Social Structure and Individual Political Participation in Five Countries

Seven hypotheses constituting the core of a causal model of individual political participation generate a large number of predictions about strengths of relations among sets of variables related to political participation. The model is tested on data from national surveys of Americans, Britons, West Germans, Italians, and Mexicans, and the model predicts the relative magnitudes of coefficients in the system of regression equations with better than 90% accuracy. Variables locating an individual in social networks, such as involvement in organizations and media use, are the best predictors of participation, and are also the most consistent in their effects crossnationally. Socioeconomic status predicts less well, and demographic variables least well; both sets of variables are important largely as they affect location in social networks.