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The article focuses on the democratic politics and several studies to understand the political judgment and engagement of individual citizens within the social and political contexts and networks and mentions that electorates are self-educating, but the quality of education varies across groups.

The article presents response of authors of the book "Race, Class, and Social Welfare: American Populism since the New Deal" for review.

Abstract: A central focus in the study of social networks and politics centers on the dynamics of diffusion and persuasion, as well as the manner in which these processes are affected by expert “opinion leaders.” The role of experts is particularly important in communication processes characterized by noisy, biased information – processes in which people with variable levels of expertise and strength of preference select informants, as well as being influenced by them. We employ an experimental approach that addresses these problems at multiple levels of observation in a highly dynamic context – small groups of individuals communicating with one another in real time. The analysis shows that participants formulate candidate judgments that decay in time, but the decay occurs at a significantly lower rate among the better informed. Moreover, the better informed are less affected by socially communicated messages regarding the candidates. Hence the influence of experts is not only due to their powers of persuasion, but also to the durability of their own privately formulated opinions. Their role in the communication process is further heightened by the higher value placed by participants on expert opinion, which in turn exposes the recipient to a heterogeneous and hence potentially influential stream of information. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article addresses the theoretical and methodological challenges that arise due to the interdependence of actors within political processes. Networks of communication and association provide a resolution to the micro—macro problem in political analysis—they provide a vehicle through which individual behavior is reciprocally connected to behavior in the aggregate. A central argument of the article is that these networks are endogenous not only to individual choice and preference, but also to the environmentally imposed supply of associates, giving rise to patterns of density dependence in politics. Density dependence, in turn, produces its own complex consequences for political processes, and hence interdependence frequently becomes a theoretical as well as a methodological imperative in political analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social Capital is created through the patterns of interdependence and social interaction that occur within a population, and we attempt to understand the participatory consequences of these patterns relative to the effects of human capital and organizational involvement. The production of social capital in personal networks was examined with the use of social network and participation data from the 1992 American study of the Cross National Election Project. The results suggest that politically relevant social capital (that is, social capital that facilitates political engagement) is generated in personal networks, that it is a by-product of the social interactions with a citizen`s discussants, and that increasing levels of politically relevant social capital enhance the likelihood that a citizen will be engaged in politics. Further, the production of politically relevant social capital is a function of the political expertise within an individual's network of relations, the frequency of political interaction within the network, and the size or extensiveness of the network. These results are sustained even while taking account of a person`s individual characteristics and organizational involvement. Hence, the consequences of social relations within networks are not readily explained away on the basis of either human capital effects or the effects of organizational engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars argue that the social structural basis of the party system in the United States developed during the New Deal era has weakened, resulting in an increasing tendency for ideology to shape partisan support. We test this proposition by examining the role of ideology in the formation of partisanship in the United States over the last two decades. We find that, over the last 20 years, ideology has played an increasing role in shaping partisanship, one that cuts across traditional New Deal social group cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]