The Political Research Experience: Readings and Analysis by Marcus E. Ethridge

Author:Marcus E. Ethridge [Ethridge, Marcus E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781561343171
Google: JMTZAAAAMAAJ
Publisher: Dushkin Publishing Group.
Published: 1994-01-15T16:08:29+00:00

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Table 1

Attributes of Social Networks

A large percentage of people rely exclusively upon family members for their social networks (“no weak ties”). The percentage naming no nonfamily network members ranges from 24.5 percent in Russia (1992) and 38.8 percent in Spain to 52.5 percent in Hungary.25 Much smaller percentages draw all of the network members from nonfamily sources. According to the mean scores, “weak” ties are most common in Russia (1992 and 1996), Spain, and France, and are least prevalent in Hungary. The American respondents score roughly at the mean of the seven countries. Yet, cross-national differences are relatively small in comparison to within-country differences. Once more, a simple “legacies of Communism” explanation is insufficient to account for these data. Weak ties are relatively common in France, but so too are they in Bulgaria. It appears from these data that social networks bear few scars from the era of Communist domination in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe.

A summary indicator of the potential for political effectiveness of each network tie would be useful for the hypothesis testing that follows. To construct such a measure, I scored each tie according to its strength and degree of politicization (and, of course, its existence). Summing across the three network ties yields an index of the political capacity of the respondent’s social network.26 Capacity is the ability of the social network to transmit political information and to provide experience at politics through political discussions. Networks with high capacity are broad (including many members), are politicized (in the sense of talking about politics being common), and are “weak” (network ties transcend family boundaries). The index varies from 0 (social isolates, without any network partners) to 9 (all three network alters are weak ties, and the network is highly politicized). According to this measure (see Table 1), social networks should be most effective at facilitating social learning in Spain and Hungary and least effective in Russia (1995) and the United States. The Russians in the 1992 survey stand out as distinctive. This capacity measure is moderately related to level of education, interest in politics, and (self-proclaimed) opinion leadership in each of the countries. It is not, however, associated with the respondent’s gender.

This cross-national analysis reveals that Russians have extensive social networks that are highly politicized and that often transcend family units. Though such networks are also found in some parts of the West (e.g., Spain), Russian social networks (at least in 1996) are distinctly different than such networks in the United States. In terms of political capacity, it appears that Russian networks have considerable potential for shaping political values.

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