National Elections and Political Attitudes: The Case of Political Efficacy

Harold D. Clarke and Alan C. Acock

British Journal of Political Science, 1989, vol. 19, issue 4, 551-562

Abstract: Elections constitute a principal avenue of citizen involvement in political life, and knowledge of their effects on public attitudes towards the polity and the role of the individual therein has important implications for theories of democratic governance. One sucli attitude is political efficacy, ‘the feeling that individual political action does have, or can have, an impact on the political process’. Although many studies have documented that political efficacy is positively associated with electoral participation, the causal mechanisms involved are not well understood. Most researchers have simply assumed that the ‘causal arrow’ runs from efficacy to participation, i.e. from the attitude to the behaviour. Investigations of the hypothesis that the behaviour (participation) affects the attitude (efficacy) are rare. Rarer still are enquiries focusing on the impact of election outcomes on efficacy, and studies that examine both effects are virtually non-existent. In this Note covariance structure analysis is used to investigate the effects of voting, campaign activity and the outcomes of the 1984 national elections on political efficacy in the American electorate.

Date: 1989
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:19:y:1989:i:04:p:551-562_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in British Journal of Political Science from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().