Socia Networks and Political Participation: The Role of Social Interaction in Explaining Political Participation

The argument advanced in this paper is that interaction in social networks has a strong, though often overlooked, influence on the individual propensity to participate in politics. Specifically, I argue that social interaction creates opportunities for individuals to gather information about politics that allow them to live beyond personal resource constraints, thereby supporting the political activity of many people. Using relational data from the South Bend election survey, this paper provides evidence that the effect of social interaction on participation is contingent on the amount of political discussion that occurs in social networks. Additional analysis shows the substantive and theoretical importance of such interaction by explaining how it is distinct from the effect of social group memberships and how it enhances the effect of individual education on the probability of participation. This key contribution of this paper is to show that models of political participation that do not account for informal social interaction will be theoretically underspecified. It also shows that such interactions play a crucial role in explicating the role of other factors that predict participation, such as group membership and individual resources

Social Expertise and the Foundations of Political Involvement

The correlation between social ties and political participation has been evident for some time, though very little attention is devoted to examining the causal mechanisms producing this relationship. This paper moves the literature in this direction by examining how an important feature of social networks -- levels of political expertise -- affect the attitudes underlying involvement. After outlining a model for explaining the relationship between social expertise and involvement, analysis of the 2000 American National Election Study shows that people who are in sophisticated social networks are less likely to be ambivalent about candidates and more likely to feel efficacious. This shows that social expertise supports participatory democracy by helping demystify politics, thus building up the reservoir of attitudinal resources necessary for involvement in politics

A Neo-Institutional Explanation of State Supreme Court Responses in Search and Seizure Cases*

To better understand the relationship between the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts, we examine how Supreme Court precedent affects state supreme court decision making. Examining state supreme court decisions in search and seizure cases decided by the Supreme Court between 1983 and 1993, we specifically test hypotheses about how state judicial context and Supreme Court behavior influences when the lower court is likely to be affected by Supreme Court precedent. We find that there is substantial variation in the responses to precedent by state supreme courts. We find that precedent has a substantial influence on the behavior of state supreme court justices, but judicial ideology and the level of historical conflict between the Supreme Court and the state supreme court also influence the dissemination of precedent to the states. Most interesting, the effect of judicia

The Effect of Presidential Campaigning: The 2002 and 2004 Midterm Senate Elections

Many scholars address the indirect effects presidents have on midterm election results by examining the “midterm loss” phenomenon, presidential coattails, negative voting, and the “referendum” thesis. However, very little research investigates the direct effect that presidential campaigning has on congressional candidates prospects for victory. This study adds to this growing literature by exploring presidential campaigning in the 2002 and 2006 U.S. Senate midterm elections. Our investigation makes two important contributions to previous research. First, we explicitly model the strategic decisions presidents make in visiting states in order to get a better estimate of presidential impact that accounts for selection bias. Second, we take advantage of a natural experiment between 2002 and 2006 to test the importance of presidential popularity in driving campaign effects. Although we expect presidents to primarily campaign in states where he believes he will be effective–an efficiency argument–we argue that the size of that effect depends very clearly on his own popularity. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding the role of the president in modern American electoral politics

The Segmented Electorate: Presidential Campaigns and Their Consequences in an Information Age

It is common to think of presidential elections as long campaigns waged by two warring powers, each competing for the hearts-and-minds of American voters. Yet this metaphor masks considerable variation in how voters experience the campaign in the run-up-to Election Day. We focus on how the rise of candidate-centered campaigns in has created a situation in which some voters experience an avalanche of information from the campaigns and others hear next to nothing. We argue that when we carefully consider which voters should be most responsive to campaign information, that the pattern of segmentation that exists does not advance a nation-wide campaign about the health of American politics

A Social Network Analysis of Interest Group Contributions and Partisan Behavior in the 2006 House of Representatives

This project examines how interest groups create partisan connections among U.S. House members. Although the rise of ideologically motivated groups has been identified as a potential cause of legislative partisanship, there is very little research on how interest groups affect the nature of partisan coalitions. We consider how interest group donation strategies create connections between legislators and how the resulting networks affect the nature of lawmaking in the House. We use a combination exploratory social network analysis and traditional statistical methods to examine the contribution network and voting behavior of legislators in the 2006 House of Representatives. The results the interest groups create significant connectivity among legislators, particularly in a way that is consistent with support centralized partisan conflict. However, we find that the consequences of this relationship are complex|it sometimes supports partisan conflict and sometimes discourages it

Social Networks and Correct Voting

Decades of research suggest that social interaction influences opinion formation and affects voting behavior. However, recent work concerning the nexus between deliberation and democratic practice--particularly in the American context--has re-focused attention on the normative consequences of socially-driven political behavior. Among the most common criticisms of interpersonal networks are that most people have very insular social circles, and that when they do not they are unlikely to engage in politics. In this paper we provide evidence that such pessimistic assessments are unwarranted, though for somewhat unexpected reasons. Using data from the American Component of the 1992 Cross-National Election Project and the 2000 American National Election Study, we examine whether and under what conditions social networks facilitate interest-based voting. Our findings indicate that when networks provide unambiguous signals regarding candidates, that they serve as potentially useful information shortcuts, facilitating connections between individuals\u27 vote decisions and their underlying preferences. And, because many Americans reside in reasonably supportive social environments, networks often help citizens make ``correct\u27\u27 voting decisions (Lau and Redlawsk 1997). In the end, social networks appear to help shoulder the demands of democratic theory, but not by helping people learn about politics in any traditional sense

Living in a Battleground: Presidential Campaigns and Fundamental Predictors of Vote Choice

Little evidence links the strategic decisions of campaigns to individual-level voting behavior. Yet for campaigns to matter in the way that experts argue, exposure to campaigns must also matter so there should be observable differences in the structure of vote choice between battleground and non-battleground states. Combining presidential campaign data with the Senate Election Study, we show that intense campaigning can activate factors like race, ideology, partisanship, and presidential approval. We find that the campaigns affected different variables in 1988 than in 1992, which we hypothesize is the consequence of campaign messages

Methodological Challenges in the Study of Social Communication

This chapter examines how the questions and concepts used in social communications research affect data collection. It begins by offering conceptual definitions of two types of social environments – networks and contexts – that are used to define the boundaries of the field and to highlight its diversity. From this starting point, the implications of these definitions for three methodological issues are discussed: 1) choosing an environmental unit of analysis, 2) selecting cases of social environments for inclusion in a study, and 3) establishing causality. The organizing theme of this chapter is that social communications research is best served by focusing on deep measurement of social environments. Although this advice has the consequence of slowing the development of a unified research program, it prioritizes better measurement and conceptual development that will place the subfield on solid footing