ABSTRACT
Introduction What is it exactly that people are doing when they discuss the most recent events of the presidential campaign or the last gaffe of the foreign minister, irrespective of the part of the world where this conversation takes place? Do they get a better grasp of political issues and become better prepared for making political decisions or is their exchange of opinions merely a means for venting grievances and occasionally getting reassured about the rightness of their options? From a theoretical perspective, all democratic theories agree on the benefits of public deliberation for the quality of democratic processes. Deliberation is believed to crystallize individuals’ positions on public issues, to let them acknowledge the variety of arguments revolving around an issue, to stir up inter est in public issues, to increase their sense of efficacy, and to raise their aware ness of the necessity to participate in order to advance their opinions and interests (Delli Carpini et al. 2004; Fishkin 1997; Mendelberg 2002; Mutz 2006). Nevertheless, some argue that deliberation does not always result in valuable new ideas and that deliberative circumstances are sometimes mere ‘echo cham bers’ (Fishkin 1997: 15), a mix of unreflected and uninformed opinions on public events and issues. From an empirical perspective, though, previous research has often confirmed the significant and positive link between political talk, participa tion and knowledge.2 Yet the specific circumstances that favour this influence and contribute to the making of a more reflective and participative citizenry remain disputed. In general, there is no clear answer to the question of whether the influence of everyday political conversation is universal or is influenced by the makeup of social milieux, political context and culture. To fill in this gap I examine the importance of casual social interaction and everyday political conversations across settings with different political cultures and structural features. The chapter addresses two questions. First, do we see evidence of more political discussion being associated with more political par ticipation, be it electoral or not? Second, does everyday political talk improve people’s ‘conceptual knowledge’ in politics (Scheufele 1999), namely the ability to employ cognitive structures and heuristic procedures when assessing political issues? The research draws on survey data collected in national studies in
Hungary, both before and after the regime change. The analysis looks at the influence exerted by the size of political discussion groups and their composition – whether homogenous or heterogeneous – on people’s likelihood to turn out to vote and to participate in a number of political and civic activities that are gener ally seen as mainstream forms of political participation, such as working for a party, participating in rallies or displaying bumper stickers. It also tests whether an increase in the size and partisan diversity of these groups make people better equipped to recognize and employ left-right heuristics in politics. Results indicate that more extensive participation in informal political con versation – that is, more partners for political discussion – is associated with increased political participation, but does not affect individual turnout. The ana lysis does not suggest a significant relation between participation in political conversation and either ‘conceptual knowledge’ or practical political knowledge – that is, the ability to position parties on the economic left-right scale. The analysis also indicates that embeddedness in politically homogeneous networks promotes electoral participation, whereas politically heterogeneous surroundings are associated with an increase in non electoral forms of participation and the ability to use left-right semantics. Additionally, the test of potential reciprocal effects between social and political networks and participation reveals a bi directional relationship between political discussion networks and participation.
