ALIENATIONpretty much run by a few big interests looking out
for themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all
people?’’ Similarly, a person’s sense of inefficacy
can be measured by asking the person to agree or
disagree with the following statements, which con-
tain the words ‘‘like me’’: ‘‘People like me don’t
have any say about what the government does’’
and ‘‘I don’t think public officials care much what
people like me think.’’
During election years since the 1950s, the
Center for Political Studies at the University of
Michigan at Ann Arbor has posed these and other
questions to national samples of citizens. Those
replying that you can trust the government only
some of the time or none of the time comprised 22
percent in 1964 but 73 percent in 1980. This
percentage fell during President Ronald Reagan’s
first term but then increased through 1994 (reach-
ing 78 percent) before falling to 67 percent in
- Those disagreeing with the statement that
public officials care rose from 25 percent in 1960,
to 52 percent in 1980 and 66 percent in 1994
(Orren 1997; Poole and Mueller 1998).
In addition, polls indicate that in the same
time period, increasing numbers of citizens felt
that government was less responsive to the people
(Lipset and Schneider 1983, pp. 13–29). This atti-
tude, which can be termed system unresponsiveness,
was measured by asking questions that did not use
the words ‘‘like me.’’ Responses to the questions
thus focused not on the respondents’ evaluations
of their own personal power, but rather on their
judgments of the external political system. (Craig
1979 conceptualizes system unresponsiveness as
‘‘output inefficacy’’).
What are the consequences of the increase in
political alienation among Americans? Social sci-
entists have investigated whether individuals with
highly alienated attitudes are more likely to with-
draw from politics, engage in violence, or favor
protest movements or extremist leaders. Research
findings have been complicated by the fact that the
same specific alienated attitudes have been linked
to different kinds of behaviors (Schwartz 1973, pp.
162–177).
The alienated showed little tendency to sup-
port extremist candidates for office. (The only
exception was that high-status alienated citizens
supported Goldwater’s presidential campaign in
- See Wright 1976, pp. 227, 251; Herring
1989, p. 98.) Social scientists have generally agreed
that politically alienated individuals are less likely
to participate in conventional political processes.
During four presidential elections from 1956 to
1968, citizens with a low sense of efficacy and a low
level of trust were less likely to vote, attend politi-
cal meetings, work for candidates, contribute mon-
ey, or even pay attention to the mass media cover-
age of politics. Although some studies fail to confirm
that those with low trust are likely to be apathetic
(Citrin 1974, p. 982), those with a low sense of
political efficacy are indeed likely to be nonvoters,
mainly because they are also less educated (Lipset
and Schneider 1983, p. 341). In the United States,
the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast
ballots declined between 1960 and 1980, while the
percentage who expressed political inefficacy rose
in the same period; Abramson and Aldrich (1982)
estimate that about 27 percent of the former trend
is caused by the latter. (See Shaffer 1981 for confir-
mation but Cassel and Hill 1981 and Miller 1980
for contrary evidence).Piven and Cloward (1988) vigorously dispute
the notion that the alienated attitudes of individu-
als are the main cause for the large numbers of
nonvoters in the United States. Piven and Cloward
construct a historical explanation—that in the ear-
ly twentieth century, political reformers weakened
local party organizations in cities, increased the
qualifications for suffrage, and made voting regis-
tration procedures more difficult. Legal and insti-
tutional changes caused a sharp decrease in vot-
ing, which only then led to widespread political
alienation. Voting participation, especially among
the minority poor in large cities, continues to be
low because of legal requirements to register in
advance of election day and after a change in
residence, and because of limited locations to
register.
Some researchers have found that the po-
litically alienated are more likely to utilize
nonconventional tactics such as political demon-
strations or violence. College students who partici-
pated in a march on Washington against the Viet-
nam War, compared to a matched sample of
students from the same classes at the same schools,
expressed more alienated attitudes, stemming from
an underlying sense of inefficacy and system unre-
sponsiveness (Schwartz 1973 pp, 138–142). Paige’s
(1971) widely influential study drew on Gamson’s
distinctions between trust and efficacy and showed