The research proposed will set forth and test a life span development theory of political participation. It is hypothesized that there tends to be an accretion of civic competence as people are that is based on experience. This, coupled with increasing community attachment, strength of partisanship, and church attendance, which are also associated with aging, is seen as fostering greater political participation among older persons than would be expected in the absence of these life cycle effects. By enhancing the participation of older people, these effects offset the socio-economic and educational advantages that younger cohorts enjoy and thus reduce the biases in participation atttributable to these factors. In so doing, they also alter the policy preferences and issue orientations that find expression through political participation. Cross sectional time series analysis survey data from the National Election Study series conducted by the Center for Political Research at the University of Michigan will be used to test our life span development theory of political participation. Nine surveys dating from 1952 through 1984 will be used in the analysis. Models will be constructed and estimated by pooling the data across surveys so as to distinguish life cycle or aging effects from period and generational (or cohort) effects on various modes of participation. These models will allow identification of older persons whose political activity is attributable to life span civic development. The attitudes and orientations of this group will then be compared with the views of those the models suggest would have been active in any case and with those who are predictably inactive to assess how civic development may affect the type of views that are projected into politics through popular participation.
