Friends from Across the Aisle: The Effects of Partisan Bonding, Partisan Bridging, and Network Disagreement on Outparty
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Friends from Across the Aisle: The Effects of Partisan Bonding, Partisan Bridging, and Network Disagreement on Outparty Attitudes and Political Engagement Nathanael Gratias Sumaktoyo1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Research on the influence of social networks on political behavior has led to findings showing an apparent trade-off between positive attitudes toward the outparty and political engagement. The prevalent sentiments have been that partisan bonding or ties with fellow partisans hurts evaluations of the outparty but helps political engagement. Partisan bridging or ties with opposite partisans, on the other hand, improves evaluations of the outparty but hurts engagement. I argue that this trade-off is essentially an illusion driven by a mistaken assumption that bonding and bridging are two opposite ends of the same continuum. Analyzing two original national surveys of the American public, I show that bonding and bridging are independent constructs with different consequences. Consistent with previous studies, I find that bonding hurts and bridging helps outparty attitudes. Both bonding and bridging, however, are positively related to political engagement. I also show that network disagreement partially mediates the effects of partisan bonding, but not the effects of partisan bridging. This suggests that the efforts to encourage voters to build relationships with politically different others can be done without having to worry that they will lead to decreased engagement. Keywords Social network · Partisan bonding · Partisan bridging · Inparty ties · Outparty ties · Political engagement · Outparty attitudes Various studies have used the terms partisan bonding (ties with fellow partisans), partisan bridging (ties with opposite partisans), and network disagreement Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1110 9-019-09552-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Nathanael Gratias Sumaktoyo [email protected] 1
Center for the Study of Religion and Society, University of Notre Dame, 4019 Jenkins Nanovic Halls, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA
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interchangeably or taken as given that they are strongly related to each other (e.g., Lupton and Thornton 2017; Mutz 2002a). These studies assume that partisan bonding and bridging are two opposite ends of the same continuum. As one increases, the other has to decrease. They also treat partisan bonding and bridging as similar to or strongly related to the level of disagreement in one’s discussion network. These conceptualizations have led to an apparent trade-off between positive outparty attitudes and political engagement. Partisan bridging leads to more positive outparty attitudes by increasing network disagreement and exposing individuals to diverse viewpoints (Mutz 2002b; Pattie and Johnston 2008). At the same time, partisan bridging and network disagreement lower pol
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