Should we be really worried about declining public engagement? Or should we accept that it is merely changing shape? This book describes substantial alterations in the ways Americans are involved in public life, particularly younger citizens, and analyzes a wide range of empirical data with the goal of understanding the implications—both negative and positive—of these emerging patterns of participation.

In the course of their National Youth Civic Engagement Project, Cliff Zukin and his colleagues consulted experts in youth activism; convened a number of focus groups; conducted two nationwide surveys of civic engagement; and supplemented these data sources with information from the National Election Studies, the General Social Survey, various Pew Research Center studies, an Internet-based National Youth Survey, and a National Council of State Legislatures survey.

A New Engagement? offers the careful reader many provocative findings and sensible, nuanced arguments. Take the distinction between “civic” and “political” participation. Does this make sense in a context where (as they discuss on p. 53) devolution, privatization, and the growing importance of nonprofit organizations continually blur this distinction? The authors deal nicely with this puzzle in their concluding chapter, briefly describing what the literature proposes about the connections between civic and political activities, and then going on to probe their respondents' expressed motivations for volunteer and community work. By one measure, about half see this work as having direct political relevance (an effort to address social or political problems).

One of the most useful aspects of this research project is that it allows us a deeper look than we normally get at a number of interesting questions having to do with political socialization, political attitudes, and generational differences. For example, the authors develop models (based on two different sources of survey data) of the civic and political engagement of high school students (pp. 147–50) that confirm the importance of political talk in the home; learning specific political skills; being female (which, of course, begs the question of why a participatory gender gap exists later on in life); and frequent Internet use (the latter served to reassure me about my own children and their friends). The same chapter also argues convincingly that providing volunteer opportunities, rather than requiring students to volunteer, encourages involvement; and that high scores on measures of civic involvement are produced “when teachers encourage open discussions” about politics (p. 142). Similarly, I found very intriguing the authors' investigation (via factor analysis of adjectival terms) of young peoples' views of government, and the fact that young people who associate neutral, descriptive terms with “politics” (terms like “government,” “power,” “democracy”) are more likely to engage in conventional political activity than are those with either negative or positive views. I also liked the survey questions about reasons for not voting. Here, the authors find that older generations have reasons for not voting, such as disliking politics or perceiving no difference between the parties, whereas younger generations frequently give no reasons at all: They “have not so much dropped out as they have never tuned in” (p. 93). Finally, their examination of the political views of younger citizens suggests a sometimes contradictory mix: social liberalism, support of environmental policies and health-care reform, a feeling that corporations have a big impact on their lives, negativity about “politics” but (a bit surprisingly) fairly positive views of what government can and should be doing.

The book has some weaknesses, perhaps not surprisingly for such an ambitious and complex project. There is some conceptual fuzziness around the notion of “cognitive engagement,” which initially (pp. 57–58) is treated as one of the four categories of engagement, along with civic indicators (community problem solving, volunteering, etc.), political indicators, and “indicators of public voice” (contacting officials, petitions, boycotting, etc.). Later on, however, this same concept seems to morph into “political capital,” which is treated as a “precursor” to political engagement. Perhaps a more serious problem has to do with the likelihood that the altered shape of civic participation that the authors describe will persist over time. This is a critical question, yet they are not really able to separate out generational from life-cycle effects. They acknowledge this, of course, but the fact that this dilemma is given such a central position in their inquiry makes its insolubility frustrating.

The significance level of the differences among groups—particularly among the four generational groups (termed Dutifuls, Boomers, GenXers, and DotNets)—is not generally presented. This is particularly problematic in cases where the differences are not especially large, but the text makes claims based on the differences. For example, on page 127 we read that the youngest two generations (DotNets and GenXers) are “somewhat less likely than Boomers, and especially Dutifuls, to report a home that had political talk”—but I wondered whether the difference between the two younger cohorts (16% and 17%, respectively) and the Baby Boomers (19%) was statistically significant.

These quibbles aside, the authors are carefully evenhanded in reaching their conclusion. The book attempts to provide both an overall picture of Americans' civic engagement and an analysis of generational differences in behavior and attitudes. The combination of data sources both strengthens and adds to the complexity of the book's conclusions. Appropriately, the authors are careful in sorting through all the findings. Overall, nearly half the adult population is “disengaged from both the civic and political realm” (p. 188); those who do participate slightly favor the traditional political realm. Using a generational lens, they find that the younger generations (GenXers and DotNets) are not—as the stereotypes may hold—apathetic. On some dimensions, particularly voluntarism and charitable activities, they may be more involved than older citizens. They are certainly, however, less politically interested and involved. Nonetheless, in some ways they are less cynical than older cohorts and endorse a higher level of government activity. Further, Zukin et al. argue that the tendency of many young Americans to choose civic over explicitly political involvement may not be problematic, given the increasingly blurry line between the two; and that “in the proper context, civic engagement can be a pathway to political engagement” (p. 200). At the same time, the fact that young people clearly need to be explicitly persuaded if they are to participate politically is a challenge for the system.

A New Engagement? bravely takes on these and other issues of great import for both political science and for American democracy.