Change We Can Believe In: Structural and Content Dynamics within Belief Networks

Le résumé fourni par la source

Presumably, network analysis supplies an analytical framework for exploring the empirical properties of ideology. This manuscript incorporates two important, though ignored features in past research by inves- tigating how time shapes the properties of belief networks for different populations of people – those who exhibit high and low levels of political knowledge. Subsequent analysis produces several findings: (1) belief network density increases asymmetrically among people with high relative to low knowledge; (2) symbolic preferences are always more central to belief networks irrespective of survey timing or popula- tion; in contrast, policy beliefs exhibit some increase in centrality over time among the politically knowl- edgeable; and, (3) centrality does not predict variance within standard parametric models. This latter finding, in particular, presents problems for describing belief networks using the vernacular of Conversian belief systems – a disconnect that seems grounded in the mismatch between Converse’s individual-level theory and network analysis’ population-based properties.

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