Political Conversations in the United States: Who Talks to Whom, Why, and Why Not

Authors

  • Stephen Earl Bennett
  • Bonnie Fisher
  • David Resnick

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2374-7781.1995.16.0.277-298

Abstract

Although normative political theorists have argued that citizens talking with other citizens about public affairs is essential in a democracy, empirically oriented political scientists have tended to ignore political discussions. This paper draws on National Election Studies and General Social Surveys to plumb the extent and breadth of political conversations in the U.S. We also explore who talks about public affairs, with whom they speak, and why some people avoid discussing politics. A logit analysis of pooled National Election Studies from 1984 to 1992 shows that some factors typically thought to affect taking part in politics are not significant predictors of the probability that people will engage in political discussions, but other variables not normally included in participation models do affect talking about politics.

References

Almond, Gabriel A., and Sidney Verba. 1963. The Civic Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781400874569

Aristotle. 1988. The Politics, ed. Stephen Everson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Barnes, Samuel, Max Kaase, et al. 1979. Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies. Beverly Hills: SAGE.

Bennett, Stephen E. 1986. Apathy in America, 1960-1984. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers.

Berelson, Bernard R., Paul M. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee. 1954. Voting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Boyd, Richard W. 1981. Decline of U.S. Voter Turnout: Structural Explanations. American Politics Quarterly 9:133-59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1532673X8100900201

Burt, Ronald S. 1984. Network Items and the General Social Survey. Social Nenwrks 6:293-339. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0378-8733(84)90007-8

Campbell, Angus. 1966. Surge and Decline: A Study of Electoral Change. In Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, Elections and the Political Order. New York: Wiley.

Cantril, Hadley D., and Mildred Strunk. 1951. Public Opinion 1935-1946. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Conway, M. Margaret. 1991. The Study of Political Participation: Past, Present, and Future. In William J. Crotty, ed., Political Science: Looking to the Future. Volume 3. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Crigler, Ann N., and Klau Bruhn Jensen. 1991. Discourses on Politics: Talking about Public Issues in the United States and Denmark. In Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks, eds., Communication and Citizenship. London: Routledge.

DeMaris, Alfred. 1992. Logit Modeling: Practical Applications. SAGE University Paper series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, series no. 07-086. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412984836

Denk, Charles E., and Steven J. Finkel. 1992. The Aggregate Impact of Explanatory Variables in Logit and Linear Probability Models. American Journal of Political Science 36:785-804. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111591

Dewey, John. 1927. The Public and Its Problems. New York: Holt.

Dryzek, John S. 1988. The Mismeasureof Political Man. Journal of Politics 50:705-25. Political Conversations in the United States | 297 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2131464

Farr, James. 1993. Framing Democratic Discussion. In George E. Marcus and Russell L. Hanson, eds., Reconsidering the Democratic Public. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Gamson, William A. 1992. Talking Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Granovetter, Mark. 1973. The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology 78:1360-80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/225469

Hagle, Timothy M., and Glenn E. Mitchell II. 1992. Goodness-of-Fit Measures for Probit and Logit. American Journal of Political Science 36:762-84. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111590

Hosmer, David W., and Stanley Lemeshow. 1989. Applied Logistic Regression. New York: Wiley.

Huckfeldt, Robert, and John Sprague. 1995. Citizen, Politics, and Social Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511664113

Kenny, Christopher B. 1992. Political Participation and Effects from the Social Environment. American Journal of Political Science 36:259-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111432

_______. 1993a. The Microenvironment of Political Participation. American Politics Quarterly 21:223-38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1532673X9302100204

_______. 1993b. Social Influence and Opinion on Abortion. Social Science Quarterly 74:560-74.

Kim, Jae-On, and Charles W. Mueller. 1978a. Introduction to Factor Analysis: What It Is and How To Do It. SAGE University Paper series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, series no. 07-013. Beverly Hills: SAGE. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412984652

_______. 1978b. Factor Analysis: Statistical Methods and Practical Issues. SAGE University Paper series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, series no. 07-014. Beverly Hills: SAGE.

Kinder, Donald R., and Don Herzog. 1993. Democratic Discussion. In George E. Marcus and Russell L. Hanson, eds., Reconsidering the Democratic Public. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Knoke, David. 1990. Political Networks: The Structural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511527548

Lane, Robert E. 1965. Political Life: Why and How People Get Involved in Politics, rev. ed. New York: The Free Press.

Lazarsfeld, Paul, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. 1948. The People's Choice, 3rd ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

Luskin, Robert C. 1990. Explaining Political Sophistication. Political Behavior 12:331- 61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00992793

MacKuen, Michael. 1990. Speaking of Politics: Individual Conversational Choice, Public Opinion, and the Prospects of Deliberative Democracy. In John A. Ferejohn and James H. Kuklinski, eds., Information and Democratic Processes. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Mansbridge, Jane J. 1983. Beyond Adversary Democracy, rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Milbrath, Lester W. 1965. Political Participation. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Mill, John Stuart. [18611 1958. Considerations on Representative Government, ed. Currin v. Shields. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

Parry, Geraint, George Moyser, and Neil Day. 1992. Political Participation and Democracy in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511558726

Resnick, David, and Stephen E. Bennett. 1993. Rethinking Political Participation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April 13-15.

Sigelman, Lee, Philip W. Roeder, Malcolm E. Jewell, and Michael A. Baer. 1985. Voting and Non-voting: A Multi-Election Perspective. American Journal of Political Science 29:749-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2111179

Sniderman, Paul M. 1975. Personality and Democratic Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Verba, Sidney, and Norman H. Nie. 1972. Political Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality. New York: Harper & Row.

Walker, Jack L. 1966. A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy. American Political Science Review 60:285-95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0003055400127443 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1953356

Downloads

Published

1995-11-01

Issue

Section

Articles