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Political Information Acquisition for Social Exchange

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  • Aldashev, Gani

Abstract

Why do citizens get politically informed in a democracy? On one hand, being informed allows a citizen to participate in political discussions within her social network. On the other hand, having an informed opinion can help her to extend her social network. This paper builds a simple model on these insights and finds that effort in political information acquisition has inverted-U shape in the size of social network. The data from the 2000 American National Election Study and the 2002–2006 European Social Surveys confirm this theory: political information acquisition, political knowledge, and interest in politics increase with the size of social network, at a decreasing rate. The effect of social network is much weaker for the political efficacy measures for the United States, but not for Europe.

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  • Aldashev, Gani, 2010. "Political Information Acquisition for Social Exchange," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 5(1), pages 1-25, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00009009
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00009009
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    Cited by:

    1. Valentino Larcinese, 2009. "Information Acquisition, Ideology and Turnout: Theory and Evidence From Britain," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 21(2), pages 237-276, April.
    2. Valentino Larcinese, 2007. "Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 387-411, June.
    3. R. Aytimur & Aristotelis Boukouras & Robert Schwager, 2014. "Voting as a signaling device," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 55(3), pages 753-777, April.
    4. Couttenier, Mathieu & Hatte, Sophie, 2016. "Mass media effects on non-governmental organizations," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 57-72.
    5. Bruns, Christian, 2013. "Elections and Market Provision of Information," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79857, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Karamychev, Vladimir A. & Swank, Otto H., 2022. "A social image theory of information acquisition, opinion formation, and voting," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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