Politics is a complicated struggle for conflict resolution that involves many strings of different ideologies. Politics is an activity where those who are willing to participate can have an opportunity to embrace our democratic system while better his or her social existence. For many politics is too difficult to understand or uninteresting that they prefer to not engage in it. Whether one is political active or not is rooted in the way they were raised or what social class they belong to. Essentially, in our democratic government having intellectual and participatory skills makes a person a good citizen. A good citizen is a person that adequately fulfills the role to follow his/hers expectations of what is considered a good citizen. These expectations consist of either being civic duty or engaged citizenship. Being a civic duty citizen involves abiding to the American norms such as voting, paying taxes, and belonging to a political party. Being involved in politics because of civic duty is accepting the fulfillment of trust in the government. Whereas, being an engaged citizen emphasizes a more absolute role of involvement community actions citizenship. For instance, having the lack of trust in politics more so in the government and preferring the more direct action such as non-profits social programs, where the outcome is immediate. Voting is not an option for an engaged citizen. They would prefer to have personal contact with volunteering or being a part of political protest rather than voting for an officer in any type of government politics. According to Dalton, in the book A Good Citizen he states that civic duty citizenship is decreasing among the young, but the patterns of the engaged citizenship are increasing; because the youth observes that involvement in communities, private political organizations have more power and are more effective than voting for government. .
"An engaged citizen emphasizes a more assertive role for citizen and a broader definition of the elements of citizenship to include social concerns and the welfare of others " (Dalton 5).