I thank Laurel Weldon for her generous and incisive review of my book. Our two books share a common interest in investigating the mechanisms through which marginalized constituencies gain voice in politics. While my book takes a micro, individual perspective, focusing on questions about participation in American politics, Weldon's takes a macro perspective, analyzing the impact of social movements and movement organizations in a comparative context. Thus, while I try to understand the factors that motivate individuals from traditionally marginalized communities to get involved, she asks what happens when they do get involved: Does their participation in movements and movement organizations matter? These divergent perspectives contextualize some of the very helpful questions Weldon raised about my book.

Two questions push me to provide a broader context for my work. First, Weldon notes that there are many diverse forms of participation, not just those reflected in the formal political behaviors included in my empirical analyses. Second, she raises important questions that could be answered by taking a comparative approach: For instance, does the existence of “weak parties” and the “depoliticization of public space” make issue publics more salient in America? Both of these points are well taken. My response reflects the differences in our approaches. I would argue that understanding the psychological mechanisms that motivate people to become involved in politics is universally important. It is quite possible that issue publics are more salient in certain types of political systems, or for particular forms of civic and political involvement. Yet I wonder if the finding that people take action (political or not) based on what they find to be personally important is similarly variable.

Along the same lines, Weldon rightly notes that it is not motivation alone that precludes participation among marginalized constituencies; instead, there is a broader institutional context in American politics that creates real barriers to equal participation.

I hope I did not minimize the importance of institutional barriers for marginalized constituencies. Nonetheless, I would argue that reform should focus on making it not only more possible for marginalized constituencies to participate (through the lowering of institutional barriers) but also more probable that they will (through the effort to increase their motivation). Most reforms focus on the former and neglect the latter.

Weldon also raises an important question about selection bias in my interviews. The goal of the interviews was to generate a richer sense of the pathways people took to becoming politically engaged. As a result, I traded breadth for depth and was unable to develop a representative sample, but I was able to get more contextual depth than I would have with shorter interviews or surveys on a larger sample. I agree that a representative sample is needed to verify the themes emerging from my interviews, which, I hope, will be an avenue for future research—as will many of the questions she raises. I thank Weldon for pushing me to think more critically about my work and our common interests.