Friendship Networks and Political Opinions

Yann Algan, Nicolo Dalvit, Quoc-Anh Do, Alexis Le Chapelain and Yves Zenou

No 20075, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We examine how social interactions and friendships shape students' political opinions in a natural experiment at Sciences Po, a leading French university specializing in social and political sciences. The quasi-random assignment of students into short-term integration groups before their academic curriculum reduces political opinion gaps and fosters friendship formation. Using same-group membership as an instrumental variable for friendship, we find that after 6 months friendship reduces opinion differences by 50% of the mean opinion gap. Our evidence supports a homophily-enforced mechanism: friendships form among initially politically similar students, leading them to join political associations together, reinforcing their similarity. However, friendship does not significantly influence politically dissimilar pairs. Instead, it reduces opinion divergence without enforcing ideological convergence.

Keywords: Political; opinion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D72 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03
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