How do citizens both individually and collectively influence government

Citizens make up a state or a country.  Policies by the country’s government are supposed to be for the benefit of its citizens.  If citizens feel that policies or laws are not helping them or worse harming them, they can lobby their governments to make changes on such laws or policies.  Even individually, a person with enough charisma can sway others to take action on a certain issues if that issue is critical to their well-being.   No matter what form of government a country has, its policies and laws must be for the benefit of the people.

What citizens do to influence the government from an individual and collective level is that they individually can start actions and initiatives which can take off and present important streams of thought which then affect what the government does and thinks. Colectivelly they influence the government through protests and rallies which does the same.

The best sociological research method would have to be using experiments although it has some disadvantages as well