4 - Durability, volatility, and social influence

Summary

The goal of this chapter is to assess the dynamic consequences of social structure and social influence for the distribution of political preferences during an election campaign. Two questions are addressed: First, under what circumstances does social structure and social influence lead to durability and volatility in mass political preferences? Second, do different explanations for social influence necessarily lead to different conclusions regarding its dynamic implications?

The durability and volatility of political preferences are key issues in the study of mass political behavior, and identifying their origins is a major preoccupation within political research. But the relationship between social influence, social structure, and the dynamics of partisan preference has been a source of some confusion. Social structural explanations for political preference have been accused of “static social determinism” (Stokes 1966: 19) at the same time that particular political processes depending on social structure – bandwagon effects, behavioral contagion – are typically associated with volatile, rapidly changing preference distributions. Indeed, we have already argued that social influence might lead either to stable preferences or to rapid change, and the purpose of this chapter is to specify the circumstances under which social structure and social influence might give rise to durability and volatility in political preference distributions.

This chapter's analysis is primarily an exercise in exploring logical consequences. Several mathematical models are developed to examine the theoretical implications involved in different models of social influence.