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Political disagreement and vote volatility: the role of familism across different European countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2019

Moreno Mancosu  and
David N. Hopmann
Moreno Mancosu*
Affiliation:
Department of Cultures, Politics, and Society, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
David N. Hopmann
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and Public Management, Southern Denmark University, Odense, Denmark
*
*E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Interpersonal influence shapes political behavior and attitudes. So far, however, little efforts have been devoted to testing this mechanism comparatively in Europe. This paper aims at explaining differences in influence patterns in three European countries (Italy, Germany, and the UK). Based on works in demography, we argue that in Mediterranean cultures (characterized by high degrees of familism), people are more prone to be affected by attitudes and behaviors of their relatives with respect to other strong ties (e.g., spouses), while in continental, northern Europe, and the UK, this effect is less important. We test this argument using longitudinal data. Consistent with expectations, results show that the influence of relatives in familistic contexts is stronger than in non-familistic ones. At the same time, the spouse effect (namely, the effect of an intimate, non-relative discussant) is particularly strong in non-familistic contexts (and vice versa). In sum, we demonstrate that public opinion studies can be strengthened by theories developed in other social sciences, such as demography.

Keywords

comparative politicsinterpersonal communicationinterpersonal influencefirst-difference modelsfamily regimes
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 301 - 317
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2019 

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