FOR SHAME - THE EFFECT OF COMMUNITY COOPERATIVE CONTEXT ON THE PROBABILITY OF VOTING

The question of why some people vote in American national elections an d others do not has been the focus of a vast literature in social scie nce. This study builds on previous work emphasizing the political rele vance of civic norms prescribing social cooperation. County-level cens us response rates were used to measure the strength of civic norms in counties represented in the 1992 National Election Study (NES). The an alysis shows that a person's likelihood of voting increases with the c ensus response rate in the county of residence, controlling for the us ual set of factors associated with turnout The probability of voting w as also correlated with the incidence of cooperative behavior in other arenas, such as giving to charities or willingly sewing on juries, Th ese findings provide support for the importance of cooperative norms i n explaining political participation. In addition, the relationship be tween voting and county-level census response was significantly greate r among respondents who read newspapers more often; hence, newspapers evidently are one means by which social expectations are communicated.