It seems pedantic, but who is "they?" Are we talking about the senatorial class, both the nobiles and the senatorial families who had not achieved the consulship? Are we talking of influential people not exerting direct political power through magistracy? Are we talking about those outside the senatorial class, or Roman citizens as a whole, or non-citizens (at least before the Social War)? You could write entire books on any one of these groups (and it has been done quite a lot). For example, around the middle of the 1st Century we have at least two completely different political circles within the city, both arguing among themselves while simultaneously fighting each other. The Clodian faction and the senatorial faction operate in totally different ways, both of them largely illegal, but it makes it impossible for the period to speak of Roman society's engagement of politics as a whole. And this is ignoring the presence of Clodius' collegia, which more or less accidentally allowed direct extra-legal exercise of political power. So could you do me a giant favor and specify who precisely we're talking about here? Roman politics is immensely complicated, and it's really necessary to specify such things when speaking of the subject.