Hostname: page-component-669899f699-chc8l Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T19:01:52.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Spatially Dispersed Ties Among Interdependent Citizens: Connecting Individuals and Aggregates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Brady Baybeck  and
Robert Huckfeldt
Brady Baybeck
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and Public Policy Administration, University of Missouri—St. Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499. e-mail: [email protected]
Robert Huckfeldt
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A continuing tradition in contextual analysis locates individual citizens within spatially defined, aggregate settings in an effort to provide a more complete account of individual behavior. Given the increasing individual mobility within society, it is less than clear that geography continues to define the boundaries on meaningful aggregate contexts—people have become less tied to their geographic contexts, and technology makes it possible for citizens to maintain relationships independently of space, distance, and location. In this paper we pursue an analysis and set of analytic techniques that are designed to connect individual voters, their communication networks, and the geography that surrounds them. The analytic techniques utilize a unique data set that captures spatial dispersion in an individual's social and political network, and from these analyses we can draw two conclusions. First, spatial dispersion in a network does have an effect on interaction within the network; the world is not full of voters who operate independently of their geographic contexts. Second, spatial dispersion provides opportunities to connect citizens living in different geographic contexts, thereby creating bridges for communication across different contexts. These findings suggest that scholars might profitably incorporate geography as an important component of the complex relationships among and between individual citizens in explaining the role of the individual in modern democratic politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 10 , Issue 3: Special Issue on Spatial Methods in Political Science , Summer 2002 , pp. 261 - 275
Copyright
Copyright © Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association 2002 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Achen, Christopher H., and Phillips Shively, W. 1995. Cross-Level Inference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baybeck, Brady, and Huckfeldt, Robert. 2002. “Urban Contexts, Spatially Dispersed Networks, and the Diffusion of Political Information.” Political Geography 21:195–220.Google Scholar
Berelson, Bernard R., Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and McPhee, William N. 1954. Voting: A Study of Opinion Formulation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, Lawrence H. Jr., and Iversen, Gudmund R. 1979. Contextual Analysis: Concepts and Statistical Techniques. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Burnham, Walter Dean. 1970. Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Burt, Ronald S. 1992. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., Wright, Gerald C., and McIver, John P. 1993. Statehouse Democracy: Public Opinion and Policy in the American States. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eulau, Heinz. 1986. Politics, Self, and Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Giles, Micheal W., and Buckner, Melanie. 1993. “David Duke and Black Threat: An Old Hypothesis Revisited.” Journal of Politics 55:702–713.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78:1360–1380.Google Scholar
Hanushek, Eric, Jackson, John E., and Kain, John F. 1974. “Model Specification, Use of Aggregate Data, and the Ecological Correlation Fallacy.” Political Methodology 1:87–106.Google Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert. 1986. Politics in Context: Assimilation and Conflict in Urban Neighborhoods. New York: Agathon Press.Google Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert, and Weitzel Kohfeld, Carol. 1989. Race and the Decline of Class in American Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert, and Sprague, John. 1993. “Citizens, Contexts, and Politics.” In Political Science: The State of the Discipline II, ed. Finifter, Ada. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, pp. 281–303.Google Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert, and Sprague, John. 1995. Citizens, Politics, and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huckfeldt, Robert, Sprague, John, and Levine, Jeffrey. 2000. “The Dynamics of Collective Deliberation in the 1996 Election: Campaign Effects on Accessibility, Certainty, and Accuracy.” American Political Science Review 94:641–651.Google Scholar
King, Gary. 1997. A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Tomz, Michael, and Wittenberg, Jason. 2000. “Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation.” American Journal of Political Science 44:347–361.Google Scholar
Miller, Warren. 1956. “One-Party Politics and the Voter.” American Political Science Review 50:707–725.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam. 1974. “Contextual Models of Political Behavior.” Political Methodology 1:27–61.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam, and Sprague, John. 1986. Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, W. S. 1950. “Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of Individuals.” American Sociological Review 15:351–357.Google Scholar
Sprague, John. 1976. “Estimating a Boudon Type Contextual Model: Some Practical and Theoretical Problems of Measurement.” Political Methodology 3:333–353.Google Scholar
Tingsten, Herbert. 1937. Political Behavior: Studies in Election Statistics. London: P. S. King.Google Scholar
Tomz, Michael, Wittenberg, Jason, and King, Gary. 2001. CLARIFY: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results. Version 2.0. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. http://gking.harvard.edu.Google Scholar