Gimpel, Lay & Schuknecht (2003) Cultivating Democracy: Civic environments and Political Socialization

Becoming Political: Local Environments and Political Socialization Chapter 1

The Focus: The effects of local context on political socialization.

Town 1: Dundalk, Maryland
Rustbelt Northeast (like the bible belt, the limousine liberals, Starbucks republicans, MAC users, Dunkin Donuts Democrats)

"A place as distinctive as Dundalk aolso breads an distinctive politics. The population is working class white, hostile to diversity, baffled by sustained immigration in the wake of September 11, pro-union, pro-death penalty, not highly confident that it has a voice in government, generally unsure of the value of its opinion,s, and Democrat by identification but not strongly loyal to either party" (2).

Town 2: Potomac, Maryland
wealthy; racially homogenous; kids are held to high academic standards; many suffer from depression.

"These kids grow up to see government as highly responsive to what few demands their parents make...Students pick up political orientations from their parents...Churchill students express their opinions on virtually any topic, but their views usually are not deeply seated in a hurtful personal experience of threat or injustice" (3).

City 3: Baltimore, Maryland
Black; isolated, insular population; disruptive kids; poor students; low retention among young teachers

"People are political socialized by the information they receive. This information certainly varies over time, but it varies more regularly across space, as communities and their constituent parts structure the content an flow of politically relevant messages in distinctive ways" (7). [individual characteristics + and characteristics of the place you live].

The Framework presented in this book:
(1) children are raised within a specific structural context, a local social environment, that influences the political attitudes and values that they develop---this includes income education, race, political engagement (voter turnout), political leaning (Dem etc). (often an indirect impact on adolescent's political develpoment).
(2) social context-structures quality and flow of information; some are self-selected (neighborhood), yet are constrained (i.e. by your income, and thus which neighborhood you have the option of living in). Work setting, also exposed one to political opinions/information
(3) the direct impact of structural environmental factors is mediated through family and school relationships which are more immediate sources of causal influence on an individual's sense of efficacy, political knowledge, nationalistic sentiment, tolerance of diversity, and other dispositions germane to the political socialization process. "We do not argue that political attitudes and behaviors are completely structurally determined but rather that the range of individual freedom is restricted by the political and social aspects of the nurturing environment in the family and community" (10).

Although much work has been done to uncover which individual characteristics determine political attitudes and activity, politics does not occur in a vacuum. "Instead, cetain social context stimulate interest and mobilize pople for political action better than other [hence the importance of subcultures!]" (8). "non-self selected exposure" (8).

Dependent Variables:
(1) internal efficacy
(2) external efficacy
(3) opposition to diversity
(4) nationalistic feeling
(5) negativity toward local police
(6) support for clinton impeachment
(7) political discussion in the past week
(8) factual knowledge exam score

Independent Variables:
(1) social environment
(2) political environment
(3) media exposure
(4) demographics--gender, race etc
(5) family characteristics
(6) school experience

Chapter 2 Communities and Political Socialization
"Some might argue that social and political contexts do not matter in an era in which people can receive information directly from television or through the internet. Our suggestion is that messages conveyed through broadcast media are refracted through and transfromed by local agents of political socialization, including peers, paresnts and other family members, school authorities, religious authoritise, and local news media" (45).

Gimpel Chapter 2: Communities and Political Socialization

general finding: communities have an impact on political attitudes and behavior independent of the effects of individual characteristics like race, occupation, income, party, etc.

Community Characteristics:

ethnic/immigrant composition:
-percent of community that is of Asian ancestry
-percent African American
-percent Hispanic
-percent foreign born

community resources:
-median family income
-percentage with college degree

political characteristics:
-percent in Democratic Party
-voter turnout

etc.

dependent variables:
-frequency of political discussion
-level of factual political knowledge
-internal and external senses of political chauvinism
-attitudes toward the police and courts
-support for the clinton impeachment

first three categories showed relationships with ethnic diversity, knowledge, efficacy and political discussion (ex: communities with higher Asian populations tended to have high levels of discussion and knowledge)

-community resources didn't have much of an effect on knowledge, efficacy, or discussion

-partisan diversity had larger impact on political knowledge - structures pre-adult socialization heavily

-voter turnout greater associated with support for law enforcement

-ethnically "mixed" communities less tolerant of immigrants...?

-political environment most potent predictor of attitudes toward tolerance - two-party system = greater tolerance (as opposed to a community with homogeneous political attitudes, one-party)

Chapter 3: Racial Group Membership, Neighborhood Context, and Political Socialization

-evaluate individual racial or ethnic traits with community characteristics with a two-level model (HLM)

-major difference between white respondents and minority respondents was level of political discussion (lower for minorities)

-negative attitides toward law enforcement not as context dependent as other socialization indicators

-they basically spent the whole chapter trying to correlate race with their previous measures (knowledge, efficacy, etc...)

their conclusion:
-living within a coethnic enclave is not conducive to a positive socialization experience unless you are white.