Why Is Public Opinion Important? Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain the need for public opinion polling. Analyze the way public opinion is used vis-à-vis policy making and in politics. Discuss the role of public opinion in a globalized world. Despite the potential difficulty of obtaining poll results that accurately reflect the views of the people, polls remain an important component of participatory democracy. The Declaration of Independence, which laid the framework for American democracy, states that governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed ” (emphasis added). If the people’s will creates the foundation for any representative government, then public opinion polling acts as the instrument by which the people are heard and consent is granted. Elections are the people’s recourse when the government ignores their wishes. But is there evidence that public opinion influences government policy? Studies by several researchers, including Northwestern University Professor Benjamin I. Page and Columbia University Professor Robert Y. Shapiro (1983), Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, “Effects of Public Opinion on Policy,” American Political Science Review 77, no. 1 (March 1983): 175–190, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1956018. University of Washington Professor Paul Burstein (2003), Paul Burstein, “The Impact of Public Opinion on Public Policy: A Review and an Agenda,” Political Research Quarterly 56, no. 1 (March 2003): 29–40, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3219881. and Vanderbilt University Professor Larry Bartels (1991), Larry M. Bartels, “Constituency Opinion and Congressional Policy Making: The Reagan Defense Build Up,” American Political Science Review 85, no. 2 (June 1991): 457–474, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1963169. support this assertion. In a New York Times opinion piece, University of North Carolina Professor James Stinson writes, “When public opinion changes, demanding for example more or less government, government responds in the demanded direction. And it does so quickly.” James Stimson, “Don’t Underestimate the Power of Public Opinion,” New York Times, updated April 22, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/04/21/do-the-rich-call-the-shots-13/dont-underestimate-the-power-of-public-opinion. One need not look far to see the simple relationship between public opinion and policy outcomes: President Barack Obama was elected by a public that overwhelmingly agreed that the economy, jobs, and health care were their top priorities. Pew Research Center, For Voters It’s Still the Economy (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, September 2012), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/09/24/for-voters-its-still-the-economy/. As such, his policy agenda reflected these concerns. At the top of his list was an economic stimulus package and, of course, the Affordable Care Act . In a way, we can understand public opinion and its influence on policy as a chicken-and-egg relationship: the public alerts elected officials of their preferences, and these officials then try to sell their solutions to the public as the best course of action. This relationship further underscores the importance of public opinion in our democratic process. Polls allow voters to assess choices and, in the most idealistic sense, provoke people to think about issues and alternatives. In this way, the very acts of polling and being polled are also important parts of the democratic process and encourage people to become informed and aware. Public opinion also plays a crucial role in our globalized world. In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, political psychologist Steven Kull of WorldPublicOpinion.org explained, “If policy practitioners want to promote international cooperation, they can pretty much see public opinion as a kind of ally in this process—not in every case, of course, but this is a tendency on that side.” Steven Kull, Stewart M. Patrick, and Marvin Kalb, “Does Public Opinion Matter? World Attitudes on Global Governance,” Council on Foreign Relations, December 4, 2009, https://www.cfr.org/event/does-public-opinion-matter-world-attitudes-global-governance-0. In simpler terms, another reason it is important for Americans to understand global public opinion is that it gives us the ability to view the world and ourselves from a different perspective. This table makes it possible to compare the results of opinion polls of French, German, and UK citizens regarding the likelihood that recent American presidents would “do the right thing” in world affairs. (source: Pew Research Center Fall 2020 Global Attitudes Survey. Q28.) For example, the graph in illustrates how Britain, France, and Germany viewed recent US presidents in fall 2020 and how much confidence they had in the incoming Biden administration. Understanding how people in other countries view the United States is important “because popular sentiments and resentments constrain what a government (even in a not-particularly-democratic nation) can do.” Paul R. Pillar, “American Politicians Should Care More about Global Public Opinion,” Atlantic, January 7, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/01/american-politicians-should-care-more-about-global-public-opinion/251013/. In this way, understanding public sentiment is not only important within countries; it is vital when working across nations. Public opinion is crucial for elected officials to gauge public sentiment and understand how to engage in diplomacy because “US leaders’ credibility in the eyes of foreign publics is critical in shaping attitudes toward US foreign policy.” Benjamin E. Goldsmith and Yusaku Horiuchi, “Spinning the Globe? US Public Diplomacy and Foreign Public Opinion,” Journal of Politics 71, no. 3 (July 2009): 1. Public opinion is thus vital for understanding not only how the public views its own government but also how the US government engages with other countries. If public opinion works to legitimize governments, and if we are reliant on sound polling practices in order to gauge public sentiment, we must care about the future of public opinion polling as an industry. As an article in Atlantic points out, “Public-opinion polling was one of the last ways we had to understand what other Americans actually believe. If polling doesn’t work, then we are flying blind.” David A. Graham, “The Polling Crisis Is a Catastrophe for American Democracy,” Atlantic, November 4, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/polling-catastrophe/616986/. Despite the inherent and explicit importance of public opinion, the practice and science of polling faces new challenges. In the 2016 presidential election, an overwhelming number of pollsters inaccurately predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency over Donald Trump . Again in 2020, the polls overstated the margin by which Joe Biden would take the White House. If polling is subject to scientific rigor, how did this happen? Some attributed the inaccuracy of the polls to an underweighting of voters without college degrees, who turned out in great numbers to propel Donald Trump to the presidency, and an overexuberance of Biden supporters to respond to polls, respectively. Other explanations included the fact that large swaths of undecided voters did not decide on their vote until the last minute, particularly in 2016. Nate Cohn, “What Went Wrong with Polling? Some Early Theories,” New York Times, November 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/upshot/polls-what-went-wrong.html. Accuracy in polling is increasingly hampered by modern-day facts, including the decreasing likelihoods that people will own a landline, be at home during the day to answer pollsters, or respond to polls in general due to lowering levels of public trust. Another suggestion is that those people who actually respond to polls are not representative of the population in general and that their responses skew the accuracy of polls in a way that has yet to be addressed through advanced polling techniques. Dylan Matthews, “One Pollster’s Explanation for Why the Polls Got It Wrong,” Vox, Vox Media, November 10, 2020, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/11/10/21551766/election-polls-results-wrong-david-shor. Despite these rational explanations, the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections show that while both state and national polls face challenges in portraying public sentiment accurately, the importance of valid opinion polls is self-evident. As Vanderbilt University Professor Joshua Clinton explains, while elections can tell us who wins, polls are the best tools available to tell us why , underscoring yet another facet of the importance of polls—their explanatory power. Joshua Clinton, “Polling Problems and Why We Should Still Trust (Some) Polls,” The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy, Vanderbilt University, January 11, 2021, https://www.vanderbilt.edu/unity/2021/01/11/polling-problems-and-why-we-should-still-trust-some-polls/. While reaching the electorate has undoubtedly become more difficult, the importance of polling within a democracy remains. Sam Wang , neuroscience Professor at Princeton University and cofounder of the blog Princeton Election Consortium , explains that “polling is critically important because it is a way by which we can measure public sentiment more rigorously than any other method.” Sam Wang, “Why Polls Were Mostly Wrong,” interview by Gloria Dickie, Scientific American, November 13, 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-polls-were-mostly-wrong/. As the industry continues to reflect and evolve in response to changes in technology and the electorate, it is important for us to remember the value of polls, understand how they are conducted, and participate fully and honestly when called upon to do so. Editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll Frank Newport provides a succinct explanation for the importance of public opinion polling: “Humans live with and around other people. Acquiring a knowledge of these people is an important way in which humans manage to survive, get along, and come together to accomplish common goals.” Frank Newport, Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People (New York: Warner Books, 2004), 1–2. Public opinion is important because it is the mechanism by which the public alerts elected officials of their preferences. Elected officials also rely on swaying public opinion in order to sell a legislative agenda to the public as the best course of action. In addition, understanding public opinion across countries allows for global cooperation and partnership. Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Scott Keeter. What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion, Our Social Skin . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Patterson, Thomas E. The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Schudson, Michael. The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life . New York: Free Press, 1998. Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Social Sciences


Introduction Greta Thunberg speaks to thousands of climate activists in front of Germany’s parliament at the Reichstag building in September 2021. (credit: “Greta Thunberg spricht beim Klimastreik vor dem Reichstag” by Stefan Müller/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) As a young teen, Greta Thunberg ’s first foray into environmental activism was persuading her parents to reduce their carbon footprint in an attempt to reduce their family’s contribution to global climate change . By age 15, she took to protesting alone on a bench outside the Swedish parliament, gradually drawing attention for her persistence. Soon thereafter, Thunberg was inspiring environmental protests in schools around the world, with as many as 1.6 million students from some 120 countries participating in efforts to prevent catastrophic climate degradation. Suyin Haynes, “‘It’s Literally Our Future.’ Here’s What Youth Climate Strikers Worldwide Want Next,” Time , March 20, 2019, https://time.com/5554775/youth-school-climate-change-strike-action/. To the extent that Thunberg’s individual actions will influence political choices, it will be because these actions have helped create a movement, inspire interest groups and parties, and lead governments to change their policies. Despite these worldwide protests, it is not at all clear that environmental policies will change rapidly and dramatically. One reason for this is that powerful interests oppose taking action. Another reason—one that this chapter will consider in some detail—is that even when individuals agree that action must be taken, it can be difficult to come to an agreement on exactly what those actions should be. Opportunities to free ride , or to take advantage of the global commons, continue to be difficult to address despite the passionate efforts of so many to change them. All political action is ultimately individual action, but even if you were Greta Thunberg, you would not be able to make political change entirely on your own. Only when groups of individuals come together to take collective action can they make political decisions that lead to change. Candidates run as individuals, but to win elections, they typically need the backing of an organized political party with—especially in the case of national elections—perhaps millions of supporters. Legislatures are composed of individual politicians, but they act through groups—for example, committees, caucuses, and the party organization. Political movements form when enough individuals come together in common purpose to seek political change. Even an emperor is likely to receive advice from some sort of cabinet, and for an emperor to accomplish anything, they will need the support of a military or a bureaucracy. Unless individuals come together with others, their ability to effect or resist change is miniscule. Thunberg’s efforts will come to naught unless those seeking to mitigate climate change are able to overcome collective dilemmas. Thunberg’s activism has earned her many awards, such as being selected as Time “Person of the Year” in 2019. Alter, Charlotte, Suyin Haynes, and Justin Worland, “Greta Thunberg is Time’s 2019 Person of the Year,” Time , December 23, 2019, https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2019-greta-thunberg/. This chapter focuses on group action. Humans, in all their marvelous diversity, act for all sorts of reasons. Some of these reasons are instrumental and strategic—people do this to get that—but others are more properly seen as expressive and symbolic. People act not to get, but to be or to display. The distinction between expressive and instrumental actions is not precise, and these behaviors overlap (as noted in Chapter 2: Political Behavior Is Human Behavior ). Consider the mass protests against the government of Cuba that broke out in the summer of 2021. Pascal Fletcher, “Cuba Protests: Frustration at Government Runs Deep.” BBC News, July 14, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57823130. Those protesting may have done so to express anger (an emotion), show solidarity (symbolic behavior), and/or seek political change (instrumental action). Though it is not yet possible to hook up sensors to a person’s brain to learn what triggered each element of their behavior, it is possible to recognize the potential importance of different types of triggers. You learned in Chapter 2 that individuals can be rational and also intuitive, strategic yet expressive, self-interested but still public spirited. These concepts carry over to the study of group behavior, focusing on the expressive, symbolic, or emotional aspects of individuals within groups as well as the rational, instrumental, and strategic behaviors of individuals in group decision-making. Subsequent chapters will examine civil rights, as well as the structure and behavior of specific categories of groups, such as interest groups, political parties, and legislatures. The streets of Hong Kong are jammed with protestors in 2019. (credit: “IMG_20190616_171444” by Studio Incendo/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) collective action the activities of a group as it makes and implements a decision regarding a group goal

Social Sciences


Political Socialization: The Ways People Become Political Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define political socialization. Describe the main influences on a person’s political socialization. Analyze the ways social media has affected political socialization. Discuss the factors that determine which influences will have the greatest impact on a person’s political socialization. Do you consider yourself to have a political identity? Do you belong to or identify with a political party? Do you have a political ideology, such as conservative, libertarian, liberal, or populist? Are you apolitical (indifferent to politics), or are you deeply engaged in political action? Whatever your answers are, there is a chance—but a rather small one—that you deliberately and thoughtfully made these choices at a single moment by analytically comparing the various alternatives. It’s more likely that your choices gradually emerged over time through a complex combination of environmental and social influences interacting with your own personal biological and psychological makeup. It is not entirely clear how Greta Thunberg became a climate change activist, for example, although her father Svante was named after his grandfather, a Nobel Prize–winning scientist who identified the link between increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and higher global temperatures. Martin Vrijland, “Greta Thunberg’s Great-Grandfather is Greenhouse Gas Guru Svante Arrhenius,” Principia Scientific International , January 20, 2020, https://principia-scientific.com/greta-thunbergs-great-grandfather-is-greenhouse-gas-guru-svante-arrhenius/. She grew up in Sweden, a country with a strong ethic of environmentalism (by some measures, it is ranked as the most environmentally friendly country in the world). Kirsten Korosec, “Sweden ‘Most Sustainable Country in the World,’” Environment + Energy Leader, August 13, 2013. https://www.environmentalleader.com/2013/08/sweden-most-sustainable-country-in-the-world/. She reports learning about climate change by age eight and credits the American student activists who protested gun laws after the Parkland, Florida, school shootings with inspiring her to act. Linda Givetash, “How Teen Greta Thunberg Shifted World’s Gaze to Climate Change,” NBC News , August 17, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/how-teen-greta-thunberg-shifted-world-s-gaze-climate-change-n1043151. The gradual process of developing values and beliefs, of people becoming who they are as adults, is socialization , and the slow development of who a person becomes as a political being is political socialization . An excellent original statement regarding socialization is found in Berger; Haegel provides an update on the controversies in the field. Peter L. Berger, The Social Construction of Reality; a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966); Florence Haegel, “Political Socialisation: Out of Purgatory?” European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes De Sociologie 61, no. 3 (December 2020): 333–64. doi:10.1017/S000397562000017X. Through political socialization, people develop their political ideology in the broadest sense. This includes not only their values and attitudes regarding the role of citizens and the government, but also regarding issues such as social justice or climate change. Socialization also influences whether a person is likely to have any interest in politics at all. Political socialization is neither premeditated nor preordained, although there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that there are genetic links to political predispositions. See, for example, Anke Hufer, Anna Elena Kornadt, Christian Kandler, and Rainer Riemann, “Genetic and Environmental Variation in Political Orientation in Adolescence and Early Adulthood: A Nuclear Twin Family Analysis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 118, no. 4 (2020): 762–76. doi:10.1037/pspp0000258. As an infant, you did not choose who you would become as an adult. As you grew, you were subject to a wide variety of forces that shaped your personality. Some of these forces were present in your physical environment, such as your home (Was there lead paint on the walls?), your neighborhood (Was it safe?), Urban Child Institute, “How Neighborhoods Affect Children’s Well-Being,” http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/sites/all/files/databooks/TUCI_Data_Book_V_2010.08_community.pdf. and your school (Was it a place you looked forward to going to?). World Health Organization, The Physical School Environment: An Essential Component of a Health-Promoting School (2004), https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/42683. As your physical environment shapes your learning, it also influences your views and attitudes, even if you are unaware of these influences. People who grow up under insecure conditions, like these Kurdish refugee children, will experience political socialization differently than those who grow up in safer environments. (credit: “Kurdish children bunch together to have their photograph taken while playing at a refugee camp” by Department of Defense. American Forces Information Service. Defense Visual Information Center. (1994 - 10/26/2007)/National Archives Catalog, Public Domain) The line from your social and physical environment to your political personality may be indirect. If you grew up in a heavily policed neighborhood, attended a deteriorating school, and lacked safe drinking water, your attitudes about government are likely to differ from an otherwise identical individual who lived in a comfortable home with safe drinking water and attended a well-resourced school in an affluent neighborhood. Humans are complicated, and it would be unwise to conclude that all those growing up in privilege are identically socialized or that those raised lacking such privilege all have the same political personalities. Your social and physical environments do not determine your political personality, but they can have an important influence. The Role of the Family The family is usually considered the most important influence on both a person’s overall socialization and their political socialization . Families profoundly affect people’s views about religion, work, and education. The term families is used in the broadest sense to include those who sheltered you and raised you as a child. This includes caregivers in institutional settings, extended biological and nonbiological relatives, and other possibilities. People gradually develop these preferences, attitudes, and behaviors as they grow from infants to adolescents to adults. The impact families have on people’s lives does not vanish when they become adults. It is likely to persist over their lifetimes. The influence need not always flow from the parents to the child. Greta Thunberg ’s activism led her parents to reconsider their own environmental attitudes, and research suggests that children often affect their parents’ views on the environment. Lydia Denworth, “Children Change Their Parents’ Minds about Climate Change,” Scientific American , May 6, 2019, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/children-change-their-parents-minds-about-climate-change/. Your family is likely to exert a substantial influence on your political views. Kent L. Tedin, “The Influence of Parents on the Political Attitudes of Adolescents,” American Political Science Review 68, no. 4 (December 1974): 1579–92. https://www-jstor-org.proxy.library.georgetown.edu/stable/1959943. In some political settings in which a child’s identity is defined by religion, ethnicity, and place, their political views may seem almost predetermined. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, the three main groups tend to be divided by ethnicity and religion, which largely define their political affiliations. Ethnic Bosniaks tend to be Muslim, Croats tend to be Roman Catholic, and Serbs are mainly Orthodox Christians. These differing ethnic and religious groups largely determine individuals’ political affiliations: there is little political intermingling across ethnic and religious lines. Some countries have taken steps to ensure that political parties do not exist strictly along ethnic or religious lines. Kenya, for example, explicitly prohibits ethnically determined political parties. See John Rabuogi Ahere, “Party Politics in Kenya and South Africa: The Conundrum of Ethnic and Race Relations.” Scientific Research 7, no. 5 (May, 2020): 1–24. doi:10.4236/oalib.1106383. In most places around the world, if parents raise their children in a particular religious faith, those children are more likely than not to adopt that faith as they become adults (or, if the children are raised in no faith, they are less likely to have religious connections as adults). For US data, see Jeff Diamant and Elizabeth Podrebarac Sciupac, “10 Key Findings about the Religious Lives of US Teens and Their Parents,” Pew Research Center, September 10, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/10/10-key-findings-about-the-religious-lives-of-u-s-teens-and-their-parents/. The same is true for almost any other important facet of life: social attitudes, beliefs about the role of the family, and yes, political beliefs. This is not to say that beliefs are automatically transmitted: young people have agency and may accept, reject, or simply question what their parents believe. Peter K. Hatemi and Christopher Ojeda, “The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization.” British Journal of Political Science 51 (3): 1097–118. doi:10.1017/S0007123419000516. The Changing Family Families play a key role in political socialization, and family structure is evolving in different ways around the world. One fundamental change is family size; fertility rates have dropped in virtually every country in the past century. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides an extreme example. When the PRC was established in 1949, the government encouraged families to have children to create additional workers, and by the 1960s the typical Chinese family had six children. At that point political leaders became worried about rapid population growth, and so in 1980 they instituted a one-child policy strictly enforced through a combination of benefits and often-harsh penalties. The policy dramatically slowed population growth, and it substantially increased both the age of and the percentage of males in the population. Under this policy, a cultural preference for male children led to sex-selective abortions and female infanticide. Believing that they had gone too far, the Chinese government lifted the one-child policy in 2016. Feng Wang, Baochang Gu, and Yong Cai, The End of China’s One-Child Policy , Brookings, March 30, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-end-of-chinas-one-child-policy/. What It Was Like to Grow Up under China’s One-Child Policy In this TED talk, Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang describes her experiences as a child growing up under China’s one-child policy and as an adult making a documentary about people’s experiences under the policy. Family structure involves not only how many children are in a family, but where they live when they effectively become adults. As of 2016, a higher percentage (52 percent) of 18-to-29-year-olds in the United States were living with their parents than at any time since 1900. Richard Fry, Jeffrey S. Passel, and D'vera Cohn, “A Majority of Young Adults in the US Live with Their Parents for the First Time since the Great Depression,” Pew Research Center, September 4, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-live-with-their-parents-for-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/. Among wealthy countries, the percentage of 15-to-29 year-olds living with their parents varied from about 80 percent in Italy to 30 percent in Canada. Because these data include 15-to-17-year-olds, they are not directly comparable to the United States. They still show the substantial variation across countries. Devon Haynie, “Countries Where the Most Young Adults Live with Their Parents,” U.S. News & World Report , October 5, 2016, //www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-10-05/countries-where-the-most-young-adults-live-with-their-parents. Given what we already know about how family members can influence each other’s political attitudes and beliefs, it will be interesting to see how these changing family structures and living conditions impact political socialization . Your parents’ political leanings and your broader family environment affect your political views. For example, who is expected to take responsibility for caring for parents as they age varies from country to country. In China, caring for one’s parents is a sacred duty; in Norway, it is more often seen as an obligation of the government. Germans and Italians are more than twice as likely as Americans to say that the government, rather than the family, has the main responsibility for caring for the elderly. “Family Support in Graying Societies,” Pew Research Center, May 21, 2015, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/05/21/family-support-in-graying-societies/. Note that these statements, like other generalizations, are not true for every person in every circumstance everywhere. Some children of devout worshippers become atheists, some people raised as capitalists become communists, and some of the children of political, social, and cultural liberals become ardent conservatives. When making these generalizations, this chapter uses words like “generally” or “tend” to suggest that the statements are accurate for the bulk of the group or characteristic being discussed. For example, in the United States, about 7 out of 10 teenagers have political ideologies and partisan affiliations similar to their parents: liberal teens tend to have liberal parents, and conservative youth generally have conservative parents. Still, about one-third of US teenagers adopt different political ideologies from those they were raised with. Linda Lyons, “Teens Stay True to Parents’ Political Perspectives,” Gallup, January 5, 2005, https://news.gallup.com/poll/14515/Teens-Stay-True-Parents-Political-Perspectives.aspx. Bernie Sanders Says His Childhood Shaped His Political Views In a 60 Minutes interview, Senator Bernie Sanders describes how his childhood experiences helped shape his political views. The identities of a young person’s parent(s) affect that person’s political socialization . If parental engagement in politics is high and party identification is strong, children are more likely to adopt those attitudes and behaviors than if parental political engagement is low and their partisanship indifferent. If first-generation immigrants are disconnected from politics, it appears that the political socialization of the second generation may be later and more prolonged. Roberto F. Carlos, “Late to the Party: On the Prolonged Partisan Socialization Process of Second-Generation Americans,” Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 3 (2): 381–408. doi:10.1017/rep.2018.21. Family structure—whether a child is living with two parents or a single parent, and whether parents are married, divorced, or cohabitating, for example—raises complex issues for political socialization that are not well understood. Political scientists know a bit more about how family structure and changes in structure affect such political behaviors as voting. See, for example, Julianna Sandell and Eric Plutzer, “Families, Divorce and Voter Turnout in the US,” Political Behavior 27 (2005): 133–62. doi:10.1007/s11109-005-3341-9. Only a small amount of research has focused on family structure and political socialization. James W. Clarke, “Family Structure and Political Socialization among Urban Black Children,” American Journal of Political Science 17, no. 2 (May 1973): 302–15, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2110522. Moreover, the impact of the family on socialization is not limited to children. Family dynamics also impact the political socialization of adults. Florence Haegel, “Political Socialization: Out of Purgatory?” European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes De Sociologie 61, no. 3 (December 2020): 333–64. doi:10.1017/S000397562000017X. Peers Your living situation growing up largely determines what influences you will encounter as you mature. Your school can influence your political socialization, as different schools have differing teaching philosophies, student bodies, and political activities. Likewise, your place of worship may have a profound influence on who you become. When you are young, your parents or guardians probably choose your school and religion; however, as people grow older, many of them spend less time with their parents or guardians and more time with their peers, including friends at school, work, community, and play. You may change your language, clothing, and interests to fit in with those in your group. And as you grow older, you are increasingly able to make your own decisions. Social peer groups can influence how individuals talk, how they communicate using physical gestures, and how they dress, and they can play a significant role in shaping individuals’ views on politics. (credit: “Globe Town Massive, a Bangladeshi youth gang in Bethnal Green, Tower hamlets, London, England” by Bangali71/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0) It is less clear whether your peers will have a lasting impact on your political socialization. Like many things when you are growing up, your choice of peers is not entirely in your control. Most children don't pick where they live and where they attend primary school, and those two factors play a big part in determining the pool of people from which individuals can choose friends. In short, your parents’ life circumstances and choices shape who your peers are likely to be. Still, context is important. Before the advent of social media, parental decisions would almost entirely determine your pool of peers. Now, given internet access, young people can find their peer groups virtually anywhere. Increasingly, young people rely on social media to learn about the world and connect with others. Political scientists are still trying to decipher what this means for political socialization. In the past, a young person’s peers tended to be local: other members of the clan, the village, or the church. Today, a young person’s peers can be almost anywhere in the world, assuming they understand the same language, and thus young people (and adults) can more easily choose their peers based on common interests and beliefs than they could in the past. To the extent that young people, and indeed all individuals, can choose their social networks rather than being placed in them by virtue of their location, it is more likely that peer networks will reinforce existing beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors rather than change them. The ability of individuals to choose their social networks leads to “echo chambers,” which Chapter 12: The Media will examine further. Other Affiliations Your family and peers greatly influence your political opinions, attitudes, values, and behaviors, but there are other important influences. How much these other influences affect a person’s political socialization depends, in part, on how important they are to the person’s identity and daily life. What Does Being Indigenous Mean? In this clip, Indigenous people in Canada explain what it means to them to be Indigenous. Consider ethnicity. The dominant ethnic group within a country—the White British within the United Kingdom, for example—may not perceive their ethnicity as having much of an influence on their political socialization, but its impact is likely to be profound. Members of ethnic majorities may be more likely to assume that politics and government should favor their interests as a matter of course because they may (naively) believe that what is good for them is good for everyone. Ethnic minorities, in contrast, may be socialized to feel the sting of discrimination and to view the government as no friend. One’s ethnic identity is likely to be more salient if that identity signifies one as an outsider. Jennifer L. Hochschild, Outsiders No More? Models of Immigrant Political Incorporation (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013). If you were raised in a devout family, that family’s religion may have an important influence on your political socialization. Sky L. Ammann, “Creating Partisan ‘Footprints’: The Influence of Parental Religious Socialization on Party Identification,” Social Science Quarterly 95, no. 5 (December 2014): 1360–80. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44072754. In the United States, for example, those individuals identifying as evangelicals are much more likely than the rest of the population to favor socially conservative public policies such as prohibiting same sex marriage or curtailing abortion rights, and they are much more likely to support the Republican Party. At the opposite end of the spectrum, those raised as atheists are more likely to believe that governmental policy should not be based on religious principles. Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz and James G. Gimple, “Religion and Political Socialization” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics , eds. Corwin E. Smidt, Lyman A. Kellstedt, and James L. Guth (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009). Gender roles and gender identification can influence an individual’s political socialization. Socialization into “traditional” gender roles may discourage women from developing interest or participating in politics, while in countries with women in leadership positions, young women may be socialized to become more politically aware and active. Miki C. Kittilson, “Gender and Political Behavior,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics , May 9, 2016, https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-71. The impact of gender identification and sexual orientation on political socialization is not well understood, but it seems likely that the greater the importance a person places on these attributes and the more intense the formative experiences they have regarding these attributes, the greater the influence these attributes will have on that person’s political socialization. See, for example, Andrew R. Flores and Maisy Morrison, “Potential Differences between the Political Attitudes of People with Same-Sex Parents and People with Different-Sex Parents: An Exploratory Assessment of First-Year College Students,” PLoS One 16, no. 2 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246929; Landon, Schnabel, “Sexual Orientation and Social Attitudes,” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World (January 2018), doi:10.1177/2378023118769550. Socialization into gender roles, whether they be the traditional gender roles suggested by this photo or less traditional roles, may impact your political personality. (credit: “Group Shot” by OakleyOriginals/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Even though young people spend a lot of time in school, the impact of schooling on political socialization appears to be modest. Why? The schools children attend often reflect the choices and environment of their parents, so they have little independent influence on socialization. For example, if you come from a religious home and your family has the means to do so, your parents might choose to send you to religious school; this reinforces the influence of the family’s religion on socialization. More broadly, the schools young people attend are likely to reflect the conditions and values that already exist in their environment. People are socialized as individuals, and they are socialized in groups, including their family, peers, and others in their social environments. As people are socialized, they become part of larger groupings of individuals with common characteristics. The next sections discuss these larger groupings. Political socialization is the process by which individuals develop their political personalities from their youth through their adult years. These personalities include values and attitudes regarding politics, such as one’s views about the role of the government and the relationship between the government and citizens. Socialization affects whether people are even interested in politics and government in the first place. Those who are most important in a person’s life, like their families and friends, play important roles in their political socialization. Schools, places of worship, and—increasingly—interactions with others through social media can also be important influences. The process is not deterministic; you cannot look at all the influences on your development and predict precisely who you will become. Still, you do not entirely choose who you will become, as you are in part the product of your social environment. political socialization the gradual development, from youth through adulthood, of a political personality socialization the gradual process through which a person develops the values and beliefs that determine who they will be as an adult

Social Sciences


Political Culture: How People Express Their Political Identity Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define political culture, mass culture, elite culture, and minority culture. Describe the effects of the weakening of mass cultures. Explain how political cultures form. If you have ever had the chance to travel to another country, you might have observed the behaviors, habits, values, and beliefs that distinguish that country from your own. Those distinguishing factors are in part a result of the way individuals in different countries are socialized. In Argentina, dinner doesn’t typically start until around 10 p.m.; in Norway, 5 o’clock is more common. The Japanese often have green tea and rice for breakfast; in Denmark, breakfast is more likely to be smoked eel and scrambled eggs. Each country has a different personality, or culture. While Argentines, Norwegians, Japanese, and the Danes have national cultures that distinguish them from each other, cultures are not uniform within these or any other countries. Every country has various cultures within it, including a mass culture, an elite culture, and diverse minority cultures. The details of these cultures vary from country to country, but some characteristics are typical of culture in all countries. Culture refers to the shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices common to members of a group. The shared political attitudes, values, goals, and practices common to members of a political group, such as a country, a party, or any other political organization or grouping, is the group’s political culture . Gabriel Abraham Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), doi:10.1515/9781400874569. A country’s political culture frames how individuals in that society see their roles as citizens, including their relationship to other political actors and to the government. The United States tends to be highly individualistic, prioritizing personal freedom and individual responsibility over more community-centered values. This individualism can appear odd to the citizens of countries that put much higher importance on communal values. For example, researchers asked Americans and Europeans, “What’s more important in our society, that everyone can be free to pursue their life’s goals without interference from the state or that the state plays an active role in society so as to guarantee that nobody is in need?” Almost six in 10 Americans surveyed responded that individual freedom was more important, while nearly eight in 10 Lithuanians, whose country was a part of the collectivist Soviet Union for nearly 50 years, responded that the state’s active role was more important. Richard Wike, “5 Ways Americans and Europeans Are Different,” Pew Research Center, April 19, 2016. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/19/5-ways-americans-and-europeans-are-different/. Note that this survey asked only Americans and Europeans. If it had asked people living in other countries, the differences would likely be even greater. As with any generalization, political culture is open to unfortunate stereotyping. Not all Americans favor individual freedom over state intervention. Not all Lithuanians prefer that the government play an active role to protect individuals. Generalizations are helpful to describe patterns and tendencies, but they should never be automatically attributed to specific individuals. Public Meetings At meetings like this hearing on the legislative redistricting plan in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2011, members of the public are invited to comment on issues. (credit: “Public Hearing on the Legislative Redistricting Plan” by Maryland GovPics/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Local governmental meetings are excellent venues for observing group decision-making in action. Careful observation may also yield clues about political cultures. But if you attend these meetings, you need not be a passive observer. City council meetings, school board meetings, or other local meetings frequently offer opportunities for public comment. Because there are some 90,000 local governments in the United States, United States Census Bureau, “Census Bureau Reports There Are 89,004 Local Governments in the United States,” August 30, 2012, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/governments/cb12-161.html. it is not possible to point to a single source of information regarding where, when, and why local meetings will occur. A simple web search can help you locate a wide array of local government meetings in your area. For example, if you had been in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on Monday, November 1, 2021, you could have attended a City Council tour, a meeting of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, or a meeting of the Animal Services Advisory Board. Whatever meeting you choose to attend, you will have a chance to engage in local political action. Elite Culture The term “elite” can trigger mixed reactions. Some people might hear the term and think positively of elite athletes, elite dancers, or elite musicians—those who, by virtue of their abilities or accomplishments, stand out as extraordinary. In many countries today, however, the term “elite” is usually less complimentary. People may complain, “The elites control everything” or “The elites take advantage of the rest of us.” Those within a society who, by virtue of their wealth, status, position, and power, have the greatest influence over the country’s political agenda, its policy decisions, and its decision-making cadre are the society’s political elite . Harold D. Lasswell, Daniel Lerner, and C. Easton Rothwell, “The Elite Concept,” in Political Elites in a Democracy , ed. Peter Bachrach (London: Routledge, 2010), 13–27, https://www.routledge.com/Political-Elites-in-a-Democracy/Bachrach/p/book/9780202363462. Their political culture is the country’s elite political culture. The degree of influence and domination of elite culture varies from country to country. At the extreme, in North Korea, the ruling class, led by Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un , controls every aspect of political life. Kim Jong-un’s grandfather was the first Supreme Leader of North Korea, and his father was the second. North Korean elite culture is his culture, and he expects to be worshipped. At the other end of the spectrum is New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern , whose parents were middle class (her mother was a school catering assistant and her father was a police officer), who attended a public school, and who became one of only two elected heads of state to give birth while in office, leads the closest thing New Zealand has to a ruling class. Even in relatively egalitarian New Zealand, however, those with money, status, and power tend to set the agenda, influence policy decisions, and dominate the decision-making process. In the United States, there are multiple elite cultures—cultural, financial, and political. Members of these elite groups tend to live in major metropolitan areas (such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco, Boston, and Houston), attend highly selective colleges and universities, and have high incomes. Howard Wial, Where the One Percent Live , Brookings, October 31, 2011, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/where-the-one-percent-live/; “Where the 1% Send Their Kids to College,” College Stats, accessed August 2, 2021, https://collegestats.org/2012/07/where-the-1-send-their-kids-to-college/. However, despite their commonalities, their political values and attitudes may differ sharply. The ultra-wealthy may be devoted either to liberal or conservative causes: the “one percent” (those wealthier than 99 percent of the rest of the population) are divided almost equally in how much they give to Republican or Democratic candidates for political office. Lee Drutman, “The Political One Percent of the One Percent,” Sunlight Foundation, December 13, 2011, https://sunlightfoundation.com/2011/12/13/the-political-one-percent-of-the-one-percent/. Billionaires may be either liberal or conservative, and while at one time the social networks of those politicians at the most elite levels within their parties might have overlapped, they do not overlap much anymore. Still, political elites have disproportionate influence over American public policy, and it is reasonable to believe that this finding would hold for other countries as well. Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (2014): 564–81, doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595. Cultural Anthropology Political scientists are interested in political culture, a subset of the attitudes, values, goals, and practices the members of a group share that define that group’s culture. If you want to learn more about culture itself, you might explore a course in cultural anthropology. According to the National Park System’s Cultural Anthropology Program, “Cultural anthropologists specialize in the study of culture and peoples’ beliefs, practices, and the cognitive and social organization of human groups. Cultural anthropologists study how people who share a common cultural system organize and shape the physical and social world around them, and are in turn shaped by those ideas, behaviors, and physical environments.” National Park Service, “What Is Cultural Anthropology?” accessed October 21, 2021, https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1209/what-is-cultural-anthropology.htm. Although cultural anthropologists use both quantitative and qualitative research methods, a hallmark of cultural anthropology is participant observation, in which the researcher spends an extensive amount of time living with and observing a cultural community. In a cultural anthropology course, you will learn techniques to make systematic observations so that you are able to describe and explain a culture in ways that are accurate and appropriate. Through systematic observation you can develop a deep understanding about “the knowledge people use to live their lives and the way in which they do so.” W. Penn Handwerker, “The Construct Validity of Cultures: Cultural Diversity, Culture Theory, and a Method for Ethnography.” American Anthropologist 104, no. 1 (2002): 106–22. Mass Culture The broadest culture within a country is its mass culture . Where do you get your political information? What movies do you watch, what kinds of sporting events do you attend, and where do you buy your clothes? While it is possible to distinguish between elite and mass cultures, the lines between them are not always distinct. Still, without too much stereotyping, it is safe to say that many members of elite cultures would generally answer these questions differently than members of mass cultures would. Prior to the rise of newspapers, radio, and television, mass culture (including political culture) did not exist. All culture was local. Individuals were influenced most by those with whom they had direct personal contact. As increasingly larger proportions of the population had access to these media, culture became increasingly mass, increasingly shared. Those living in smaller towns came to have access to the same tastes, styles, and information as those in the larger cities. Mass culture was most visible when the media was limited to newspapers, radio, and television. When television options were limited, mass culture included the shows that “everybody” watched. The most watched TV shows in the world include the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup. In India, Bollywood films have dominated the media landscape, as telenovelas have in the Americas. Mass culture, including mass political culture, is weakening. About 60 percent of the adult population in America watched the presidential debates between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960. In 2020, even during a highly contentious presidential campaign between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden , fewer than 30 percent of adults watched the debates (more on this in Chapter 12: The Media ). “Media Advisory: Final Presidential Debate of 2020 Draws 63 Million Viewers,” Nielsen, October 23, 2020, https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-releases/2020/media-advisory-final-presidential-debate-of-2020-draws-63-million-viewers; United States Census Bureau, “The US Adult and Under-Age-18 Populations: 2020 Census,” August 12, 2021, https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/adult-and-under-the-age-of-18-populations-2020-census.html. This move away from mass focused attention on the same political events through a few media outlets holds true in countries around the world. As media options proliferate, mass culture diminishes and minority cultures flourish. People no longer get their political information from the media that “everyone” watches. Instead, they are able to obtain—and share—political information with those in their own, sometimes very specific, political cultures. Minority Cultures When the political culture of the United States is described as prioritizing individual liberty and personal responsibility, that hardly describes how everyone in the United States thinks. Any statements about a national political culture will be far too broad to speak for the members of all the various communities within a country. This is especially true now that mass cultures are breaking down, with the rise of social media especially enabling minority cultures to flourish. The Japanese Visual Kei culture involves a blend of music and style. (credit: “Harajuku denizens [3]” by Jacob Ehnmark/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Minority cultures have their own consistency of beliefs and behaviors, of ideas and actions that bind them together. Minority cultures can be quite specific. For example, there are the doomsday preppers in the United States, gopniks in Russia, Adam Muskin, “Of Russian Origin: Gopnik,” Russiapedia, https://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/gopnik/. cholos in Mexico, Lauren Cocking, “A Brief Guide to Mexican Subcultures,” Culture Trap, November 28, 2016, https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/a-brief-guide-to-mexican-subcultures/. and thousands of others. Subcultures can be all-consuming, as with a cult that dominates every aspect of cult members’ lives, but an individual need not be connected to only one culture. Professional wrestling has its own culture, as does anime. Xavier Woods —you may never have heard of him, but many prominent figures in various cultures are unknown to the broader public—identifies with both. Evan Valentine, “WWE Superstar Xavier Woods Shares His Love for the God of High School,” ComicBook, July 31, 2020, https://comicbook.com/anime/news/wwe-superstar-xavier-woods-god-of-high-school-anime-love/. Anime Lightning Round with WWE’s Xavier Woods In this clip, professional wrestler Xavier Woods describes anime and talks about some of his favorite anime shows and characters. Political cultures emerge organically, in that they are not necessarily created with the intention of building political organizations. Instead, individuals with particular interests and lifestyles—environmentalism, queer identities, or gun ownership, among many other potential affiliations—find similar individuals, and a community of interest forms. These communities of interest may grow into social movements or establish formal interest groups. Prior to the 1970s in the United States, the gay community (culture) was largely apolitical. Language evolves, and what was commonly called “gay” in the 1900s is generally referred to today as LGBTQ. State-sanctioned violence against gays and, later, the AIDS epidemic, politicized the gay community and mobilized members of the community to organize interest groups and participate in a broader social movement. What You Need to Know about the Gay Rights Movement After the US Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the right of same-sex couples to marry, CNN aired this report on the history of the gay rights movement. Elements of Black American cultures provided a foundation for the civil rights movement in a continuous link from the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement (and the formal BLM organization) of today. The reader should note that there is not one single African American culture, so referring to it in singular terms is a generalization. Hip-hop is also a distinct political culture. Danielle Garcia, “The Politics of Hip Hop: A Political Analysis of Hip Hop’s History and Its Complicated Relationship with Capitalism” (master’s thesis, CUNY, 2021), https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4194. In some cases, cultural activity has led to the formation of political parties, such as the Green parties that have spread to some 80 countries around the world. Neither a person’s political socialization nor their cultural identity dictates precisely how they will behave in group settings or what the outcomes of the group interactions will be. An individual might identify as an ardent environmentalist but nonetheless engage in polluting activities like using disposable diapers or routinely traveling by aircraft. One might ask: “Why does an environmentalist engage in polluting activities?” Millions (virtually or physically) marched along with Thunberg to protest climate change and the public policies that allowed (or even spurred) it to happen. Why didn’t these millions of protestors have more success obtaining the policy changes they sought? To learn more about how individuals behave as part of a group or in group settings and why policy change is often so hard to obtain, it’s necessary to study some essential elements of group decision-making. This study will pay close attention to strategic behavior—behavior that sometimes leads to unfortunate consequences. Every country has multiple political cultures. Political culture is the set of political attitudes, values, goals, and practices common to members of any political grouping. Countries have distinct political cultures, which means that citizens of a country are likely to share common views about their roles as citizens and the responsibilities of the government. In any country, you can identify elite, mass, and minority cultures, each having its own set of views and attitudes and, perhaps, social markers such as clothing, music, or even dietary preferences. The elite culture comprises those who dominate a country’s political agenda, policy choices, and official positions of power. The mass culture consists of the bulk of citizens or, in democracies, voters who typically embrace the political values that are central to the nation’s political cultures but who are not in positions of power. A vast number of minority cultures exist, each having its own particular set of attitudes and behaviors. A key aspect of minority cultures is that they allow groups of individuals to distinguish themselves from the majority culture in ways that produce pride, belonging, and solidarity. Minority cultures arise for diverse reasons and may later develop their own political identities. Those in a particular culture might both change their personal behaviors to advance the group’s goals and engage in political activism with others in that culture. elite culture those in a country who, by virtue of their wealth, education, and position, have the dominant influence over politics and policy mass culture the most popular views, attitudes, preferences, and behaviors within a society minority cultures the views, attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of subsets of a society that produce group identity political culture the set of shared political attitudes, values, goals, and practices within a country political elites those within a society who, by virtue of their wealth, status, positions, and power, have the greatest influence over the country’s political agenda, its policy decisions, and its decision-making cadre

Social Sciences


Collective Dilemmas: Making Group Decisions Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Discuss the major causes of collective dilemmas. Describe the major types of collective dilemmas. Explain ways to overcome collective dilemmas. The American public is pretty disgusted with the United State Congress. Public opinion polls show that, as of July 2021, Congress had a 12 percent approval rating—lower than any other institution rated in the poll. Megan Brenan, “Americans’ Confidence in Major US Institutions Dips,” Gallup, July 14, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/352316/americans-confidence-major-institutions-dips.aspx. The widespread discontentment with Congress was due in part to the public’s view that Congress gets little done and that what it does, it does poorly. Public disenchantment with governments is not limited to the United States. Majorities in Mexico, Spain, Greece, Brazil, and other countries believe their democracies are not working well. David Kent, “The Countries Where People Are Most Dissatisfied with How Democracy Is Working,” Pew Research Center, May 31, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/31/the-countries-where-people-are-most-dissatisfied-with-how-democracy-is-working/. Wherever democratic legislatures exist, in recent years they have struggled to impress the people who elect them. There are lots of specific reasons for public disdain of legislative bodies, but one broad reason encapsulates them: legislatures find it difficult to solve their collective problems. For 18 days in 2013 and then again for 35 days in 2018–2019, the US government shut down because Congress and the president could not agree on ways to fund federal operations. The public was not amused by this deadlock: In a 2019 survey, 80 percent of the public believed that the shutdown was a “very” or “somewhat” serious problem for the country. “Most Border Wall Opponents, Supporters Say Shutdown Concessions Are Unacceptable,” Pew Research Center, January 6, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/01/16/most-border-wall-opponents-supporters-say-shutdown-concessions-are-unacceptable/. Federal employees attend a rally seeking to end the government shutdown in 2013. (credit: “10.4.13 CPC End Government Shutdown Rally” by Keith Ellison/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) If all people agreed on everything, there would be no collective dilemmas. But because individuals do have differing needs, preferences, and goals, they have to overcome challenges to make a decision. Whenever two or more individuals need to make a plan or resolve a conflict and those involved do not agree on the solution, there is a collective dilemma . This is as true for two individuals deciding where to go to eat as it is for a national congress trying to set policies for immigration, climate change, a pandemic, or the myriad other policy choices the legislature faces. Causes of Collective Dilemmas Collective dilemmas exist when members of a group try to make decisions that all must agree to or comply with. If you are trying to decide where to go to dinner by yourself, there is no collective dilemma, but if you and a friend are deciding whether to go to dinner and where, there is at least the potential for a collective problem. Maybe you want to go out, and your friend simply does not: one of you will be disappointed by whatever decision you make. Or maybe you want to go one place, and they want to go a different place. They want to go now, and you want to go later. They have more money than you do, but you have more time. Have you had the experience of eating out with friends and, after the bill arrives and you all pitch in your “fair share,” you discover that there is not enough money to pay the bill? There are three main causes of collective dilemmas. The first is when the participants disagree because they have opposing preferences. Think of two political parties making a decision, divided into two sides with irreconcilable differences—for example, with one party favoring the death penalty and the other opposing it. There is no compromise that will satisfy both parties: the death penalty will either be allowed or be banned. The second cause is when participants generally agree on what they want to do but disagree over the details. General agreement does not mean specific agreement. Consider climate change policy. Should internal combustion (gas-powered) cars be banned, or should there just be incentives to buy electric cars? Should new houses be required to have solar panels, or should the government offer perks to encourage builders and homeowners to have them installed? In legislatures or courts, in interest groups or within bureaucracies, resolving the details of collective decisions creates numerous challenges involving coordination, transaction costs, and conformity costs. The third cause, when individual motivations are contrary to the groups’ mutual interests, is especially troubling. In this case, group members have a common interest or goal, but members of the group have incentives to make decisions that are actually harmful to the group and, ultimately, to themselves. Collective dilemmas of this sort are commonly called collective action problems . For the seminal book on this topic, see Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). Solutions to Collective Dilemmas When Participants Disagree When a collective dilemma involves participants simply disagreeing on an appropriate course of action (e.g., whether to allow or ban capital punishment), the rules for making a decision can have an important influence on which side will prevail. As Chapter 2: Political Behavior Is Human Behavior discussed, the rules by which decisions are made affect the ease with which agreements are reached. As a result, whether the death penalty will be legal depends on the decision-making rules and on the existing situation—that is, the status quo . If the rule is that a decision will be made by majority vote, the preferences of whichever voting group has the most members will become policy. If more people oppose capital punishment than support it, then capital punishment will be banned, and vice versa. Many types of voting rules exist (voting rules are discussed further in Chapter 8: Interest Groups, Political Parties, and Elections and Chapter 9: Legislatures ). Perhaps the most common is majority (or plurality) voting. Under majority rule , for a proposal (or candidate) to win, that option must receive more than 50 percent of the votes cast (usually defined as 50 percent + 1). The rules can become quite complicated. For example, a majority could be defined as 50 percent plus one of all eligible voters, of all voters present, or of all voters casting votes, among other possibilities. In plurality voting, the proposal (or candidate) with the most votes wins, whether or not that person receives a majority of the votes. Supermajority rules typically require that the measure being voted upon receive 60 percent, two-thirds (67 percent), or even three-quarters (75 percent) of votes. Whenever a supermajority rule exists, the status quo is more difficult to change. Trials in the United States generally require the 12 jurors, who sit in a jury box like this one, to unanimously agree in order for a defendant to be convicted. (credit: “Calhoun County Courthouse, Port Lavaca, Texas 1805151209” by Patrick Feller/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) The most extreme form of supermajority is found in most US courtrooms, as well as in the courts of Australia and Ireland. For a defendant to be found guilty in a jury trial, the jury must unanimously agree; otherwise, the defendant will either be released or face another trial. This is called a unanimity rule . How might these differing voting rules be explained? One sensible rationale is that the greater the consequences of making an “incorrect” decision or the longer those consequences will last, the greater the need for a supermajority to guard against making rash or incorrect decisions. One of the most coercive things a state can do is to deprive a citizen of their liberty by imprisoning them, and one of the worst mistakes is to imprison an innocent person, so most democracies make it relatively difficult to convict suspected criminals. In the United States, conviction requires jury unanimity and each member of the jury is instructed to vote to convict only if they believe the evidence shows the suspect’s guilt “beyond reasonable doubt.” For more on this idea, see Chapter 11. A unanimity rule helps guard against wrongful convictions, although it does not entirely prevent them. One credible source has estimated that about 4 percent of persons convicted of murder in the United States are likely not guilty. Samuel R. Gross, Barbara O'Brien, Chen Hu, and Edward Kennedy, “Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced to Death” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Michigan Public Law Research Paper No. 405, U of Michigan Law & Econ Research Paper No. 14-011, 2014), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2431520. Constitutions are the core document establishing the basic structure of the state, and laws are meant to address current problems. A constitution typically outlines the government’s general powers and duties, while laws fill in the specifics regarding these matters. (For more on constitutions, see Chapter 1: What Is Politics and What Is Political Science? .) To change a constitution generally requires a supermajority, while changing laws requires only a simple majority . Think of it this way: constitutions are the foundations of the house, while laws are the paint in the rooms. It is hard to change the foundation because it is meant to be durable, but it is easier to repaint the bedroom because people’s taste in colors can change over the seasons. That is why voting rules typically make constitutional changes subject to supermajority votes and laws changeable by a simple majority. This is not true in every country, however: in an effort to ensure that legislation has support from minority parties, in South Korea a 60 percent supermajority is required in the National Assembly to bring any measure up for a vote. Scott Snyder, Domestic Constraints on South Korean Foreign Policy (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2018). Voting rules have another, more self-interested, political rationale. Those setting the rules have incentives to establish the kind of rules that will benefit their interests now and in the future. Those writing a constitution want it to be durable because the constitution represents how they believe their country should be ordered for generations to come: therefore, they make the constitution difficult to change. There is also a self-interested reason for making constitutions difficult to change. Those writing them may be currently in power, but they can imagine a time when they may be in the minority. Constitutional authors thus try to lock in their preferences in ways that will make it difficult for those with other preferences to change the document. This does not mean that it is easy to come to an agreement about how to write the constitution or other rules in the first place. What happens when those trying to make a collective decision are simply not able to make one, such as when a vote is split 50-50 or when there are not enough votes to make the required supermajority? In those cases, the status quo prevails. Rules shape but do not determine outcomes. When political actors disagree, it is always possible that one side will prevail because it is able to persuade its opponents. In the United States, there has been substantial conflict over whether same-sex marriages should be legal. As recently as 2004, the American public opposed same-sex marriage by a 2-to-1 margin. By 2019, those numbers had reversed, with public opinion polls showing that 61 percent favored legalization while only 31 percent opposed it. “Attitudes on Same-Sex Marriage,” Pew Research Center, May 14, 2019, https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/. Decisions regarding same-sex marriage followed public opinion, and changing minds changed policy. In 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that the states could not prohibit same-sex marriage. By the time the Supreme Court ruled, same-sex marriage was already legal in 37 states. “State-by-State History of Banning and Legalizing Gay Marriage,” ProCon/Encyclopaedia Britannica, last modified February 16, 2016, https://gaymarriage.procon.org/state-by-state-history-of-banning-and-legalizing-gay-marriage/. If one or both sides decide not to play by the rules but instead to use violence to accomplish their goals, then force—and not votes—may determine which side prevails. One of the reasons Greta Thunberg ’s calls for climate action have not been adequately answered is that there remains substantial opposition to the kinds of policies that would be necessary to limit climate change. But what happens when those making decisions basically agree about what should be done? These cases may still present other difficulties, which the following sections will examine. Solutions to Collective Dilemmas When There Is General Agreement If you have tried to coordinate the actions of a group—family, school, church, community, or any other gathering—then you have directly experienced coordination problems . Coordination problems occur whenever a group seeks to make a decision on a common course of action, the group members generally agree on what they are seeking, and everyone in the group will need to live with the results, but it’s not possible to give every group member exactly what they want. Coordination problems become more complex the greater the size of the group. Deciding what movie to watch in a group of two? Depending on the personalities of the two, this may be a pretty easy coordination problem. If the group has 20, or 20,000, or a million, or a billion members, the coordination challenges become increasingly complex. There are various ways to solve coordination problems, but they boil down to two main possibilities. One way is to delegate decision-making power to a single person (or a small set of people) who will act on behalf of all. Another way is to have everyone participate in making decisions—for example, through voting or some other deliberative methods. Each solution has its own advantages and disadvantages. Delegating power to a single person reduces transaction costs but increases conformity costs . Group decision-making is likely to reduce conformity costs but to increase transaction costs. The following sections discuss those concepts. Transaction Costs When political scientists speak of costs, they do not mean just monetary costs: they mean the use of resources to obtain some benefit. The cost (use of resources) of making a decision (the benefit) can include monetary costs, such as the expense of printing ballots, but perhaps more importantly, it can also involve time and effort. The money, time, and effort necessary to make group decisions are called transaction costs. Oliver E. Williamson, “The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach on JSTOR,” American Journal of Sociology 87, no. 3 (November 1981): 548–77. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2778934. The more people involved in the decision-making process and the more complicated the decision, the higher the transaction costs. The higher the transaction costs, the more difficult it is to make a decision. Think back to the “Where do we go for dinner?” question. With three people, the transaction costs will be modest, and you’ll probably be able to arrive at a decision. As the number of individuals in the group increases, the transaction costs—the costs of making the decision—are also likely to increase. If the costs become too high—imagine how much time and effort it would take for 300 people to agree on where to eat and to find a restaurant that can host them!—then the decision-making process can break down. What happens then? The status quo prevails, which, in this example, means that nobody is going to a restaurant. What if you are deeply committed to maintaining the status quo? You can deliberately raise transaction costs to the point that no changes to the status quo can be made. Defenders of the status quo do not necessarily need to defend it. They just need to raise the transaction costs high enough so that no changes can be enacted. In recent years there have been major political battles over voting rights. As of July 2021, efforts to impose new voting restrictions in the state of Texas had been thwarted by virtue of a dedicated Democratic minority’s efforts to increase the costs of passing legislation. The minority’s strategy? Flee the state capitol, depriving the majority of the quorum , the minimum number of the group that must be present for a vote to be held. Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Republicans were in the minority and did their best to stall measures to expand voting rights—also by throwing up procedural roadblocks to the legislation. In each case, the minority party (Democrats in Texas, Republicans in Washington) chose to raise transaction costs in order to prevent a change from being made. Texas ultimately approved the restrictions on voting rights after the Democratic minority gave in and returned to the state capital to vote, thus lowering the transaction costs. Collective Action and Critical Thinking The EU-funded Biodiversity Information for Development program (BID) runs workshops to help participants learn to use data to come to collaborative decisions that direct public policy. (credit: “BID Workshop: Data Use for Decision Making” by GBIF, photo by Mélianie Raymond/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) One of the biggest challenges that individuals, groups, and governments face is trying to figure out how to allocate limited resources (which may be intangible things like time and effort). As discussed in this chapter, people are often asked to make difficult decisions with seemingly no correct—or “good”—answer. This is especially true when the problem that needs to be solved impacts a community, be it a country, a city, or even a neighborhood. As you go through the process of trying to decide which option to choose in order to solve issues related to things like resource depletion, pollution, or reducing transaction costs , what you are really doing is engaging in critical thinking . At its core, being able to think critically involves not only being able to describe the issue at hand, but also taking relevant ideas, perspectives, and data about a particular problem or issue and using that information to assist in analyzing different perspectives and arguments to reach an informed conclusion about the issue. Critical thinking is hard work—it requires a lot of information and a lot of time—but it gets easier with practice, and it leads to better outcomes. Conformity Costs Transaction costs are the “price” of making a decision, and conformity costs are the “price” those who do not get what they want must pay to arrive at a decision. For each person affected by the collective decision, the conformity cost is the difference between what the person wanted from the decision and what they actually got out of it. When you were making the collective decision about where to go for dinner, you might have argued for sushi. If the final decision was for tacos, your conformity cost would be the difference between the smaller amount of satisfaction you will get from having tacos and the greater happiness you would have gotten from having sushi. School provides another example. Your classes always meet at the same time, most likely everyone in a class has the same assignments and takes the same tests at the same time, and so forth. These are all factors that impose conformity costs. If every student’s education was personalized to meet their own preferences and goals—with schedules, assignments, and exams all designed for that purpose—that would be an educational system with extremely low conformity costs. But the establishment and monitoring of such a system would create enormous transaction costs. How would classrooms be assigned, for example? To the extent that education is personalized—college students can choose their own majors and select electives, for example—the transaction costs are higher because this requires more complicated administration (e.g., some official has to track your schedule to make sure that you are completing all the requirements). Consider driving laws. When the government imposes speed limits on the driving public, the conformity cost is the difference between how fast drivers want to drive and how fast they are allowed to drive. Speed limits apply to everyone; they are not variable based on the skills or preferences of the driver. No one under the legal age can obtain a driver’s license, but (almost) anyone over the legal age can. These are just a few examples of government policies that limit transaction costs but increase conformity costs. Transaction costs and conformity costs often move in different directions: when transaction costs are low, conformity costs are often high, and vice versa. The lowest transaction cost occurs when a single decision-maker can rule by decree—for example, “We will watch this movie.” In Brunei and in other countries ruled by absolute dictators, transaction costs are minimal. The Sultan speaks, and it is so. The lowest conformity costs exist when individuals can simply do whatever they want. Contrast the centralized power of Brunei with the city council meetings in Fayetteville, Arkansas. At those meetings, and in similar meetings around the United States, virtually any resident may voice their concerns on any issue before the council. Meetings do not end until everyone who wants to speak has been heard. Tribal leaders in Afghanistan meet to discuss options for defusing local unrest. (credit: “101117-A-W3011-0006 “ by ResoluteSupportMedia/Flickr, CC BY 2.0) If you ever have the chance to attend a group meeting in which a large number of people attempt to decide what to do—whether that meeting involves tribal leaders in Afghanistan, party leaders in China, or an Indigenous deliberative assembly in Bolivia—you will quickly learn that these meetings move slowly. Not every voice will ultimately influence policy (those arguing to “pass the bill” and those arguing to “kill the bill” will not both be satisfied, even if they are both heard), but when multiple voices are heard, the chances that the final measure will be more closely tailored to the preferences of everyone in the group are higher than if those voices were not heard. Ordinance Would Finally Allow for Public Comment at Cleveland City Council Meetings This news clip from April 2021 reports on an ordinance that would allow public comment at Cleveland City Council Meetings. The Council approved new procedures for public comment in September 2021. Is it better to have lower transaction costs or lower conformity costs ? It depends. When decisions must be made, and made quickly, it is better to minimize transaction costs. If a country is under surprise attack, for example, that may not be the best time for long, deliberative conferences. In such a circumstance, the longer a country deliberates, the more it is likely to lose, so quick and decisive action—that is, decisions with low transaction costs—are essential. When a political party is deciding what its platform will be, on the other hand, it makes sense for the party to listen to multiple voices in order to attract multiple voters. Under those circumstances, expediency is less important than leading the various supporters of the party to believe that the party seeks the same things they seek. Discussions are lengthy precisely so that all the various interests can be heard. Solving coordination problems is no easy task, and finding solutions with acceptable amounts of transaction and conformity costs is often a challenge. As difficult as it can be, when people of good faith come together to confront these challenges, they can be successful. To avoid existential threats, they must find a way to coordinate. Toby Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity (New York: Hachette Books, 2020). Resolving so-called prisoner’s dilemmas (discussed in the next section) is a different matter because they contain features that make it difficult to arrive at decisions that benefit both the larger public and the individuals involved. The problem with prisoner’s dilemmas is not coordination costs. The problem with prisoner’s dilemmas is that individuals have strong incentives to do things that are not socially beneficial. Whenever individuals come together to make decisions, there is the potential that the group (collective) will face certain difficulties (dilemmas). These difficulties can involve disagreement about group goals or about the best course of action, or they might involve incentives individuals have to act in ways that are counter to group interests. When a group is sizable, one or more of these dilemmas is likely to exist in every attempt to make decisions or take action. When group members disagree regarding goals, a decision can be reached by force or through nonviolent, democratic means. Nonviolent, democratic processes typically involve voting. In these cases, the voting rules will influence the outcome. These rules can vary, from a plurality rule, in which the outcome is decided by the position that obtains the most votes, to a unanimity rule, in which everyone must ultimately agree to a single position. In general, voting rules are set so that the more consequential the issue, the higher the proportion of votes is needed to change the status quo. Groups making decisions face coordination challenges. These challenges exist when group members generally agree on the goals but disagree about the specifics. Making decisions regarding the specifics creates transaction costs—the time, effort, and other resources required to make the decisions—and conformity costs—the differences between the value of the policy that each individual hoped for and the decision they each actually received. collective action problems the broad category of activities in which participating individuals have incentives to maximize their own self-interest in ways that harm the group interest collective dilemma any situation in which a group must make difficult choices conformity costs the difference between what an individual wants from a policy decision and what the individual actually receives coordination problems the challenges groups face when there is general agreement on goals but disagreement on the specific ways in which to achieve them majority rule a form of decision-making by voting, in which the proposition that receives more than 50 percent of the votes wins quorum the minimum number of the group that must be present for a vote to be held status quo the current situation supermajority a voting rule in which more than a majority is needed for a measure to pass transaction costs the time, money, and effort required to make a group decision

Social Sciences