Huckfeldt - Political Participation and the Neighborhood Context

Study combines survye data with aggregate census tract data to show that hte neighborhood social context has an important effect upon the extent of individual political activity and the degree to which participation is structured by individual status. Higher status contexts encourage particiaption among higher status individuals while discouraaging participation among lower status individuals. as a result, political activity is more highly structured by individual status in higher status contexts than in lower status contexts. This effect is most pronounced upon political activities which require social interaction, and laternative explanations based upon individual attributes do not satisfactorial account for the social context's effect.

External scoail facotrs in conjunction with individually intrinsic factors provide powerful explanations for political participation. Local social context is importatn b/c (1) many political activites inolve locally based social interaction, and (2) the neighborhood environment is a relatively constatn and inescapable source of political and social stimuli.

Social Status, Social Context, and Participation
Higher status people are more likely to perform most political acts. There appear to be group norms and networks which make this more likely.

At the same time, occupying a minority status in that social context (being lower class), discourages participation.

Political Participation in Buffalo
Study is focused on adult, white Buffalo area survey responents.

Individual v. Social Activity

Some political acts probably have less contextual influence - in this case, writing letters.

Other political acts are highly social - like vote registration.

High education people are more likely to engage in vote registration in high education neighborhoods than high education people in low education neighborhoods. Low educated people living in high education neighborhoods are less likely to get people registered than low educated individuals in low education neighborhoods.

If you ignore individual status, the results are misleading. Aggregate data looks very different than contextualized data.

Summary [Index] Measures of Participation

Authors create an index of individually based participation and socially based participation.

Individual - voting, sending protest messages, making views known to public officials, writing letters etc.

Social - participate in political party between elections, given money, work to register, campaing, inform others about politics, etc.

Results of data analysis suggest that high status environments encourage participation among high status indvidiauls, but discourage participation among low status individuals. Political activity is more highly structured by individual status in high status contexts than in low status contexts.

Alternative Explanations
Is it the context that matters, or is there an unconsidered interaction between individual level attributes and the behavior in question? What about Hauser's objections?

-Huckfeldt claims he controlled for income and occupation and individual education. The coeffecients for the contextual factor and for the interatction between contextual and individual social status are maintained.

What about Hauser's objection that the relationship between environment and individual behaviors exists because people choose soically reinforcing environments? Huckfeldt says that contextual explanations based on EXCLUSION from a group cannot suffer from a self-selection bias.

Conclusion
Higher status individuals participate more than lower status individuals, and low status people are less likely to participate in a high status neighborhood.