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Friendship Networks and Political Opinions: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians

Author

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  • Do, Quoc-Anh
  • Dalvit, Nicolò
  • Le Chapelain, Alexis
  • Zenou, Yves

Abstract

We study how social interaction and friendship shape students' political opinions in a natural experiment at Sciences Po, the cradle of top French politicians. We exploit arbitrary assignments of students into short-term integration groups before their scholar cursus, and use the pairwise indicator of same-group membership as instrumental variable for friendship. After six months, friendship causes a reduction of differences in opinions by one third of the standard deviation of opinion gap. The evidence is consistent with a homophily-enforced mechanism, by which friendship causes initially politically-similar students to join political associations together, which reinforces their political similarity, without exercising an effect on initially politically-dissimilar pairs. Friendship affects opinion gaps by reducing divergence, therefore polarization and extremism, without forcing individuals' views to converge. Network characteristics also matter to the friendship effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Do, Quoc-Anh & Dalvit, Nicolò & Le Chapelain, Alexis & Zenou, Yves, 2019. "Friendship Networks and Political Opinions: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians," CEPR Discussion Papers 13771, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13771
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    Cited by:

    1. Michael Bailey & Drew Johnston & Theresa Kuchler & Dominic Russel & Bogdan State & Johannes Stroebel, 2020. "Online Appendix & Additional Results for The Determinants of Social Connectedness in Europe," Papers 2007.12177, arXiv.org.
    2. Polipciuc, Maria & Cörvers, Frank & Montizaan, Raymond, 2023. "Peers’ race in adolescence and voting behavior," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    3. Zenou, Yves & Biavaschi, Costanza & Giulietti, Corrado, 2021. "Social Networks and (Political) Assimilation in the Age of Mass Migration," CEPR Discussion Papers 16182, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Zenou, Yves & Campbell, Arthur & Leister, Matthew, 2019. "Social Media and Polarization," CEPR Discussion Papers 13860, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Michael Bailey & Theresa Kuchler & Dominic Russel & Bogdan State & Johannes Stroebel, 2020. "The Determinants and Effects of Social Connectedness in Europe," CESifo Working Paper Series 8310, CESifo.
    6. Pierre Magontier & Albert Solé-Ollé & Elisabet Viladecans Marsal, 2021. "The Political Economy of Coastal Development," CESifo Working Paper Series 9059, CESifo.
    7. Adrian Mehic, 2024. "Peer desirability and academic achievement," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(4), pages 525-542, June.
    8. Bailey, Michael & Kuchler, Theresa & Russel, Dominic & State, Bogdan & Stroebel, Johannes, 2020. "Social Connectedness in Europe," SocArXiv 3wh67, Center for Open Science.
    9. Zenou, Yves & Bochet, Olivier & Faure, Mathieu & Long, Yan, 2020. "Perceived Competition in Networks," CEPR Discussion Papers 15582, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Bochet, Olivier & Faure, Mathieu & Long, Yan & Zenou, Yves, 2020. "Perceived Competition in Networks," CEPR Discussion Papers 15582, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Hakobyana, Zaruhi & Koulovatianos, Christos, 2019. "Populism and polarization in social media without fake news: The vicious circle of biases, beliefs and network homophily," CFS Working Paper Series 626, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political opinion; Polarization; Friendship effect; Social Networks; Homophily; Extremism; Learning; Natural experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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