The Distribution and Determinants of Socially Supplied Political Expertise

• Author: Paul A. Djupe,Anand Edward Sokhey
• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Date: 01 March 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X13486924
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

2014, Vol. 42(2) 199 –225

© The Author(s) 2013

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X13486924

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Article

The Distribution and

Determinants of Socially

Supplied Political

Expertise

Paul A. Djupe1 and Anand Edward Sokhey2

Abstract

Recent work on social influence has highlighted the importance of socially

supplied political expertise, crediting it with strengthening attitudes, resolving

ambivalence, and encouraging political participation. However, in focusing on

the consequences of socially supplied political expertise, scholars have made

the implicit assumption that citizens have equal access to this resource and

have largely ignored its distribution. Given that individuals are constrained by

their social contexts, we are particularly troubled by this oversight, and thus

use two nationally representative data sources to explore the distribution

of expertise among and throughout the social networks of citizens. We find

consistent evidence that existing resource inequalities reinforce the unequal

distribution of expertise in social networks—a gender-moderated pattern

that involvement in civil society may help remedy.

Keywords

social networks, expertise, gender, civil society, political knowledge

1Denison University, Granville, OH, USA

2The University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Paul A. Djupe, Department of Political Science, Denison University,

Granville, OH 43023-0810, USA.

Email: djupe@denison.edu

486924APR42210.1177/1532673X13486924American Politics ResearchDjupe and Sokhey

research-article2013

200 American Politics Research 42(2)

In a series of high-profile findings, Diana Mutz (2002a, 2002b, 2006) has

posed a dilemma for democratic theorists: democracy can be either delibera-

tive or participatory, but not both. There are many reasonable responses to

this claim (e.g., Klofstad, Sokhey, & McClurg, 2013), though a particularly

important one is that people may rely on political experts to provide them

with information that is essential for political participation, regardless of the

amount of disagreement that they encounter in their daily lives (e.g., McClurg,

2006). In this article we address this claim, describing the distribution of

political expertise in the electorate, exploring the degree to which existing

inequalities structure access to political experts, and considering the forces

that may facilitate the acquisition of this important political resource.

Political expertise is important from a variety of well-established theoreti-

cal perspectives. Downs (1957) first argued that citizens’ social circles func-

tion as information shortcuts, and that people seek out socially supplied

information from like-minded political experts. This assumption has been

widely adopted (e.g., Huckfeldt & Sprague, 1995),1 motivating the study of

the effects of social access to political expertise, and enabling the argument

that political experts undergird democracy by allowing an efficient division

of labor in the broader electorate (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954;

Huckfeldt, 2001). Others have followed up on this point, presenting socially

supplied expertise as a sort of democratic panacea that strengthens attitudes,

resolves ambivalence, and encourages political participation (Huckfeldt,

2001; McClurg, 2006; Richey, 2008; Ryan, 2010; though see Sokhey &

McClurg, 2012 for mixed evidence). As Huckfeldt succinctly describes it,

“[S]ocial communication creates the potential for modest amounts of politi-

cal expertise to go a long way in enhancing the performance of democratic

politics” (2001, p. 425).

While socially supplied expertise appears to be an efficient method of

information diffusion and a potential solution to Mutz’s (2006) democratic

dilemma, we are troubled by the fact that the actual distribution of expertise

in the mass electorate has received little scholarly attention. In reality, indi-

viduals face constraints in network selection (Huckfeldt & Sprague, 1995);

networks are coercive and regulate individuals’ exposure to broader informa-

tion environments (Granovetter, 1973; Huckfeldt, Beck, Dalton, & Levine,

1995); social contexts—like neighborhoods and churches (Djupe & Gilbert,

2009; Mutz & Mondak, 2006)—are broadly structured by socioeconomic

status and race (Huckfeldt, 1986; Leighley & Matsubayashi, 2009). Thus,

instead of an electorate that reaps the benefits of “trickle-down” knowledge,

the reality may be unequal distribution. That is, political expertise may be

concentrated in pockets, which may reinforce existing civic inequalities.

What is perhaps more pernicious is that involvement in elements of civil