Networks of Political Beliefs

Philip Converse (1964) started a niche tradition in the social sciences of investigating the relationships among different beliefs in different populations. In contrast with mainstream political science research, which has long studied political beliefs as independent constructs, the ‘relational culture’ perspective argues that the relationships among attitudes, beliefs, and values are a crucial element of a culture because they give meaning and order to the system as a whole (Abelson and Rosenberg 1958; Swidler 1986; Eckstein 1988; Romney et al. 1996; Pachucki and Breiger 2010; McLean 2016; DiMaggio et al. 2018). Viewing the relationships between beliefs as a network structure permits the testing of new questions and theories about cultural formation and change within the social networks that exist in any example of collective action (eg Jasny and Fisher 2022). A key example of this work is in the policy arena where many network studies have focused on the similarity of beliefs as the basis for coalition formation among policy actors and organizations; which is one of the components of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier 1988; for networks approach see Leifeld 2013). Newer approaches view beliefs as complex systems of preferences that characterize each individual and that are shared through complex social systems through which political opinions are formed. Neglecting to observe the relational component of beliefs hides a crucial part of the picture. Hence, analyzing the network component of beliefs is urgent to advancing political science as a discipline. In fact, the analysis of beliefs touches upon several different sub-fields of political science and is cross-sectional to the discipline. New methods apply complex systems methodologies such as directed acyclic graphs (Pearl 2022), causal loop diagrams (McGlashan 2016), and system mapping (Zexian et al 2010) to describe and quantify the existing relationships. Moreover, semantic networks can help explore beliefs' inner structure (Yang et al 2017). Political networks as a subfield is poised to bring these developments from the complex systems and networks science literature into the field of political science and make real advancements in our understanding of critical political beliefs.