CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Lup, Oana |
|---|---|
| Title | THE RELEVANCE OF MICRO SOCIAL CONTEXTS FOR INDIVIDUAL POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS |
| Summary | In my dissertation I explore the role played by the micro social contexts in which ordinary citizens are embedded on their political engagement. I start my examination with the assumption that participation in informal political conversations promotes individuals’ political participation and contributes to an increase in their level of political cognition. I analyze the effects of everyday political discussion in two types of micro social settings – close, intimate and generic ones. Results indicate that political discussion in either type of social setting has both direct and indirect effects on voting and political knowledge. Most of the direct effects are moderated by macro contextual factors. Specifically, frequency of political talk in intimate settings appears to advance individual political knowledge in those countries characterized by extensive political talk in the micro social settings. Political agreement with close, intimate peers stimulates electoral participation, especially in newly democratized countries. Frequent political talk within generic social settings, on the other hand, generates an increase in political knowledge in less developed countries. With regard to the indirect effects, my results indicate that political discussion stimulates individuals’ attention to political news in media and general political interest. Political interest and media attentiveness are, in turn, the most significant antecedents of voting and political knowledge. I continue with an empirical examination of the hypothesis that political discussion is a significant antecedent of individual political engagement and test different directions of influences between the two. Results indicate that the assumption present in the previous literature might not be tenable in its original form. In the context of Japan, the classical direction of effects seems to be reversed; more politically knowledgeable and opinionated people are more likely to engage in political conversations. On the other hand, there is evidence that informal political talk influences individuals’ levels of political opinionation and knowledge indirectly. More frequent political discussion and membership in loosely connected networks of political conversation strongly affects individuals’ interest in politics, which, in turn, influences their level of political knowledge. For the relationship between political discussion and participation, my results confirm the expectations formulated by the previous literature; frequent political conversation stimulates participation in political and civic activities in Hungary. Having established that in some contexts and under specific circumstances micro social settings play an important role in politics, I examine the supply side of those politically relevant features of social networks, in countries dissimilar in their democratic experiences. The results indicate that people from countries with a more recent democratic experience are, in general, part of smaller, less diverse, less politicized and more politically homogeneous social networks compared to their counterparts from older democracies. Within the group of newly democratized countries, people who were socialized in a democratic period are similar to young generations from consolidated democracies in their patterns of social connectivity. However, in the new democracies, those generations who were socialized in democracy tend to participate less in political conversations compared to those who became adults under authoritarian regimes. |
| Supervisor | Tóka, Gábor |
| Department | Political Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/pphluo01.pdf |
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