Thomas Macias

Ever since Mark Granovetter’s highly cited 1973 paper on the strength of weak ties, there has been a tendency to think of network ties in terms of personal advantage. How can I find the right weak-tie contact to get a job interview? Where can one find childcare in a new city far from family or long-term friendships? With whom can I share a carpool to a common destination?

As regards strong ties, Li et al argue that they are most closely tied to “expressive action,” i.e., a demonstration of your values, identity, emotions, that is, elements clearly devalued in the literature as not rational or instrumental.  The hyper-individualism implied in this research suggests that only those outcomes tied to clearly defined goals matter most.  We can state, however, that context within which social capital research and associated methodologies emerged forty years ago is different from that of the present day.  In a moment of shrinking governmental support, rising costs and economic uncertainty, the need to rely on each other for mutual support appears all the more essential.  To underscore that point, this paper shifts the analysis to less directly instrumental outcomes.

Given the diversity of social contexts, we do not anticipate that strong ties should predict directly values, beliefs or political views.  Practically, however, we anticipate that close social ties should be linked to the willingness to participate in social activities, a hypothesis supported especially by the social movements literature where often the best predictor of attending a protest or political event is knowing someone else in attendance.  This does not only apply to politically focused events.  Knowing others in attendance is a great motivator for doing anything – running a 5K, joining Toastmasters, or volunteering at the local food shelf.  No one (very few of us, anyway) prefers to be at a gathering surrounded by strangers.

This paper, using cross-national 2017 ISSP data, aims to put a pin on what is the social network basis for human connection across ISSP participating countries?  I take advantage of the 2017 ISSP Network Module, specifically the “position generator” instrument to explore the relationship between an individual’s close social ties and their commitment to social life as measured by time devoted to volunteerism, participation in groups and organization for sports, hobbies and other leisure interests, and participation in political parties and events.

Specifically, I examine three hypotheses:
1.    As predicted by the “forbidden triad,” strong ties should foster opportunities to beget other social ties, weak and strong.
2.    Multiplex contexts should be better predictors than weak ties of collective social engagement as measured by volunteerism, group participation in sports, hobbies and other leisure interests, and participation in political parties and events.
3.    Though multiplex contexts likely influence political participation, their influence on what people believe is best for the common good should be indeterminant since social ties in and of themselves cannot predict the content of one’s views.