The Relationship Between Participation, Social Networks and Cooperation: How Social Networks Influence Voter Turnout through Mobilization and how both Networks and Turnout are Related to Cooperation.

Abstract

This dissertation is organized around three papers that illustrate the codependence of cooperation, political participation and social networks. It takes advantage of a unique project, the 2010 Rural Social Network Study that comprehensively mapped the social relationships of residents in 32 small Honduran communities. These data are paired with survey questions and behavioral observations of subsamples in incentivized settings.

The first paper, ``Cooperation and Popularity,'' reinforces the claim that cooperation and friendship share a strong positive relationship. Friendship and social networks may have evolutionary roots in cooperation, but this work is the first to demonstrate a relationship between the number of friends one has and the propensity to cooperate. Number of friendships predicts cooperation in a public goods game. Specifically, I find that individuals with more friends are more likely to cooperate in earlier rounds, and that a group's total amount of money earned increases with the aggregate number of friends of its members.

The second paper, ``Habituated Cooperation and Voter Turnout,'' provides empirical support for the claim that voting is a cooperative act. Prior theoretical work argues for a link between cooperation and voter turnout. I demonstrate that there is a robust empirical relationship been those who cooperate in public goods games and self-reported voting.

The final paper, ``Social Networks and Mobilization,'' demonstrates that mobilization occurs more commonly when strong affective relationships are present. This study is the first to demonstrate how one’s position within a social network can affect the ability to mobilize others for participation in a community meeting. Specifically, the greater the number of connections a person is away from a mobilizer, the less likely she is to attend a community meeting. I also show that as mobilizers are more central to the network, the percentage of those who attend the community meeting grows.

Together these papers illustrate that cooperation, social networks, and participation are linked to one another thereby contributing to the understanding of the interrelationship between social, political, and economic dynamics in the political process. These findings could be used to augment political participation and community cooperation through social networks.