Spatially Dispersed Ties Among Interdependent Citizens: Connecting Individuals and Aggregates

A continuing tradition in contextual analysis locates individualcitizens within spatially defined, aggregate settings in aneffort to provide a more complete account of individual behavior.Given the increasing individual mobility within society, itis less than clear that geography continues to define the boundarieson meaningful aggregate contexts—people have become lesstied to their geographic contexts, and technology makes it possiblefor citizens to maintain relationships independently of space,distance, and location. In this paper we pursue an analysisand set of analytic techniques that are designed to connectindividual voters, their communication networks, and the geographythat surrounds them. The analytic techniques utilize a uniquedata set that captures spatial dispersion in an individual'ssocial and political network, and from these analyses we candraw two conclusions. First, spatial dispersion in a networkdoes have an effect on interaction within the network; the worldis not full of voters who operate independently of their geographiccontexts. Second, spatial dispersion provides opportunitiesto connect citizens living in different geographic contexts,thereby creating bridges for communication across differentcontexts. These findings suggest that scholars might profitablyincorporate geography as an important component of the complexrelationships among and between individual citizens in explainingthe role of the individual in modern democratic politics.