Rethinking the Political Participation Paradigm: The Case of Women and Gun Control

Political-participation studies have paid too little attention to the cognitive and emotional motivations for citizen engagement. This study uses a natural experiment in issue-centered mobilization, a women's march for stricter gun control, to construct a fuller model of political participation, one that focuses on the interaction between individuals and issues. I find that reframing political issues to resonate with social roles and responsibilities-in this case, reframing gun control as a child-protection issue-legitimizes participation by new groups of people-in this case, women. The more citizens internalize these frames, the more intensively they participate over time. © 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Duke Scholars

Author Kristin Anne Goss Sanford School of Public Policy