Voter Turnout A Social Theory of Political Participation [Hardcover]

This book combines positive political theory, social network research and computational modeling, explaining why some people are more likely to vote than others.This book develops and tests a new explanation of why some people, in particular the college educated, are more likely to vote than others. Most people do not weigh the costs and benefits of participation, but instead rely on largely automatic decision rules that are conditional on the decisions of their friends and family. When people make conditional decisions, larger social networks encourage participation. The book remains accessible, even while integrating multiple data sources into a cutting edge combination of positive political theory, social network research, and computational modeling.This book develops and tests a new explanation of why some people, in particular the college educated, are more likely to vote than others. Most people do not weigh the costs and benefits of participation, but instead rely on largely automatic decision rules that are conditional on the decisions of their friends and family. When people make conditional decisions, larger social networks encourage participation. The book remains accessible, even while integrating multiple data sources into a cutting edge combination of positive political theory, social network research, and computational modeling.This book develops and empirically tests a social theory of political participation. It overturns prior understandings of why some people (such as college-degree holders, churchgoers, and citizens in national rather than local elections) vote more often than others. The book shows that the standard demographic variables are not proxies for variation in the individual costs and benefits of participation, but for systematic variation in the patterns of social ties between potential voters. Potential voters who move in larger social circles, particularly those including politicians and other mobilizing actors, have more access to lSR