TY - JOUR
T1 - Genetic variation in political participation
AU - Fowler, James H.
AU - Baker, Laura A.
AU - Dawes, Christopher T.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank T. K. Ahn, John Aldrich, Robert Bates, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, Nicholas Christakis, Gary Cox, Eric Dickson, Jeff Gill, Don Green, Zoli Hajnal, Ben Highton, Robert Huckfeldt, Kosuke Imai, Gary Jacobson, Cindy Kam, Sam Kernell, Gary King, Thad Kousser, Michael Laver, Arend Lijphart, Peter Loewen, Gerry Mackie, Ann Pearson, Maggie Penn, Mark Pletcher, Eric Plutzer, Sam Popkin, Pete Richerson, Brian Sala, Ethan Scheiner, Darren Schreiber, John Scott, Jas Sekhon, David Singer, Oleg Smirnov, Matt Stephenson, John Zaller, Langche Zeng, and Alan Zuckerman for helpful comments. We also thank participants in seminars at Loyola University of Chicago, the Harris School at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, University of California-Irvine, Vanderbilt, Univeristy of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska, University of Southern California, Washington University at St. Louis, and at panels for the 2007 Behavior Genetics Association Annual Meeting, the 2006 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting and the 2007 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. Funding for this research was provided by the Institute of Government Affairs at the University of California, Davis. The contact author can be reached by email at [email protected] or by web at http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu.
PY - 2008/5
Y1 - 2008/5
N2 - The decision to vote has puzzled scholars for decades. Theoretical models predict little or no variation in participation in large population elections and empirical models have typically accounted for only a relatively small portion of individual-level variance in turnout behavior. However, these models have not considered the hypothesis that part of the variation in voting behavior can be attributed to genetic effects. Matching public voter turnout records in Los Angeles to a twin registry, we study the heritability of political behavior in monozygotic and dizygotic twins. The results show that a significant proportion of the variation in voting turnout can be accounted for by genes. We also replicate these results with data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and show that they extend to a broad class of acts of political participation. These are the first findings to suggest that humans exhibit genetic variation in their tendency to participate in political activities.
AB - The decision to vote has puzzled scholars for decades. Theoretical models predict little or no variation in participation in large population elections and empirical models have typically accounted for only a relatively small portion of individual-level variance in turnout behavior. However, these models have not considered the hypothesis that part of the variation in voting behavior can be attributed to genetic effects. Matching public voter turnout records in Los Angeles to a twin registry, we study the heritability of political behavior in monozygotic and dizygotic twins. The results show that a significant proportion of the variation in voting turnout can be accounted for by genes. We also replicate these results with data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and show that they extend to a broad class of acts of political participation. These are the first findings to suggest that humans exhibit genetic variation in their tendency to participate in political activities.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0003055408080209
DO - 10.1017/S0003055408080209
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:44849130693
SN - 0003-0554
VL - 102
SP - 233
EP - 248
JO - American Political Science Review
JF - American Political Science Review
IS - 2
ER -