PUBLICATIONS

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Articles

2008	D. Baldassarri, "Partisan Joiners: Associational Membership and Political Polarization in American Society ", under review. Associational life may favor political integration or amplify division, depending on how individuals partition themselves into groups and whether their multiple affiliations embed them into concentric or crosscutting social circles. Using GSS data (1974-2004) on affiliations to 16 types of groups, I look at the interplay between associational membership and political polarization, and ask if there is any evidence of increased polarization in the associative patterns of Americans. Results show that the often lamented decline in group membership affects primarily the category of single-group members and is limited to few types of groups. The density of the network of overlapping membership has remained stable over time and there are no real changes in the patterns of shared memberships between groups, nor Republicans and Democrats differ in their patterns of preferential affiliation. While group types are not becoming more partisan, group joiners are becoming more so: group members have grown consistently more extreme in their political identities, and group types are becoming ideologically more heterogeneous. This raises the hypothesis that civil society polarization is occurring at the level of actual groups, and not group types.
2008	D. Baldassarri, A. Gelman " Partisans without Constraint: Political Polarization and Trends in American Public Opinion," American Journal of Sociology. 114(2): 408-46. Political polarization is commonly conceived as a phenomenon of opinion radicalization and measured using the variation of responses on individual issues. By this measure, research has shown that, despite the blatant polarization of the political elite, Americans' attitudes have become no more variable in recent decades. What has increased is the ideological distance between partisan subgroups. We think of polarization as a process of alignment along different dimensions of political conflict and measure it as growing constraint in people's political attitudes. We distinguish between issue partisanship---the correlation of issue attitudes with party ID or ideology---and issue alignment---the correlation between pairs of issues. Using data from the National Election Studies (1972-2004), we find issue alignment to have increased by only 2 percentage points in correlation per decade. Issue partisanship has increased more than twice as fast, thus suggesting that changes in people's attitudes correspond more to a re-sorting of party labels among voters than to greater constraint on issue attitudes: since parties are more polarized, they are now better at sorting individuals along ideological lines. Our findings suggest a reconsideration of the traditional liberal-pluralistic account of American politics. Although the partisan realignment of public opinion has not been matched by a realignment in issue preferences, it does not come without consequences for the political process. In fact, parties' polarization might have gained momentum as party voters have become more divided in their preferences. Moreover, increased issue partisanship, in a context of persistently low issue constraint, might amplify dynamics of unequal representation.
2007	D. Baldassarri, M. Diani "The Integrative Power of Civic Network," American Journal of Sociology, 113(3):735-80. This article moves the debate on the integrative mechanisms of civil society from the study of individual civic engagement and associational life to the study of interorganizational civic networks. Drawing upon evidence from Bristol and Glasgow, we identify a polycentric model of civic networks, based on horizontal solidarity and generalized reciprocity, in which organizations engage in micro relational patterns of balanced interdependence. Different types of ties - ‘transactions’ and ‘social bonds’ - operate as bridging and bonding forms of interorganizational social capital. Basic relational mechanisms generate network structures that are remarkably similar across locality, despite substantial differences between the two cities in their political culture and in the salience of established cleavages.
2007	D. Baldassarri, P. Bearman " Dynamics of Political Polarization," American Sociological Review, 72:784-811. Outstanding Article Publication in the ASA Section on Mathematical Sociology. This article accounts for two puzzling paradoxes. The first paradox is the simultaneous absence and presence of attitude polarization--the fact that global attitude polarization is relatively rare, even though pundits describe it as common. The second paradox is the simultaneous presence and absence of social polarization--the fact that while individuals experienced attitude homogeneity in their interpersonal networks, their networks are characterized by attitude heterogeneity. These paradoxes give rise to numerous scholarly arguments. By developing a formal model of interpersonal influence over attitudes in a context where individuals hold simultaneous positions on multiple issues we show why these arguments are not mutually exclusive and how they meaningfully refer to the same social setting. The results from this model provide a single parsimonious account for both paradoxes. The framework we develop may be generalized to a wider array of problems, including classic problems in collective action.
2006	D. Baldassarri, H.M.A. Schadee "Voter Heuristics and Political Cognition in Italy: An Empirical Typology,” Electoral Studies, 25, 448-466. Within a framework of reasoning voters who use various cognitive shortcuts — heuristics — to arrive at decision, we classify Italian voters on the basis of the information they possess, how information and judgment are organized and whether preferences match actual vote. By using only two sets of variables present in nearly all election surveys, we distinguish four types of voters: Utilius, a sort of Downsian voter that uses the left–right dimension in order to reduce the complexity of politics to a unidimensional space; Amicus, who conceives politics as an arena in which two main coalitions fight; Aliens, a detached voter that is strongly disinterested in — or even disappointed by — politics and its protagonists; and Medians, who belongs to a residual category. By distinguishing voters according to their actual knowledge and style of political reasoning, we provide a classification that is both able to grasp actual differences in the level of political cognition and sophistication, and suggestive with respect to the kind of information that are pertinent for the task at hand. We demonstrate that people follow multiple strategies and rely selectively on different kind of available information. It follows that parties, leaders, coalitions and media affect voter behavior, but they have different leverage on different types of voters.We conclude that a proper account of voter behavior needs to move from the search of the determinants of vote to the search of multiple mechanisms through which voters perceive, represent and evaluate the political landscape.
2005	D. Baldassarri, "Beyond Free Riding: On the Use of Formal Models for the Study of Collective Action," Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, 1, 125-156. Or. title: “Oltre il free rider: l’utilizzo di modelli formali nello studio dell’azione collettiva.” Since Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action appeared, several formal models of collective action have been proposed. Although maintaining the same analytical approach, scholars working on this vein have strongly relaxed Olson’s rational choice assumptions, even shifting toward a relational or structural perspective. Current models of collective action consider the interdependence among actors; the effect of norms, sanctions and mutual influence; population heterogeneity in resources, interest and power; social position and the impact of the network structure; and processes of adaptive and backward looking decision making. By reviewing recent literature, this paper shows the possibilities of mathematical modeling and introduces some basic notions about computer simulations, with a specific focus on agent-based models.
2004	D. Baldassarri, H.M.A Schadee "The Appeal of Coalitions: How and Why Electoral Alliances Affect Voters' Political Understanding," Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 2, 249-276. Or. title: “Il fascino della coalizione. Come e perche' le alleanze elettorali influenzano il modo in cui gli elettori interpretano la politica.” Changes in the electoral and party system at the beginning of the ’90s had several effects on the attitudes and behavior of ordinary Italian citizens. Based on public opinion surveys, the article studies how voters perceive and interpret the political landscape and electoral competition. Three main results can be shown. First, with respect to the self-placement on the left-right dimension, Italian voters “discovered the right”. Second, party locations on the left-right continuum became an unsettled aspect of the electoral competition: in particular, citizen's perception of party placement changes according with the overall pattern of their alliances. Finally, several cues suggest that the center-left and center-right alliances (and their candidates) have become important reference objects. Specifically, at least a fourth of Italian voters deploy a judgmental logic based on a “amicus/hostis” criterion: they are positively biased in favor of parties and leaders affiliated with the coalition they prefer, and, specularly, they are negatively biased toward those that belong to the opposite alliance. We suggest this being an easy, although effective shortcut for reducing the complexity of electoral choice.
2003	D. Baldassarri "Does the Ideological Voter Exist?: The Use of 'Left' and 'Right' by Italian Voters," Quaderni dell’Osservatorio Elettorale, 49, 5-34. Or. title: "Il voto ideologico esiste? L’utilizzo delle categorie di sinistra e destra nell’elettorato italiano."

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