Seminar

Ethnic Political Socialization and University Elections

Daniel Tavana ( IAST)

September 21, 2021, 12:15–13:15

Toulouse

Room Auditorium 4 + Zoom

Abstract

Foundational studies of political behavior find that university education facilitates the development of political attitudes and shapes socialization outcomes. But in unconsolidated democracies where ethnic political parties dominate and identity is politically salient, education may play a different role in shaping patterns of mass politics. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the consequences of political party intervention in annual university elections, a common feature of university life in the Middle East and the Global South. We draw on pre- and post-election surveys at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon and argue that ethnic political parties recruit partisan students as "party agents" who mobilize unaffiliated students through intense forms of peer-to-peer contact. Using a conjoint experiment embedded in both surveys, we show that these elections facilitate horizontal socialization by increasing support for in-group political elites and, to a lesser extent, ethnic political parties. By locating the university as an understudied site of competitive and contentious politics, our findings contribute new insights into the role of education in shaping political attitudes. The persistence of ethnic political power can be attributed in part to party activity in less obviously political arenas which have not been systematically studied.

Reference

Daniel Tavana ( IAST), Ethnic Political Socialization and University Elections, IAST Lunch Seminar, Toulouse: IAST, September 21, 2021, 12:15–13:15, room Auditorium 4 + Zoomroom Auditorium 4 + Zoom.