The essence of grassroots democracy is represented in participation that occurs outside of election campaigns. Citizens contact their political leaders to express their political interests or needs. Groups attempt to deal with social or community problems, ranging from issues concerning schools or roads to protecting the local environment. From the PTA to local neighborhood committees, this is democracy in action. The existence of such autonomous groups and independent action defines the characteristics of the civil society that theorists from Jefferson to the present have considered a foundation of the democratic process. Alexis de Tocqueville, for example, saw such group activity as a distinctive feature of American democracy in the 1800s:

The political activity that pervades the United States must be seen to be understood. No sooner do you set foot upon American ground than you are stunned by a kind of tumult… here the people of one quarter of a town are meeting to decide upon the building of a church; there the election of a representative is going on; a little farther, the delegates of a district are hastening to the town in order to consult upon some local improvements; in another place, the laborers of a village quit their plows to deliberate upon a project of a road or a public school… To take a hand in the regulation of society and to discuss it is (the) biggest concern and, so to speak, the only pleasure an American knows.

These are exactly the types of political activity that current critics such as Putnam see as lacking in the American public, which is described as disengaged and disconnected from the political process.

The CSES project measured these nonelectoral forms of engagement with another battery of participation questions:

Over the past five years or so, have you done any of the following things to express your views about something the government should or should not be doing…?

…contacted a politician or government official either in person, or in writing, or some other way?

…worked together with people who shared the same concern?

Even today, Americans are distinctive for their high levels of nonelectoral participation (see Figure 2). In 2004, more than a quarter said they had contacted a political figure, and more than a third had worked with others on a political issue.

In other established democracies—such as Sweden, Finland, France, and Germany—participation levels were barely half those of Americans. The participatory patterns of Americans stand out even more clearly in comparison to the new democracies at the bottom of the rankings. Not only are American participation levels relatively high, but other public opinion surveys suggest they represent a general increase in nonelectoral engagement over time. The participatory culture that de Tocqueville observed still appears alive and well in the contemporary American public.