Sameness and Segregation: The effects of communication and competition on political participation of African-Americans

Some previous research on the contextual causes of individual political participation has argued that increasing community heterogeneity increases political participation; while other researchers have claimed the opposite: that increasing community homogeneity (decreasing heterogeneity) increases participation. These theories use the different mechanisms of conflict and improved social networks. On the one hand, conflict which is theorized to increase in a heterogeneous environment is thought to increase participation and, on the other hand, more efficient social networks which are more likely in a homogenous context are thought to do the same. I argue that, in the case of race, these theories are not incompatible and, in fact, both mechanisms operate if the level of aggregation by which heterogeneity is measured is properly specified. In fact, it seems that that the seemingly contradictory evidence has been a result of the researcher's choice of the level of data aggregation. Using a model that combines contextual and individual level data and a measure of racial segregation rather than simply a measure of diversity, I demonstrate that both competition and communication increases turnout. Using data from the 1996 National Black Election Study, I demonstrate that, in the context of race, increasing homogeneity on a neighborhood level increases participation; while racially segregating these neighborhoods within a larger community, also increases participation.