Partisanship and Participation in Political Campaign Activities,

argue that higher levels of Republican participation (after controlling for socioeconomic variables) result from the differential motivating influence of policy preferences for identifiers of the two parties. Using National Election Studies (NES) surveys from 1952 to 1996, I examine the possi-bility that Verba and Nie's findings are time-bound and/or context-bound. I find that the partisanship-participation relationship is variable. Republican hyperactivity has not continued since 1968, and among weak and leaning partisans no "puzzle " exists even in the 1952-1968 period. I also show that while opinion extremity did provide greater motivation for strong Republicans than for strong Democrats up to 1968, this difference does not extend to the weak and leaning partisan ranks. In addition, since 1972 opinion extremity appears to be more important to Demo-crats than to Republicans as an impetus to participate in campaigns. I conclude by suggesting that future research should examine more closely the role of contextual variables as determinants of participation. Citizens in democratic political systems are able to participate in their own governance. Yet, not all individuals avail themselves of these participatory free-doms. Only half of the American public has voted in recent presidential elec-tions, and a significantly smaller number contribute money to political cam-paigns, attend political meetings, contact local officials, or engage in other more "demanding " activities. In a pioneering contribution on political participation, Verba and Nie (1972) described the shape of the active public, finding that par-ticipants are disproportionately drawn from the higher strata of socioeconomic status (the rich, educated, and occupational elite). Subsequent research (e.g.