Putnam - Political Attitudes and the Local Community

"There is good reason to suspect that the local communty has a significant influence on social attitudes and political behavior.  Why is this so?...This is the questionto be examined in this paper."

Alternative Explanations
Three theoretical alternatives could expalinwhy local community has an effect on political behavior:

(1) The influence of the community majority on reisdents' attitudes would operate through the activity of the majority party organization. [the party activity theory of communty influence]

(2) Motivated conformity with community norms - community influence depends on identification with the local community and on he clarity and acceptability of community political standards.

(3) Social interaction theory - community influence is mediated through personal contacts among members of a community. This tends to supports atttitudes commonly held by community members and undermines deviant views. Different from Campbell, voters can be influence by their community environment even if they are not motivated to conform to community norms, and could even be unaware that such norms exist.

Research Design
Political complexion of a county is indicated by democratic percentage. An index of social integration is then applied to respondents. Integration is based on home-ownership, itent to remain in hte local communty, and membership in secondary associations. Well-integrated individuals appear to have a tighter relationship with the community partisan environment.

[is there a problem that there is no straight-forward test for the staistical significance of differences between taus?

The Party Activity Theory
Putnam doubts it. If community influence depends on party activity, then Rs who have been personally contacted by party representative will show greater sensitivy to the community political environment than those that were not contacted. This isn't the case. Further, no reason to assume that the majority party does more campaigning.

Community Identification Theory
Use a variety of indirect meaasures to evaluate degree of "community idenification" and "localism". But the statistical relationship between community identity and partisan identification seems weak. No indirect measure of community identification is clearly and unambiguously more sensitive to the community political environment than others. Further, there is no significant difference in sensitivty of Rs who follow politics in local newspaper/emdia. Thus, the notion of conforming to community standards is unconvincing.

Social Interaction Theory
SI theory emphasize the individual's social contacs as important media for the transmission of community influence. Would expect sensitivity to the community environmen to be related to involvement in community associations. Ineed, Rs who claim membership in one group show coniderable sensitivty to their political environment, and those who claim membership in two or more groups show substantially more sensitivty than single-group members. Active membership increases this tendency.

There is a question about self-selction. Does community environment have an affect on political attitudes apart from its effect on group composition?

There are observations about friend groups. While there is some homophily, minority party members can hardly avoid making friends with opposite partisans. Social deviants cannot maintain social support for their views. Community influnce is mediated through the friendship group.

Members of associations are more susceptible to community inflence than non-members. Associational membership increases the likelihood of having friends in the community at large. Members of organizations may also be more sesnitive to the opinions of their friends.

Conclusion
Social interaction matters. The more active a person is politically, the more convenional his beliefs tend to become. Expect that the transmission of political attitudes is a function of the extent and intensity of formal and informal social interaction.

Implication for democracy - a 3:1 partisan minority is going to have an even lower chance of finding support.