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The Politics of Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Paul M. Sniderman
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Extract

Alienation, if sufficiently pervasive and profound, poses obvious dangers to a democratic political order. But obvious dangers are not the only dangers. Indeed, allegiance may pose at least as serious a threat to democratic politics as alienation, as I shall attempt to show in this paper.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 21 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 All studies of political alienation and allegiance have followed this algorithm. For an excellent collection of relevant articles, see Finifter, Ada W., Alienation and the Social System (New York: Wiley, 1972)Google Scholar. Also see Stokes, Donald E., ‘Popular Evaluation of Government: An Empirical Assessment’, in Cleveland, H. and Lasswell, H. D., eds., Ethics and Bigness (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 61–72Google Scholar; Miller, Arthur H., ‘Political Issues and Trust in Government’, American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 951–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Citrin, Jack, ‘Comment’, American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 973–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Nor is my own early work an exception. See Citrin, Jack et al. , ‘Personal and Political Sources of Alienation’, British Journal of Political Science, V (1975), 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sniderman, Paul M. et al. , ‘Stability of Support for the Political System: The Initial Impact of Watergate’, American Politics Quarterly, III (1975), 437–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a warning on this point, see Parry, Geraint, ‘Trust, Distrust, and Consensus’, British Journal of Political Science, VI (1976), 129–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Marsh, David, ‘Beliefs About Democracy Among English Adolescents: What Significance Have They?’, British Journal of Political Science, II (1972), 255–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For a fuller description of the study design and its rationale, see Merrill Shanks and Citrin, Jack, ‘The Measurement of Political Alienation: Strategic and Methodological Issues’, paper presented at conference on Political Alienation, Iowa City, Iowa, 01 1975Google Scholar. See also Citrin, et al. , ‘Personal and Political Sources of Alienation’Google Scholar, and Sniderman, et al. , ‘The Stability of Support’.Google Scholar

3 See especially Citrin, et al. , ‘Personal and Political Sources of Alienation’.Google Scholar

4 These distinctions, of course, were first set out in Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar. For his more recent views on key aspects of these distinctions, see Easton, David, ‘Theoretical Approaches to Political Support’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, IX (1976), 431–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘A Reassessment of the Concept of Political Support’, British Journal of Political Science, V (1975), 435–57.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Citrin, , ‘Comment’.Google Scholar

6 The adjective checklist, though quite familiar to psychologists, is unfamiliar to political scientists. For an instructive introduction to the methodological virtues and vices of this technique, see Masterson, Sharon, ‘The Adjective Checklist Technique: A Review and Critique’, in McReynolds, Paul, ed., Advances in Psychological Assessment, Vol. 3 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1975), pp. 275–312.Google Scholar

7 More precisely, the pattern of significant differences remains the same, though the magnitude of the differences will vary.

8 The more severe we make the standards for being classified as committed, the ‘purer’ we make the group – and as a consequence, the greater the magnitude of the differences we observe.

9 See Citrin, et al. , ‘Personal and Political Sources’.Google Scholar

10 This example is, I trust, instructive as well as amusing. Overall, the committed are thoroughly conservative. Yet when asked about government regulation of business, 75 per cent of them believe that it should be increased rather than decreased, compared to 48 per cent of the supportive.

11 The enthusiasm with which the committed embrace this notion cannot be attributed to a differential susceptibility on their part ‘to cave in’ and agree because they were told that ‘most Americans agree’. In responding to the three other statements we put to them in this section of the questionnaire, the committed were no more likely than the supportive to express agreement. Moreover, one test item preceded and the other two succeeded the ‘government bending or breaking the law’ item. Hence, it is implausible to attribute the outcome to ‘order’ effects.

12 Obviously, I use the word ‘balanced’ in a different sense than cognitive consistency theorists. See, for example, Abelson, Robert et al. , Theories of Cognitive Consistency: A Source Book (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968)Google Scholar. The choice of terms is not intended to provoke confusion, but to highlight a drawback to consistency theories, as sometimes conceived.

13 For a powerful warning of the plague of interaction terms of various orders threatening to swarm over social science, see Cronbach, Lee J., ‘Beyond the Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology’, American Psychologist, XXX (1975), 116–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 The literature on these subjects, of course, is vast. For one of the most suggestive theoretical accounts, based on quantitative data, see McClosky, Herbert, ‘Personality and Attitude Correlates of Foreign Policy Orientation’, in Rosenau, James, ed., Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 51–116Google Scholar. Also, see Selznick, Gertrude and Steinberg, Stephen, The Tenacity of Prejudice (New York: Harper and Row, 1969)Google Scholar and Sniderman, Paul M., Personality and Democratic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar. For an historical overview, see Lipset, Seymour M. and Raab, E., The Politics of Unreason (New York: Harper and Row, 1970)Google Scholar. For a somewhat different view, which in many aspects confirms the evidence of this paper, see Wolfinger, Raymond E., Wolfinger, Barbara Kaye, Prewitt, Kenneth, and Rosenhack, Sheila, ‘America's Radical Right: Politics and Ideology’, in Apter, David E., ed., Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964).Google Scholar

15 On the notion of diffuse neuroticism and political extremism, see Almond, Gabriel A., ‘The Appeals of Communism and Fascism’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association at Boulder, Colorado, 1955).Google Scholar

16 See Sniderman, , Personality and Democratie Politics, especially Chap. 3Google Scholar; and Rosenberg, Morris, Society and the Adolescent Self-image (Princeton, Conn.: Princeton University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

17 These items are taken from Rosenberg's self-esteem scale, the most widely used, and best validated, measure of self-esteem in survey research. For the rationale, details of construction, and evidence of validity, see Rosenberg, , Society and the Adolescent Self-Image.Google Scholar

18 For the full figures on political interest and involvement, see Appendix B.

19 For the full argument, see Sniderman, , Personality and Democratic Politics, Chap. 8.Google Scholar

20 The dominant partisan coloration of both the committed and the supportive is Democratic. More to the point, the two are equally likely to be Democrats. To be sure, the committed tend to be slightly more Republican than the supportive (38 per cent as against 28 per cent), but this scarcely ranks as a difference of major proportions. Finally, the supportive are slightly more likely to describe themselves as Independents (25 per cent as compared to 15 per cent). In short, the committed and the supportive do not differ substantially in their partisan loyalties.

21 Ranney, Austin, ‘The Divine Science: Political Engineering in American Culture’, American Political Science Review, LXX (1976), 140–8.Google Scholar

22 Ranney, , ‘The Divine Science’, italics added.Google Scholar

23 B.A. or post-graduate degree.

24 Italics in questionnaire.