Political Talking Partners and Civic Engagement: An Application of Egocentric Social Network Analysis in the Field of Political Science

for their valuable comments; however, all errors are my own. This is a work in progress; please do not cite or reference. Abstract: The existing literature on civic engagement in the United States has focused on face-to-face interactions as the key to acquiring both the desire and skills necessary to participate in civil society. However, few works have focused on the relationship between individuals' political talking networks and civic engagement on a nationwide level. One notable exception to this general oversight is Lake and Huckfeldt (1998), who present evidence suggesting a link between the frequency of interaction with political talking partners and civic engagement. Making use of public opinion data from the Cross-National Election Studies' United States study (Beck, et al., 1992), the current study extends the work of Lake and Huckfeldt in two parts. The first assesses the relationship between frequency of interaction in the political talking network and multiple indicators of civic engagement. The second addresses the relationship between attitudinal disagreement in political talking networks and civic engagement. The results suggest a positive relationship between frequency of interaction and civic engagement, and also between the amount of disagreement in the network and civic engagement. The methodological and normative implications of these relationships are discussed.