My Sociological Study into Politics

[humder]

 I do sociology and I have been given coursework to do. My teacher suggested I do it on politics because I am interested in it.
 
 Do you have any suggestions on what to find out? Anything that interests you particularly?
 
 For example, it is sometimes said that people get more conservative with age, but is that really true? Where do people get their political beliefs from? Why do some people have such different beliefs from their parents? Why are some people apathetic and some people interested?  How does class, gender or religion influence your political attitudes?

There are posts on here that delve into this subject, for example how the poorest places in America vote and whether Arkansas voted strongly against Obama because they are racist.
 
 There are lots of possibilities here. If there is something you have always pondered about society and politics, now is your chance!

[Scam of God]

It'd be nice if there were some way to quantify the impact of charisma - or the lack thereof - on the judgment of the electorate, beyond "charismatic candidates seem to do better on the whole".

[humder]

It'd be nice if there were some way to quantify the impact of charisma - or the lack thereof - on the judgment of the electorate, beyond "charismatic candidates seem to do better on the whole".

 Interesting idea but that is more psychological. I am doing about society, so things to do with class, gender, family, ethnicity, age, education, religion, peer groups, role models, work place, etc.

[ilikeverin]

Where do people get their political beliefs from? Why do some people have such different beliefs from their parents? Why are some people apathetic and some people interested?

Political ideology, just like everything else in personality, is approximately 50% genetic.  But don't fear; you sociologists still have something to study!  You just keep looking at the wrong people, parents, who have approximately 0% influence over the personality of their children (sans genetic contribution, o/c).  I suggest looking at peer influences on ideology, or, even better, partisan affiliation.  I suspect you'll find a strong correlation between the ideologies of someone's friends and the ideology of that person, stronger than that between the kid and the people who raised him or her.

[Citizen James]

Actually, it's been my observation that people tend to get more liberal with age.  The trick is that society also becomes more liberal over time, so as society liberalizes faster than many individuals, people seem more conservative relative to society as a whole as they get older.

For example, many adults in the 1950s were strongly opposed to school desegregation.  Now few still possess that position, though some will still admit a certain degree of discomfort.  Back when I was born, interracial marriage was forbidden in many states - now most people don't even blink at the idea, and even most elders will at least tolerate the idea.

[Beet]

Ideological identification is a red herring because most people do not have coherent ideologies. Besides, ideologies are defined by elites like political scientists, they are subjectively constructed and don't necessarily represent "the true" mapping of political preferences.

Partisan identification is another matter altogether. The correlation between partisan identification of children and parents throughout the children's lifecycle is well documented in the political science literature. It is of course stronger at a younger age than older. A recent paper in the American Political Science Review several years ago also claimed to show a genetic component of political leaning. Yet another hypothesis that has a lot of evidence behind it is that partisan identification is formed during a particular 'coming of age' (16-24) and whichever party looks better during that period wins the lifelong attachments of the generation. The correlation between partisan identification and religious identification seems to be stronger, paradoxically, in Europe than the United States. That could be an interesting topic for a paper, although it wouldn't be new, o/c.

Personally, I am more interested in Clifford Geertz's work on the role of symbolism in culture and how political actors use symbols to push their message.

[ilikeverin]

Well, of course there's a correlation in general between parents' identification and kids'; most parents raise their children in environments similar to their own, so the kids are around peers of similar partisan bent to the parents.  A similar process happened to kids in boarding schools a while back; though they had infrequent contact with their parents, they still ended up acting and talking just like them, because their peers in the schools did.  So, there's another idea: what happens to kids whose parents are from, say, Wyoming, but who raise their kids in California, or vice-versa? (or the equivalent in European politics)

[humder]

 I am going to look into three things as influences on political attitude, which are gender, parents and peer group.