Unpacking civic participation: Analyzing trends in black [and white] participation over time q Valeria Sinclair-Chapman a, * , Robert W. Walker b , Daniel Q. Gillion c a University of Rochester, 316 Harkness Hall, Rochester, NY 14627, United States b Department of Political Science, Center for Applied Statistics, Washington University in Saint Louis, United States c Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6215, United States article info Article history: Received 22 May 2009 Accepted 26 May 2009 Keywords: Political participation Civic engagement Race and ethnic politics Black politics Racial disparity Item response theory Time series analysis abstract Differences in levels of political engagement between blacks and whites have long captured scholars’ interest. As a consequence, this topic has been heavily studied in American politics. However, many of these studies have taken a static approach to analyzing political behavior and few have examined how individuals orient them- selves to political participation over time. Yet, engagement in political behavior as well as the information that can be obtained from any specific political action will change within a mutable political environment. In our examination of patterns in blacks’ and whites’ political engagement between 1973 and 1994, we investigate the ability of various civic activities to differentiate between high and low propensity participators. This dynamic analysis, with the incorporation of a unique methodological approach, reveals a gradual increase in blacks’ likelihood to engage in politics. Moreover, the increase in blacks’ engagement has served to diminish racial disparities in political behavior over time. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The growth in black registration and turnout in the aftermath of the 1960s civil rights movement spurred increased attention from political scientists to questions of racial differences in political participation. With few exceptions, scholarship suggests that African-Americans’ voting and civic participation patterns differ from those of Anglo-whites. Racial differences in voting patterns have persisted since the National Election Study (NES) first facilitated tracking them in 1952 and blacks remain the most distinctive voting bloc in the declining New Deal Coalition (Campbell et al., 1960; Lewis-Beck et al., 2008). Explanations for these differences include party campaigns and platform appeals (Walton, 1985; Smith, 1996; Smith and Seltzer, 2007), mobilization efforts of the two major parties (Wielhouwer, 2000), and the role of group-based religious and social institutions, such as churches or media outlets, in informing voters and shaping their candidate selection (Dawson, 1994; Calhoun-Brown, 1996; Leighley, 2001). Racial disparities in voter turnout are also routinely observed, though these effects are attenuated or heightened by formal rules and institutions (Campbell et al., 1960), variation in socioeconomic status (Verba and Nie, 1972; Verba et al., 1995; but see Abramson and Claggett, 1991), social context (Cohen and Dawson, 1993), and group-based resources such as stronger group identification or church q The authors wish to thank participants at the Shambaugh Conference on ‘‘The American Voter: Change or Continuity over the Last Fifty Years,’’ May 8–10, 2008 hosted by the Department of Political Science, University of Iowa. We especially thank Bill Jacoby and Cindy Kam for their useful comments on various versions of this paper. We also thank the Wallis Institute at the University of Rochester and the Weidenbaum Center at Washington University for funding portions of this research project. Any remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the authors. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: vsc@ur.rochester.edu (V. Sinclair-Chapman), rww@ wustl.edu (R.W. Walker), dgillion@rochester.edu (D.Q. Gillion). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Electoral Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud 0261-3794/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2009.05.026 Electoral Studies 28 (2009) 550–561