Political Science Social Capital, Political Participation and Public Opinion
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Social Capital
Social capital is the mutual trust and cooperation that arises from the web of connections among people involved in organizations and community groups. For the most part, private activities, not government ones, foster social capital. The term civil society is sometimes used as a synonym for the relationships that create social capital. In a civil society, social capital flows easily between people.
Creating Social Capital
Activities that can build social capital include the following:
- Participating in the local parent-teacher association
- Joining a civic organization, such as the Elks or the Kiwanis Club
- Volunteering in the neighborhood or around the community
- Forming a neighborhood watch
- Donating old clothes or goods
- Contributing to a food bank
- Joining a church or synagogue group
- Belonging to a bridge team, craft club, or other type of common-interest group
Bowling Alone
Robert Putnam’s successful book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2001) put the issue of social capital into the context of popular culture. Putnam noticed that bowling leagues had declined significantly in the last few decades of the twentieth century. People still bowled, but as individuals and informal groups, not as part of a league. This change prompted Putnam to worry that the decline of membership in community groups was eroding America’s social capital. The book prompted a great deal of debate and some controversy over Putnam’s conclusions that America’s social capital was rapidly declining.
Social Capital and Democracy
In a democratic society, people must be willing to trust others and tolerate those with whom they disagree. Without these attitudes, democracy can fail, because democracy is ultimately a cooperative form of government. Many political scientists regard social capital as essential to democracy because social capital forges bonds between members of the community. These bonds enable people to readily join together. Also, working with others helps build a sense of community and trust among citizens, which, in turn, creates more social capital.
Social Capital and Democratization
One of the most difficult tasks for any democratizing country is the building of civil society. Authoritarian regimes discour-age civil society because civil society can form the basis of resistance to the government. These governments instill fear and mistrust within their citizens, often turning groups and individuals against one another. New democracies sometimes have trouble building community trust and tolerance because their citizens are not used to working together in civil society. For this reason, nations that seek to help other nations democratize must focus much energy on creating social capital and building civil societies.
Political Participation
Political participation is any activity that shapes, affects, or involves the political sphere. Political participation ranges from voting to attending a rally to committing an act of terrorism to sending a letter to a representative. Broadly speaking, there are three types of participation:
- Conventional participation: Activities that we expect of good citizens. For most people, participation occurs every few years at election time. People strongly committed to politics are more likely to participate on a regular basis.
Example: Conventional political participation includes voting, volunteering for a political campaign, making a campaign donation, belonging to activist groups, and serving in public office.
- Unconventional participation: Activities that are legal but often considered inappropriate. Young people, students, and those with grave concerns about a regime’s policies are most likely to engage in unconventional participation.
Example: Unconventional political participation includes signing petitions, supporting boycotts, and staging demonstrations and protests.
- Illegal participation: activities that break the law. Most of the time, people resort to illegal participation only when legal means have failed to create significant political change.
Example: Illegal political participation includes political assassination, terrorism, and sabotaging an opponent’s campaign through theft or vandalism.
The Watergate Scandal
The Watergate scandal, which brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon in 1974, involved illegal political participation. The Nixon campaign, working actively with the Nixon Administration, used espionage and subversion against its opponents. For example, Nixon supporters forged letters from opposing candidates, such as the infamous “Canuck Letter,” to discredit those candidates. The scandal got its name from the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee, which members of the Nixon campaign had broken into in order to plant spying devices and to steal files.
Why People Participate
Most democratic citizens feel that some level of political participation, particularly conventional participation, is admirable and acceptable. But political participation can be hard: One must find time, and perhaps money, in order to participate. So why do people do it? People participate in politics out of a sense of the following:
- Idealism: Some participate because they believe strongly in a particular idea.
- Responsibility: For many, participation is a responsibility of democratic citizenship.
- Self-interest: A person might work to promote issues and causes that personally profit that person.
- Enjoyment: Some simply enjoy public activity, either because of the activity itself or because of the friends they make while politically engaged.
The Paradox of Participation
Rational choice theorists have argued that participation, particularly voting, is irrational. In a large country, the probability that one’s vote will decide the outcome of an election is microscopic. Because participation has costs (time to vote, effort to learn about the candidates and issues, and so on), the costs of voting outweigh the benefits. In other words, voting does not make sense for people as an activity. Another way to think about this issue is to consider the person who votes because he or she desires to have an impact on the government. If he or she votes out of a sense that the one vote will make a difference, then this person will be sorely disappointed. The truth is that one vote does not make a difference. At the same time, however, if everyone who votes ceased to believe in the power of voting to effect change, then no one would turn out for elections and the democratic process would stop functioning. Political scientists call this phenomenon the paradox of participation.
Nonparticipation
In some countries, large parts of the population do not participate in politics at all. In the United States, for example, only about half of all eligible people vote in presidential elections. Such nonparticipation signifies a number of attitudes:
- Contentment: Lack of participation indicates satisfaction with the status quo—if they were upset about an issue, people would participate.
- Freedom: In a democratic society, people have the freedom to not participate.
- Apathy: Many people do not know much about politics and do not care.
- Alienation: People do not participate because they feel that no one in power listens to their views and that the government is, at best, indifferent to them.
Public Opinion
Public opinion consists of the views held by the population of a state that influence those in power. In a democratic state, politicians must listen to public opinion if they wish to keep their jobs. Dissatisfied constituents can vote out those who ignore their views. But regimes with other types of governments also need to pay attention to public opinion. If the public overwhelmingly opposes the government, the regime could be in serious danger of revolution or collapse.
Assessing Public Opinion
We learn about public opinion through polling, which asks people their views and then compiles the results. Politicians and pundits in many countries rely on public opinion polls, and the media frequently reports on polls. Sampling a subset of the population allows pollsters, or the people who create and take the polls, to get a sense of overarching concerns and interests within a large population. Rather than polling every citizen, an expensive and time-consuming process, polls use samples. Pollsters hope that the opinions of the sample accurately reflect the population as a whole. Just as one does not need to taste every bite of stew to know that it needs more salt, one need not poll every person to learn public opinion.
Good and Bad Samples
To make sure that their poll results are accurate, pollsters seek good samples. The most obvious way to get a good sample is to include lots of people. But including more people does not guarantee that the poll will be accurate. Instead, a sample must be representative—that is, the sample must have the same basic characteristics as the population. If the population has a 15 percent poverty rate, for example, the sample should have a roughly equal portion of poor people. Pollsters have a number of techniques to ensure a representative sample, and they rely on statistical methods to measure the probability that a poll is accurate.
Pollsters rely heavily on probability and randomness to increase the chance of getting a good sample. In a probability sample, each person in the population has a known chance of being chosen as part of the sample. When pollsters assign each person an equal chance of being selected, they are using random selection.
Sampling error results from bad samples. A poll that falls prey to sampling error will inaccurately measure public opinion. A common source of sampling error is a skewed sample, one that does not match the population. Some popular types of polling—asking people as they walk down the street, for example, or online polls—produce very skewed samples and are therefore unreliable.
The Literary Digest Poll
One of the most notorious examples of a bad sample is the 1936 presidential election poll conducted by the Literary Digest, a notable magazine of the era. The sample numbered more than a million people, but it ended up very wrong: The poll predicted that Alfred Landon would defeat Franklin Roosevelt, but Roosevelt won easily. The poll was wrong because its sample was skewed. Pollsters contacted people in phone books, as well as people with registered automobiles. But during the Great Depression, rich people were the only ones with phones and cars. Thus, the poll contained responses from far too many rich people and not nearly enough from other social classes.
Influences on Public Opinion
Many factors affect public opinion:
- Politicians: Many officials actively campaign to generate support among the public. They give speeches and interviews, stage rallies, and listen to constituents.
- Media: The news media covers all major political events extensively. Indeed, sometimes it seems that the media creates important political events by choosing to cover them so much. Because the vast majority of people get their political information from the media, it has a huge impact.
- Socioeconomic status: Most political and economic events affect people unevenly, so one’s social and economic status naturally affects one’s views. Wealthy people are more likely than poor people to support a budget that cuts taxes on capital gains, for example, because they would benefit more from the tax cut.
- Major events: Any significant event—a war, an economic downturn, or a diplomatic success, for example—can influence people’s views.
Example: In the United States, whenever a foreign crisis arises, support for the president shoots up dramatically. Political scientists call this increase in popularity the rally ’round the flag effect. The effect might not always last a long time, but in the short run, the president’s popularity goes up.
- Opinion leaders: Political scientists call a person whose views on an issue can affect the views of others an opinion leader. Often, opinion leaders are prominent members of the community and pay more attention to politics than most people.
Example: The Internet has created a new type of opinion leader called a blogger (short for web logger). Many people read the same political blogs every day and are strongly influenced by what they read. Politicians have begun to court bloggers, going so far as to invite them to conventions and to grant them interviews in an attempt to win the opinion leaders over to their side.
Media Saturation
In the last twenty years, the media has become a bigger part of our lives. Twenty-four-hour news networks allow people to tune in any time. At the same time, the networks must find something to fill all those hours—and to outdo one another—so the networks often seek sensational stories. Talk radio has also become extremely popular. Many people rely on talk radio for much of their news, even though many talk radio hosts are openly partisan. Escaping the media often seems impossible: There always seems to be a television, radio, or Internet stream playing in the background of our daily lives.
