Social Network Ties and Claim-Making: Evidence from East Jerusalem

• In Event: Meaning, Identity, and Claim-Making in Palestine and Israel

Abstract

What factors increase the likelihood that individuals seek out the state in pursuit of everyday public goods and social services? How does the setting of conflict influence these choices? The claim-making literature has thus far presented explanations focusing on state visibility, party broker density within the neighborhood, and individuals’ histories interacting with the state, all in peacetime settings. Drawing on interview and original survey data from 11 months of fieldwork in East Jerusalem, I first argue that the setting of conflict influences which goods and services individuals are willing to accept from the state and which are most likely to be avoided due to conflict-related designations of controversiality. Then, I show that the strength of one’s social network ties within the neighborhood influence whether individuals will seek out the state’s most controversial public goods and social services. In neighborhoods that are more homogeneous with respect to family (arabic: ahley) and clan (arabic: hamula) membership, individuals are less likely to seek out the state in pursuit of goods and services deemed controversial. Conversely, in comparatively heterogeneous neighborhoods where families (arabic: ahlat) and clans (arabic: hama’il) are “mixed,” individuals are more likely to seek out the state in pursuit of controversial goods and services. Then, using individual-level measures, I show that individuals with stronger social ties to family and clan networks within their neighborhoods are less likely to seek out the state’s controversial public goods and services, while those with weaker social ties in their neighborhoods are more likely to do so. Finally, I support these findings with qualitative interview evidence to further elucidate the influence of neighborhood network ties and composition on individual claim-making behavior. Thus, this paper makes two principal contributions; first, it provides a novel explanation for claim-making behavior that focuses on individual and neighborhood-level measures of social network ties. Second, it analyzes how the setting of conflict influences individuals’ engagement with the state, which has yet to be considered in the broader claim-making and everyday political behavior literatures.

Author

• Hannah Early Bagdanov, University of Notre Dame