The Social Logic of Past Politics (Web Resource)
Title: The Social Logic of Past Politics
Author: Donald DeBats
Abstract: Alexandria and Newport are River Cities ? one on the Potomac River opposite Washington DC and one on the Ohio River opposite Cincinnati, Ohio. This website ? and the large study on which it rests -- focuses on these two cities as they were in years just before the Civil War (Alexandria) and just after (Newport). In the nineteenth century the United States was still a rural nation, but cities were the way of the future.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.socsci.flinders.edu.au/amst/TaleofTwoCities

It’s Not Just What You Have, but Who You Know: Networks, Social Proximity to Elites, and Voting in State and Local Elections (Article) [show prizes]
Title: It’s Not Just What You Have, but Who You Know: Networks, Social Proximity to Elites, and Voting in State and Local Elections
Author: Donald DeBats
Author: Matthew Pietryka
Abstract: Individual-level studies of electoral turnout and vote choice have focused largely on personal attributes as explanatory variables. We argue that scholars should also consider the social network in which individuals are embedded, which may influence voting through variation in individuals’ social proximity to elites. Our analysis rests on newly discovered historical records revealing the individual votes of all electors in the 1859 statewide elections in Alexandria, Virginia and the 1874 municipal elections in Newport, Kentucky, paired with archival work identifying the social relations of the cities’ populations. We also replicate our core findings using survey data from a modern municipal election. We show that individuals more socially proximate to elites turn out at a higher rate and individuals more socially proximate to a given political party’s elites vote disproportionately for that party. These results suggest an overlooked social component of voting and provide a rare nineteenth-century test of modern voting theories.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305541600071X
Primary URL Description: URL for the article
Access Model: Cambridge University Press Cambridge Core Subscription
Format: Journal
Publisher: American Political Science Review

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