Is there a Micro-Theory Consistent with Contextual Analysis?

Sprague, John. 1982. “Is there a Micro-Theory Consistent with Contextual Analysis?” In Elinor Ostrom, ed., Strategies of Political Inquiry. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.

Abstract
 Informal Contextual Theory: y=f(x,z)

 An individual's behavior is a function of: the individual's decision and the individual's environment

 Information is filtered psychologically and socially.


 *  Socially: To whom do you talk to? In what pattern? About what?
 *  Psychologically: With what consequences?

Large reason why contextual analysis is hard to quantify is because we use national samples, which remove an individual's context; thus, removing the ability for political scientists to conduct contextual analysis.

Empirical example of contextual analysis: Controlling for father's ID and individual's age, does education (of the individual and of neighbors) explain the distribution of partisanship?

 Fundamental property = the contingent  nature of interaction.


 * The individual pays attention to stimuli and then responds; then, the social system of that individual responds to the individual's behavior. The individual is contingent on the system, and the system is contigent on the individual. Thus, contextual effects are structured and patterned, but also stochastic. ( Stochastic: random; involving a random variable; involving chance or probability. )

 Modification of individual beliefs occurs when an incongruency exists between personal beliefs and social beliefs.


 * ​ As social interactions become more frequent and/or homogenous, the influences of these social interactions becomes greater.


 * High status individuals are particularly affected by contextual effects.


 * The aged and the young do not escape the effects of contextual effects.


 * Social approval = rewarding: contributes to habit strength


 * Social disapproval = punishing: causes reconsideration of a learned habit


 * Reinforcement efficiency increases as delay of reinforcement decreases.


 * Primary groups, like family or coworkers, are more powerful predictors of behavior than neighborhood, the census tract, or the social area.


 * The product of interaction is determined by = Attention + motivation + interaction patterns

Three natural dynamics in the study of mass political behavior:


 * 1) The long-run times of periodic elections and electoral epochs
 * 2) The short-run time of campaigns (most often studied)
 * 3) <span style="font-size:13px;font-family:Arial;color:#d5d4d4;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The very short-run time: high frequency behavior in the microenvironment

Place in Literature
Sprague defends the importance of contextual effects by forming an informal definition and by giving an empirical example of measuring contextual effects on partisanship.

This should be read in the context of Hauser, who argues contextual anlysis shoud not be studied because of 5 methonlogical flaws. Hauser seems uninterestes in defending contextual analysis, unlike Schelling and Granovetter, who provide justifications of contextual analysis.

Sprague also reveals that national samples remove an individual's context by its nature.