EBOOK
Persuasive Peers
Social Communication and Voting in Latin America
Andy BakerSeries: Princeton Studies in Global and Comparative Sociology(0)
About
"Winner of the Best Book Award, Political Networks Section of the American Political Science Association" Andy Baker is professor of political science and director of the Program on International Development at the University of Colorado Boulder. Barry Ames is the Andrew Mellon Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Pittsburgh. Lúcio Rennó is professor of political science at the University of Brasília.
How voting behavior in Latin America is influenced by social networks and everyday communication among peers
In Latin America's new democracies, political parties and mass partisanship are not deeply entrenched, leaving many votes up for grabs during election campaigns. In a typical presidential election season, between one-quarter and one-half of all voters-figures unheard of in older democracies-change their voting intentions across party lines in the months before election day. Advancing a new theory of Latin American voting behavior, Persuasive Peers argues that political discussions within informal social networks among family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances explain this volatility and exert a major influence on final voting choices.
Relying on unique survey and interview data from Latin America, the authors show that weakly committed voters defer to their politically knowledgeable peers, creating vast amounts of preference change as political campaigns unfold. Peer influences also matter for unwavering voters, who tend to have social contacts that reinforce their voting intentions. Social influence increases political conformity among voters within neighborhoods, states, and even entire regions, and the authors illustrate how party machines use the social topography of electorates to buy off well-connected voters who can magnify the impact of the payoff.
Persuasive Peers demonstrates how everyday communication shapes political outcomes in Latin America's less-institutionalized democracies. "Persuasive Peers sets a new benchmark for the study of electoral politics in general and Latin American politics in particular. Convincingly arguing that the Latin American electorates cannot be considered as collections of socially discrete and independent individuals, this demanding and rewarding book greatly broadens the field of inquiry."-Robert Huckfeldt, University of California, Davis "Persuasive Peers is the first book I have seen that thoroughly examines the effect of peer networks on voting. This is a wonderful and innovative work."-Ernesto F. Calvo, University of Maryland
How voting behavior in Latin America is influenced by social networks and everyday communication among peers
In Latin America's new democracies, political parties and mass partisanship are not deeply entrenched, leaving many votes up for grabs during election campaigns. In a typical presidential election season, between one-quarter and one-half of all voters-figures unheard of in older democracies-change their voting intentions across party lines in the months before election day. Advancing a new theory of Latin American voting behavior, Persuasive Peers argues that political discussions within informal social networks among family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances explain this volatility and exert a major influence on final voting choices.
Relying on unique survey and interview data from Latin America, the authors show that weakly committed voters defer to their politically knowledgeable peers, creating vast amounts of preference change as political campaigns unfold. Peer influences also matter for unwavering voters, who tend to have social contacts that reinforce their voting intentions. Social influence increases political conformity among voters within neighborhoods, states, and even entire regions, and the authors illustrate how party machines use the social topography of electorates to buy off well-connected voters who can magnify the impact of the payoff.
Persuasive Peers demonstrates how everyday communication shapes political outcomes in Latin America's less-institutionalized democracies. "Persuasive Peers sets a new benchmark for the study of electoral politics in general and Latin American politics in particular. Convincingly arguing that the Latin American electorates cannot be considered as collections of socially discrete and independent individuals, this demanding and rewarding book greatly broadens the field of inquiry."-Robert Huckfeldt, University of California, Davis "Persuasive Peers is the first book I have seen that thoroughly examines the effect of peer networks on voting. This is a wonderful and innovative work."-Ernesto F. Calvo, University of Maryland