Social contacts and political behaviour in Northern Ireland, 1968-1978

Using Northern Ireland as a case study, this note examines the political consequences of different types of social contacts between two rigidly segregated religious communities. Multivariate analysis is applied to two large sample surveys, one collected in 1968 before the present civil disturbances began, the other in 1978, some nine years after the start of the violence. The results show that while social contacts between friends, workmates or neighbours of the opposite religion have no consistent political importance, social contacts with relatives by marriage of the opposite religion is significant for both surveys. Certain types of social contact therefore have a stronger political contact than others, and in the context of Northern Ireland social contacts involving immediate kin are more important than other forms of contact.