Citizens, Politics and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign

by R. Robert Huckfeldt , John Sprague , General editor James H. Kuklinski , Robert S. Wyer , Edited by Stanley Feldman

• ISBN13: 9780521030441
• ISBN10: 0521030447
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Democratic politics is a collective enterprise, not simply because individual votes are counted to determine winners, but more fundamentally because the individual exercise of citizenship is an interdependent undertaking. Citizens argue with one another and they generally arrive at political decisions through processes of social interaction and deliberation. This book is dedicated to investigating the political implications of interdependent citizens within the context of the 1984 presidential campaign as it was experienced in the metropolitan area of South Bend, Indiana. Hence this is a community study in the fullest sense of the term. National politics is experienced locally through a series of filters unique to a particular setting and its consequences for the exercise of democratic citizenship.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
I. Democratic politics and social communication
The multiple levels of democratic politics	3	(20)
A research strategy for studying electoral politics	23	(22)
II. Electoral dynamics and social communication
The social dynamics of political preference	45	(11)
Durability, volatility, and social influence	56	(25)
Social dynamics in an election campaign	81	(22)
III. Networks, political discussants, and social communication
Political discussion in an election campaign	103	(21)
Networks in context: The social flow of political information	124	(22)
Choice, social structure, and the informational coercion of minorities	146	(13)
Discussant effects on vote choice: Intimacy, structure, and interdependence	159	(32)
Gender effects on political discussion: The political networks of men and women	191	(16)
IV. The organizational locus of social communication
One-party politics and the voter revisited: Strategic and behavioral bases of partisanship	207	(22)
Political parties and electoral mobilization: Political structure, social structure, and the party canvass	229	(28)
Alternative contexts of political preference	257	(25)
Political consequences of interdependent citizens	282	(11)
Bibliography	293	(10)
Index	303