Political Participation Of American Voter In The Transition Era

When a country’s economy develops to a certain level, industrialization, division of labor and bureaucratization would appear correspondingly, together with the improve of educational level of citizens, would bring the shift of cultural values, which causes the transformation of perception and values supporting the rapid growth of economy. The pure economic or cultural determinism cannot explain the transformation from the society to individual level, which would also influence the shift of regime, especially when the economy is in a period of rapid growth and the finiteness is to be clearer, and then new values and behavior pattern will appear.This thesis is to research the change of democratic political participation of Americans when the United States stepped into post-industrial age, which pays special attention to what change will happen to the democratic political participation behaviors of America under the influence of post-material values in a transitional period.Through an analysis of the data of20-year pannel survey of world values, it is very clear that there is an apparent transformation in political participation level, methods and focus of American Citizen, of evident post-material characteristic, including economy and individual safety is giving way to the realization of self-value, women’s political participation has changed much but not from the root and the enthusiasm of political participation is variant and appear to be different according to different issues. Why has the traditional political participation been challenged? It is the rapid growth of economy or the shift of values or any reason else. This thesis is an attempt to answer these questions.