Ma`rifat Siyasi

Efforts to explain the concept of “political participation” and determine its examples have faced disadvantages such as neglecting to pay independent attention to “participation” and the spread of normative and methodological approaches to conceptual analysis. Therefore, any rigorous descriptive or normative study of political participation will depend on reconstructing this concept through identifying imposed constraints and recovering lost constraints. The most important and controversial limitations in the definition of political participation (being “action”, “non-professional”, and “voluntary”) actually arise from our understanding of “participation” and are inherent in determining its three elements: “belonging”, “actor”, and “party” of participation. Based on the analysis presented to identify “participation”, and based on the chosen view of the association of the adjective “political” with this concept - without adding another adjective with any motivation - the definition of “political participation” can be obtained: “the conscious participation of individuals in determining the political destiny of society, together with others or with the intention of accompanying them.” It seems that any expansion or narrowing of the concept of political participation - beyond or below what has been presented - is considered a appropriation of the meaning of this social science term and requires clarification by contract and double credit.