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The social logic of political choice: Picking a political party in the context of immediate social circles

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Zusammenfassung

Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird die „social logic of politics“ dazu verwendet, um politische Präferenzen von Menschen zu erklären. Im Zentrum der politischen Wahl steht der hier vorgestellten theoretischen Sichtweise zufolge das soziale Lernen. Demnach entwickeln Menschen ihre politischen Präferenzen, ihr politisches Wissen, ihre Werte, ihre Wahrnehmungen und ihre Entscheidungen hinsichtlich politischen Verhaltens in der Regel im Austausch mit Mitgliedern ihrer engeren sozialen Kreise. Politische Einstellungen und Ziele sind damit nicht das Resultat ökonomischer Präferenzen; sie sind auch nicht das Ergebnis sorgfältiger Erwägungen, in denen die Befriedigung individueller Bedürftnisse im Zentrum steht.

Abstract

The Social Logic of Politics places social learning at the center of political choice. People develop their political preferences, knowledge, values, perceptions of ability, and decisions about political behavior in interactions with others, usually members of their social circles. Political attitudes and goals are not derivatives of exogenous economic preferences. They are not the results of careful calculations, in which optimization of personal needs guides the mode of reasoning. This theoretical stance draws sustenance from recent work across the social science, even as it harkens back to established, if neglected principles of political analysis.

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  1. Department of Political Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Alan S. Zuckerman

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Correspondence to Alan S. Zuckerman.

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My thanks to Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck for his encouragement and for the critical comments of several anonymous referees and to Josip Dasović and Jennifer Fitzgerald, my co-authors of Partisan Families: the Social Logic of Bounded Partisanship in Germany and Britain (Zuckerman et al. 2007). Material from that book appears in this essay.

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Zuckerman, A.S. The social logic of political choice: Picking a political party in the context of immediate social circles. PVS 48, 633–649 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-007-0125-3

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