PUBLICATIONS
Books

2005 D. Baldassarri
La semplice arte di votare. Le scorciatoie cognitive degli
elettori
italiani. Il Mulino,
Bologna.
En. title: The Simple Art of Voting: The Cognitive Shortcuts of Italian
Citizens.
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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." |
Book reviews and other publications
2009
| D. Baldassarri, "Collective Action beyond the Free Rider. How Collective Goods become Collective?" in P. Hedström and P. Bearman (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology. Oxford University Press, New York.
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2009
| G. Legnante, D. Baldassarri, "I fattori di breve periodo. La comunicazione politica e la campagna." in P.Segatti, P. Bellucci (eds.) La Cultura Politica degli Italiani. Il Mulino, Bologna.
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2008
| D. Baldassarri, review of "Polarized America" by Nolan McCarthy, Poole and Rosenthal, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia.
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2007
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D. Baldassarri, "How Do We Get There Empirically?" comment on Andrew Abbott's "Mechanimsms and Relations," Sociologica, 2. |
| 2007 |
D. Baldassarri, “Left and Right: The
Ideological Dimension Between the First and Second Republic,” book chapter in Marco
Maraffi (ed.) Gli italiani e la politica, Bologna, Il Mulino, forthcoming. Or.
title "Sinistra-Destra: la dimesione ideologica tra Prima e Seconda Repubblica." |
2006
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D. Baldassarri, review of A.
Zuckerman (ed) "The
Social Logic of
Politics. Personal Networks as Contexts for Political Behavior" Contemporary Sociology, 35, 4, 396-97. |
| 2005 |
D. Baldassarri, review of Guido Legnante "Alla ricerca
del consenso," Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica. |
Working papers
| 2008 |
E. Marshall, D. Baldassarri, “Early Career Trajectories in the U.S. Senate, 1981-2006” conference paper. |
| 2008 |
D. Baldassarri, “Keeping one's distance: Odysseus and the role of ambiguity in the making of social sciences (and our lives).” conference paper. |
| 2008 |
A. Ghaziani, D. Baldassarri, “The Question of Cultural Coherence and Network Analysis.” working paper. |
| | D. Baldassarri, "Political Polarization and Social
Contexts in Italy", working paper. |
| | D. Baldassarri, "Prisoners without Dilemma: Punishment and Solidarity in the Civitavecchia Political Prison (1941-1943)," working paper. |
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