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Why do vote-suppression efforts sometimes fail? Why does police repression of demonstrators sometimes turn localized protests into massive, national movements? How do politicians and activists manipulate people´s emotions to get them involved? The authors of Why Bother? offer a new theory of why people take part in collective action in politics, and test it in the contexts of voting and protesting. They develop the idea that just as there are costs of participation in politics, there are also costs of abstention - intrinsic and psychological but no less real. That abstention can be psychically costly helps explain real-world patterns that are anomalies for existing theories, such as that sometimes increases in costs of participation are followed by more participation, not less. The book draws on a wealth of survey data, interviews, and experimental results from a range of countries, including the United States, Britain, Brazil, Sweden, and Turkey.

Develops and tests a theory that explains why people take part in two key instruments of popular politics, voting and protesting
Considers the cost of abstention to explain a number of apparent anomalies, such as how efforts to suppress the vote and the repression of protesters are sometimes ineffective and can even lead to higher rates of participation
Draws on a wealth of survey data, interviews, and experimental results from a range of countries



Table of Contents

1. Introduction: rethinking political participation
2. Theories of voter participation: a review and a new approach
3. Testing the costly abstention theory of turnout
4. Theories of protest participation: a review and a new approach
5. Testing the costly abstention theory of protest participation
6. The emotional origins of collective action
7. Conclusions: criticisms, extensions, and democratic theory.