For Shame! The Effect of Community Cooperative Context on the Probability of Voting

Abstract

The question of why some people vote in American national elections and others do not has been the focus of a vast literature in social science. This study builds on previous work emphasizing the political relevance of civic norms prescribing social cooperation. County‐level census response rates were used to measure the strength of civic norms in counties represented in the 1992 National Election Study (NES). The analysis shows that a person's likelihood of voting increases with the census response rate in the county of residence, controlling for the usual set of factors associated with turnout. The probability of voting was also correlated with the incidence of cooperative behavior in other arenas, such as giving to charities or willingly serving on juries. These findings provide support for the importance of cooperative norms in explaining political participation. In addition, the relationship between voting and county‐level census response was significantly greater among respondents who read newspapers more often; hence, newspapers evidently are one means by which social expectations are communicated.

Moving to Opportunity

“…Rarely does political activity occur in individual isolation; most political acts are "socially learned and stimulated" (Huckfeldt 1979, 581;Huckfeldt andSprague 1987, 1995;Lake and Huckfeldt 1998;Giles and Dantico 1982;Fowler 2005;Kenney 1992;Knack 1992;Knack and Kropf 1998;Leighley 1990). Through political discussion, as well as the casual observation of others' behavior (e.g.…”

‘Everybody's entitled to their own opinion’: ideological dilemmas of liberal individualism and active citizenship

“…The ways in which respondents treated non-engagement in formal political activity as 'typical' of their peers might appear consistent with Knack and Kropf's (1998) account of the significance of local norms of civic engagement for personal motivation to vote. However, respondents could also construct arguments in which political disengagement was not simply treated as common among, but also as morally appropriate for, people of their own age or life-stage.…”

“Racial Threat”, Partisan Climate, and Direct Democracy: Contextual Effects in Three California Initiatives

“…Furthermore, only for county do we have measures of both voter behavior and contextual conditions. In using county as the unit of analysis, we join a long tradition of context research (see, for examples, Beck, 1974;Campbell, 2002;Giles & Dantico, 1982;Huckfeldt, 1979;Key, 1984Key, [1949; Knack & Kropf, 1998).…”