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Paths of Recruitment: Rational Social Prospecting in Petition Canvassing
Open accessAbstract
Petition canvassers are political recruiters. Building upon the rational prospector model, we theorize that rational recruiting strategies are dynamic (Bayesian and time‐conscious), spatial (constrained by geography), and social (conditioned on relations between canvasser and prospect). Our theory predicts that canvassers will exhibit homophily in their canvassing preferences and will alternate between “door‐to‐door” and “attractor” (working in a central location) strategies based upon systematic geographical variation. They will adjust their strategies midstream (mid‐petition) based upon experience. Introducing methods to analyze canvassing data, we test these hypotheses on geocoded signatory lists from two petition drives—a 2005–6 anti–Iraq War initiative in Wisconsin and an 1839 antislavery campaign in New York City. Canvassers in these campaigns exhibited homophily to the point of following geographically and politically “inefficient” paths. In the aggregate, these patterns may exacerbate political inequality, limiting political involvement of the poorer and less educated.
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“A potential hurdle, given residential partisan sorting (Brown & Enos, 2021), media partisan sorting (Broockman & Kalla, 2023b), and patterns of canvassing (Nall et al., 2018) is homogenous networks.”
From How to study democratic backsliding (2024) · cites this paper as Nall et al., 2018
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Cited by
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How to study democratic backsliding
Druckman, J. N. (2024) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12942 · Cited by 56
Metadata
- Authors
- Nall, C., Schneer, B., & Carpenter, D.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Florida State University (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Venue
- American Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-04-21
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 192-209
- ISSN
- 0092-5853 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-5907
- OpenAlex
- W3125621444
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 6.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- American Journal of Political Science (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (publishedVersion)
- Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Capital and Networks
- Keywords
- political recruitment, homophily, door-to-door canvassing, Bayesian updating, political inequality, political participation, geocoded data
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- Nall, C., Schneer, B., & Carpenter, D. (2018). Paths of Recruitment: Rational Social Prospecting in Petition Canvassing. American Journal of Political Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12305
