Civic Embeddedness and Public Employment: How Institutional Proximity Structures Civic Participation

Research on public service motivation consistently finds that public employees volunteer and contribute more than their private sector counterparts, yet less is known about how engagement varies across behavioral domains and institutional contexts. This study examines how civic engagement is structured among public employees compared to other citizens, with particular attention to variation across levels of government. Using the 2023 CPS Volunteering and Civic Life Supplement, the analysis constructs multidimensional measures across four domains: political participation, civic involvement, political expression, and social connectedness. Weighted regressions and propensity score matching show that public employees, especially at the local level, exhibit a distinct civic profile characterized by greater involvement in institutional forms of participation such as voting and volunteering, but lower engagement in informal activities such as political discussion and social interaction. These patterns persist after accounting for observable characteristics and suggest that public employment channels participation into specific forms rather than uniformly increasing overall engagement, with implications for how civil service reforms may alter the civic composition of local communities.