“The Social Citizen is the best, most thorough, and most methodologically sophisticated treatment of the role of social networks in political behavior that I have ever read. Betsy Sinclair shows just how strongly we are influenced to express ourselves politically by our family, neighbors, and friends. We are on the verge of a sea change in political science, and this will be one of the most important books we refer to when we describe what happened to the discipline in the twenty-first century.”

James H. Fowler, University of California, San Diego

“A bold and brilliant piece of political science. Betsy Sinclair presents clear evidence of social influence in American political behavior while advancing the novel theoretical argument that the effect is driven by social norms.”

Scott McClurg, Southern Illinois University

"Bringing together field experiments, original survey data, and careful analytic techniques, Betsy Sinclair demonstrates that social factors sway turnout, participation, candidate choice, and even party identification. . . . The Social Citizen emerges as a thorough and thoughtful effort, simultaneously accessible and technical, that responds to an established literature at the same time that it leads it in new directions."

Anand Edward Sokhey, University of Colorado at Boulder | Newsletter of the APSA Experimental Section

“The Social Citizen provides substantial evidence that our social networks play an important role in shaping our political actions. For many years, political scholars have focused on individual factors, like income and race, and how those affect citizens’ choices. . . . Social network researchers instead look at how social ties can influence political behavior. In The Social Citizen, Sinclair takes up the debate over individual and social factors and studies these variables, with a variety of research methods.”

Political Communication