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This paper investigates between-voter interactions in a social network model of turnout. It shows that if 1) there is a small probability that voters imitate the behavior of one of their acquaintances, and 2) individuals are closely connected to others in a population (the “smallworld” effect), then a single voting decision may affect dozens of other voters in a “turnout cascade. ” If people tend to be ideologically similar to other people they are connected to, then these turnout cascades will produce net favorable results for their favorite candidate. By changing more than one vote with one’s own turnout decision, the turnout incentive is thus substantially larger than previously thought. We analyze conditions that are favorable to turnout cascades and show that the effect is consistent with real social network data from Huckfeldt and Sprague’s South Bend and Indianapolis-St. Louis election surveys. We also suggest that turnout cascades may help explain over-reporting of turnout and the ubiquitous belief in a duty to vote. I thank Robert Bates, Lars-Erik Cederman, Eric Dickson, Paul E. Johnson, Orit Kedar, Gary King, Ferran Martinez I Coma, and Ken Shepsle for valuable feedback on earlier drafts. How does the turnout decision of a single person affect an election? Decision-theoretic models of voting show that the probability of one vote being “pivotal ” in a large electorate is extremely small (Tullock

Different periods of life present certain prototypic challenges and competency demands for successful functioning. Changing aspirations, time perspectives, and societal systems over the course of the life span alter how people structure, regulate, and evaluate their lives. Psychosocial changes with age do not represent lock-step stages through which everyone must inevitably pass as part of a preordained developmental sequence. There are many pathways through life and, at any given period, people vary substantially in how successfully they manage their lives in the milieus in which they are immersed. The beliefs they hold about their capabilities to produce results by their actions are an influential personal resource in negotiating their lives through the life cycle. Social cognitive theory analyzes developmental changes across the life span in terms of evolvement and exercise of human agency. When viewed from this perspective, the paths that lives take are shaped by the reciprocal interplay between personal factors and diverse influences in everchanging societies. The environment in which people live their lives is not a situational entity that ordains their life course. Rather, it is a varied suc-

s huge. Our purpose in providing this document, a revised version of a portion of a grant proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation in 1996, is two-fold. One is that it provides a (necessarily selective and incomplete) documentation of some of the impressive advances in the study of elections, public opinion, and related areas that have been based on NES data. Given the central role these data have played in these fields, this document should constitute a helpful review of a crucial part of the relevant literatures. Second, this document should also help stimulate ideas about further research that might tap some of the vast unused potential of these 2 individual studies, as well as the "greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts" potential of the extensive time series. In the end, the value of the project depends on the ideas and work not just of those who design the study, but those whose inspiration leads to research based on the data. All who venture within are

This paper outlines our initial thoughts on treating identity as a variable. It is part of a longer-term project to develop conceptualizations of identity and, more importantly, to develop technologies for observing identity and identity change that will have wide application in the social sciences. Heretofore the usual techniques for analyzing identity have consisted of non-replicable discourse analysis or lengthy individual interviews, at one extreme, or the use of large-N surveys at the other. Yet, much social science research relies on historical and contemporaneous texts. Specifically we hope to develop computer-aided quantitative and qualitative methods for analyzing a large number of textual sources in order to determine the content, intensity, and contestation of individual and collective identities at any particular point in time and space. These methods will allow researchers to use identity in a more rigorous and replicable way as an independent (and dependent) variable in a wide variety of research projects. They will also allow more rigorous testing among identity-based hypotheses such as those drawing on social identity theory, role theory, or cognitive theories along with other variables in explaining behavior. Researchers may also be able to develop early warning indicators that might be used to track growing intensity of out-group differentiation, a development which makes subjected groups more susceptible to identity-based mobilization for conflict. Perhaps most important, scholars will, using these methods, be able to observe more systematically the contestation and construction of identity over time. This paper is mainly a 'brush clearing' exercise where we try to systematize the problems in the ways identity has heretofore been studied, and sketch o...

The authors develop an agent-based model of dynamic parties with social turnout built upon developments in different fields within social science. This model yields significant turnout, divergent platforms, and numerous results consistent with the rational calculus of voting model and the empirical literature on social turnout. In a simplified version of the model, the authors show how a local imitation structure inherently yields dynamics that encourage positive turnout. The model also generates new hypotheses about the importance of social networks and citizen-party interactions.

There was a consensus among earlier students of New England politics that the political influence of European ancestry was fading by the latter half of the 20th century. We examine this proposition in recent times by exploring the role of ethnic ancestry in explaining the political divide in the region’s presidential voting in over 1500 New England towns. Contrary to earlier predictions, ethnic origin does retain some explanatory power in models of recent voting behavior, and ethnic cleavages have not been entirely replaced by economic divisions in the electorate. Although the settlement patterns of the more established and numerous nationality groups (i.e. Irish and Italians) are less associated with partisanship than they were 50 years ago, the political salience of white ethnicity persists, suggesting that ethnic groups do not simply dealign or politically ‘‘assimilate’’ over time. Some groups maintain a strong identity in spite of upward mobility because movement from city to suburbs is selected not just on housing, income or school characteristics, as is usually the case, but on ethnicity too. Towns with significant concentrations of specific European ancestry groups lean Republican, even after we have accounted for the presence of other sources of political leaning and past voting tendencies, while Democratic attachments are undeniably strong in towns where the newer immigrant

Debate continues over the nature and dynamics of individuals ’ attachments to political parties. In this paper, we investigate the question of partisan attachments over time. First, we discuss the debate among scholars of the long-term stability of partisanship. 1

This report presents major results of the project ‘Political Interest, Involvement, and Affect ’ (PIEB)