ORIGINAL PAPER
Beyond Membership: A Sense of Community
and Political Behavior
Mary R. Anderson
Published online: 27 March 2009
Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract Why does community matter for political participation? In this paper, I
consider how community psychology, particularly ‘‘sense of community’’ can be
used to address questions of political behavior. Individuals’ perceptions about their
significance in a given community can have meaningful effects on the way in which
communities influence politics. Using a unique survey instrument designed to
capture individual’s perceptions of community connectedness and political behavior
across five contexts (workplace, church, associations, neighborhood, and circle of
friends (i.e., an informal network) I analyze data from 822 respondents and examine
how sense of community influences two types of political behavior: voting in local
elections and political discussion. The empirical analyses presented demonstrate
that sense of community contributes to explaining voting and discussion, even after
controlling for demographic, personality, and other political factors.
Keywords Political psychology Á Sense of community Á Political behavior Á
Contexts
A long time ago I was in the ancient city of Prague and at the same time
Joseph Alsop, the justly famous critic of places and events was there…Joe and
I flew home to America in the same plane, and on the way he told me about
Prague, and his Prague had no relation to the city I had seen and heard. It just
wasn’t the same place, and yet each of us was honest, neither one a liar, both
pretty good observers by any standard, and we brought home two cities, two
truths—John Steinbeck
M. R. Anderson (&)
Department of Government and World Affairs, University of Tampa, 401 W. Kennedy Blvd,
Tampa, FL 33606-1490, USA
e-mail: mranderson@ut.edu
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Polit Behav (2009) 31:603–627
DOI 10.1007/s11109-009-9089-x
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