Are Diverse Political Networks Always Bad for Participatory Democracy?

Abstract

Political discussions within interpersonal networks not only help communicate political information that is otherwise too costly to obtain, but they also expose people to political views that are not necessarily congruent to their own predispositions. In exploring consequences of exposure to political disagreements, existing literature finds an interesting dilemma: Although political disagreements contribute to the deliberative democracy by encouraging greater awareness of rationales for opposing views as well as greater political tolerance, they undermine the prospect for participatory democracy by demobilizing people. In response, this article shows that experiences of political disagreements do not necessarily discourage political participation. More specifically, based on the American National Election Study 2000, we find that the demobilizing effect of political disagreements continues to decrease with increasing levels of indifference and alienation between the candidates. Furthermore, among highly alienated individuals, we find that experiences of political disagreements can actually promote their voting turnout.

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