  We investigate how the topology of small-world networks affects the dynamics
of the voter model for opinion formation. We show that, contrary to what occurs
on regular topologies with local interactions, the voter model on small-world
networks does not display the emergence of complete order in the thermodynamic
limit. The system settles in a stationary state with coexisting opinions whose
lifetime diverges with the system size. Hence the nontrivial connectivity
pattern leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that long-range connections
inhibit the ordering process. However, for networks of finite size, for which
full uniformity is reached, the ordering process takes a time shorter than on a
regular lattice of the same size.
