major political

parties increases—measured in their combined reluctance

to identify, their emotional coolness, and the extent to

which they perceive themselves ideologically

unrepresented—so does their likelihood of limiting their

civic activities to community service. Most Americans,

even at high levels of alienation from parties, nonetheless

participate politically. To the extent that partisan politics

deters participation (a causal claim that this paper ad-

mittedly cannot test), the larger shift it appears to pre-

cipitate is from electoral to non-electoral forms of political

participation, rather than from political participation to

service. In both cases, (dis)affect toward the parties relates

more directly to Americans’forms of civic engagement

than identity or ideological distance, although I f‌ind signs

that all three types of alienation contribute.

Narratives of Service Substitution

Speculation that Americans are substituting service for

politics, or expressive for electoral political action, con-

tradicts the civic participation literature’s traditional view

and considerable empirical f‌indings (Dalton 2009;Oser,

Hooghe, and Marien 2013;Rosenstone and Hansen 1993;

Strach 2012;Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995;Zukin

et al. 2006) that these forms of participation are com-

plementary. These forms of participation share several

common correlates, with some variation by study and

form, including education, income, whiteness, personality

dispositions, church attendance or involvement, and even

political awareness and interest (e.g., Musick and Wilson

2008;Piatak 2023;Strach 2012;Theiss-Morse and

Hibbing 2005;Verba,Schlozm an, and Brady 1995;Zukin

et al. 2006). Concerns about public problems motivate

both (Han 2009;Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995).

Often, scholars conceive of community volunteerism and

involvement as inspiring political participation, by in-

creasing exposure to problems (Eliasoph 2013), or

building civic skills, eff‌icacy, social capital, and networks

(Theiss-Morse and Hibbing 2005;Verba, Schlozman, and

Brady 1995).

Yet various acts of political and nonpolitical civic

participation can be associated with each other while a

critical mass of citizens concentrates efforts in the non-

political (or political) sphere. In a rare study describing

with a large national sample how Americans mix different

forms of civic participation, Zukin and colleagues observe

with 2002 data on Americans aged 15 and older that 16

percent performed nonpolitical civic activities such as

volunteer work, active civic group membership, fund-

raising for charity, and community problem-solving ac-

tivity while reporting little to no political participation

(2006, 64). Scholars know little about such citizens and

why they, despite their willingness to civically engage,

have conf‌ined themselves to ostensibly nonpolitical

realms.

Suspicion of a substitution effect comes largely from

qualitative or indirect evidence. One type has contrasted

what were until recently (American National Election

Studies 2021;Candid 2022) stagnant or declining rates

of participation in elections and campaigns, political

parties, and mass-membership groups with then-high and

perhaps increasing rates of volunteerism (Bennett 1998;

Macedo et al. 2005;Mann 1999;Shea 2015;Zukin et al.

2006). Qualitative studies have highlighted volunteers

and other community participants who frame their action

as a route to change that is different from and perhaps

superior to political activism (Blackstone 2004;2007;

Bilous 2014;Hussey 2020;Wuthnow 1998;Youngs

2019;Zuckerman 2021)—if not its own “alternative

politics”(Longo 2004, 63). Scholars have also identif‌ied

conditions where voluntary sector participation fails to

encourage—and may even undermine—political in-

volvement (Atkinson and Fowler 2014;Eliasoph 2013;

Musick and Wilson 2008;Theiss-Morse and Hibbing

2005).

The f‌irst of two prominent narratives about why citi-

zens address problems through service and civic associ-

ations highlights alienation from politics. Citizens tend to

associate politics with conf‌lict and civic associations or

service with cooperation, typically preferring the latter to

the former (Hays 2007;Hussey 2020;Macedo et al. 2005;

Theiss-Morse and Hibbing 2005;Walker 2000). Scholars

further observe among volunteers a tendency to associate

politics with gridlock and empty or divisive words, while

90 Political Research Quarterly 77(1)