Venues: Using Geographic Constraint to Find the Political in the Apolitical

• In Event: 222 - Regular Session. Space and Place

Abstract

Political scientists often view political networks as social networks whose ties (or structure) contain political content. This endogenous definition makes it difficult to study the independent influence of social networks on political outcomes. I introduce an analytic framework for overcoming this difficulty. Under geographic constraints in the availability of businesses selling food, fuel, and medicine, I hypothesize that the episodic formation of weak ties while carrying out routine activities will cultivate tolerant political attitudes among community members. I test this hypothesis by considering its effect on electoral behavior in the United States, where I expect this phenomenon to penalize presidential candidates that appeal to group threat (e.g. terrorism, illegal immigration, and gay marriage as urgent political issues). Using data from the past four presidential elections and a multilevel modeling framework, I find support for my hypothesis that the apolitical social settings available to voters can affect their aggregate electoral behavior. My findings demonstrate the utility of widening our definition of political networks, as well as the analytic leverage provided by more precisely characterizing the effect of social context on network structure and content.

Author

• Christopher Michael Graziul, Brown University