Publisher's Synopsis
After decades of relative neglect, spatial and contextual models of political life have become increasingly popular. These models are vital in recognising the importance of the geographic settings and group environments for an understanding of a wide variety of political phenomena. They confront a number of methodologically challenging problems such as untangling nested and multi-level contextual effects and problems of cross-level inference. Understanding how spatial and social contexts both constrain and provide opportunities for political action remains an important research frontier in the social sciences.; This text presents a number of studies, by political scientists and geographers, that explore important research questions in both disciplines. Several contributions address ongoing debates concerning the magnitude and causal mechanisms responsible for contextual effects on political attitudes and behaviour. Other contributions present spatial analyses of a variety of political phenomena, ranging from the distribution of electoral support for political parties to the diffusion of judicial innovations within a country. There are also many contributions which cover methodological issues in spatial analysis and demonstrate the application of, and potential for, developing geographic information systems GIS technology for the analysis of political phenomena. These issues are raised in the context of political research in a number of advanced industrial countries including Britain, Italy and the United States.; The book is accessible, interdisciplinary and comparative in its approach to the spatial and contextual analysis of political phenomena. The contributions establish the vitality and importance of this dimension, demonstrating how spatial and contextual perspectives can effectively be incorporated into political research in a variety of countries.
