POLITICAL AUENATION AND PARTICIPATION AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS Thesis for the Degree Ph. D. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY BERTRAND YOSHITO KOBAYASHI 1973 IIIIII/IIIIIII/I’lI/I’IIII/III/IIIIII'I’I/IIIIII/IIll/II 3 1293 10467 2153 LIBRA R y Michigan State nivcrsjty q.- .3. This is to certify that the thesis entitled POLITICAL ALIENATION AND PARTICIPATION AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS presented by BERTRAND YOSHITO KOBAYASHI has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for _Phle.__degree in Joluicu. Science "at. I, 45% Major professor ” Ada W. Finifter Date May 9, 1973 0-7 639 ABSTRACT POLITICAL ALIENATION AND PARTICIPATION AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS BY Bertrand Yoshito Kobayashi Alienation is a much maligned and misused term. Its popularity, the differences in its usages, and the vagueness with which it is often used threaten to make a cliché out of what would seem to be a very basic and useful social concept. This study systematically con- ceptualizes alienation, develops an instrument for its measurement, and applies this instrument to the analysis of the style and intensity of political participation among a diverse sample of college students. The defini- tional schema for alienation has been borrowed from Kenneth Keniston (The Uncommitted, Dell, 1965), who differentiates between the focus, form, and mode of alienation. The data for this study were collected by the author during the spring of 1971 and consist of mail questionnaires from undergraduate students at Michigan State University (MSU). In all, 822 usable questionnaires were collected, representing a return rate of 76.7 percent Bertrand Yoshito Kobayashi of the original sample. The bulk of the data comes from a weighted, two strata sample of the entire undergraduate population divided essentially between humanities and social science majors on one hand and all other majors on the other. Also included in this study were two special sub- samples of MSU students--members of the Movement for a New Congress (MNC), a nation—wide activist reform group composed and organized largely by college students to stimulate participation in the 1970 Congressional elections after the Cambodian and Kent State/Jackson State University incidents, and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical political group. The principal hypotheses of this study are derived from a typology of participation and alienation developed by Ada W. Finifter ["Dimensions of Political Alienation," American Political Science Review, 64, 2 (June, 1970), 389-410]. This typology treats alienation as a multi- dimensional concept and systematically relates combina- tions of two types of alienation--political cynicism and political efficacy--to various styles of political parti- cipation--complete withdrawal, apathy, conformative parti- cipation, reform orientation, and separatist-revolutionary movements. The participation styles cover a wide-range of activities which in turn reflect some of the dynamics of political change. The main findings of this study can be divided into two categories. The first indicates that the conceptual Bertrand Yoshito Kobayashi distinctions between types of alienation suggested by Keniston have empirical basis. Six types of alienation differentiated along the lines of form, foci, and mode are developed by means of factor analysis. The second set of findings presents evidence that the Finifter typology is a valid conceptualization of the influence of alienation on political behavior. POLITICAL ALIENATION AND PARTICIPATION AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS BY Bertrand Yoshito Kobayashi A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Political Science 1973 rai/l L 1‘ ;_ "\1w'” ...~’i a, Copyrighted by ® BERTRAND YOSHITO KOBAYASHI 1973 To MY PARENTS AND FAMILY ii PREFACE The idea for this paper was conceived in the latter half of the 1969-70 academic year just prior to the killing of students at Kent State and Jackson State Universities in May of 1970. At the time, I was at Ohio Wesleyan Univer- sity on a teaching fellowship sponsored by Ohio Wesleyan, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Great Lakes College Association, and some of the major universities in the region, specifically, in my case, Michigan State Univer- sity. The decision to switch from an earlier dissertation tOpic to this one would probably not have occurred were it not for the opportunities offered by the fellowship men— tioned above and the close-knit, undergraduate environment of Ohio Wesleyan. I came to realize that student radicalism and alienation had intricacies and implications I had not contemplated. With the hope of at least enlightening myself, I sought to differentiate the various types of student alienation and political radicalism. Of particular interest was the relationship among the numerous groupings of left- wing political activists and students of the sub- or counter-culture. The shocking events of May, 1970, along with the splintering of the Students for a Democratic iii Society (SDS), and a number of related events transformed the entire nature and direction of student politics. Therefore, by the fall of 1970, it was clear that the student Left I had hoped to study no longer existed. This study attempts, in part, to eXplain some of the chang- ing politics of that period. The ideas and hypotheses in this study are applied to students only because of my interests and resources; they are in fact much more general- izable. This study could not have been pursued without the cooperation of many hundreds of students. I wish to extend my appreciation to those who responded to my questionnaire, those in the Movement for a New Congress (MNC) and the SDS, and all those who gave of their time and ideas. During the course of my graduate studies, I was fortunate to have received financial support from the aforementioned institutions as well as the Department of Political Science and the Department of Agricultural Economics, both of Michigan State University. Their support is most gratefully acknowledged. The data collection and coding for this study, which involved the systematic handling of over 10,000 individual pieces of paper, could not have been accom- plished without the assistance of many individuals, especially Dianne Avery, Tom Ferguson, and Denise Kramarz. iv To these three promising students, I extend heartfelt gratitude for their heroic labors on behalf of this study. May their own dissertations benefit from the careful atten- tion they gave mine. The assistance provided by consultants of the MSU Computer Institute for Social Science Research was invalu- able in the computational and data analysis phases of this study. Others who came to my rescue during bouts with the computer include Elizabeth Powell and Harriet Dhanak of the MSU Political Science Data Archives, and Elliott Rachlin. To my dissertation committee consisting of Profes— sors Ada W. Finifter (Chairman), Frank A. Pinner, and Timothy M. Hennessey, I.owe more than I can ever express. Dr. Finifter worked tirelessly, conscientiously, and I hope not altogether unsuccessfully to bring this disserta- tion up to her exacting standards. Without her earlier research, this dissertation would not have been written; without her guidance, this dissertation would have been for the worse; and without her well-directed comments and criticisms, this dissertation would bear the marks of countless errors of judgment and omission. Dr. Pinner understands parts of this dissertation better than I do and gave me the benefit of his understanding of what I did or tried to do. For this, I am both fortunate and grateful. Dr. Hennessey provided stimulation and assistance at several points during this study, directing me to literature and ideas I otherwise would have neglected. While all these people and institutions played a part in making this study what it is, they can be held accountable only for its strengths but not for its shortcomings. The substance of this dissertation, such as it is, is my doing. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DEDICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Chapter I. THE PROBLEMATIC CONCEPT OF ALIENATION: AN INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Footnotes--Chapter I . . . . . . . . 13 II. FRAMEWORK FOR THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF POLITICAL ALIENATION AND ITS SUBTYPES . . . . l6 Preface to the Conceptualization of Political Alienation: Limiting the Scope of the Concept . . . . . . 17 Alienation as an Attitude . . . . . . 26 A Framework for the Conceptualization of Political Alienation . . . . . . 32 Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . 58 Footnotes--Chapter II . . . . . . . . 60 III. HYPOTHESES RELATING ALIENATION TO PARTICIPATION 69 Framework for the Main Hypotheses: The Finifter Typology . . . . . . 70 The Relationship betweel Alienation and Participation . . . . . . . . 82 Footnotes--Chapter III . . . . . . . 90 IV. SAMPLING AND THE COLLECTION OF DATA . . . . 92 Footnotes--Chapter IV . . . . . . . . 106 V. THE MEASUREMENT OF ALIENATION . . . . . . 108 Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . 152 'Footnotes—-Chapter V . . . . . . . . 155 vii Chapter VI. THE NATURE OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION VII. ALIENATION AND PARTICIPATION: Participation and Alienation: A Preliminary Analysis . Chapter Summary . . . . . Footnotes--Chapter VI . . . OF THE MAIN HYPOTHESES . . VIII. THE BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDICES A. B. C. The Contribution of Political Relevance to the Typology . Chapter Summary and Suggestions for Further Research . . Footnotes--Chapter VII . TESTING Page . . . 161 . . . . 183 . . . . 191 . . . . 193 . . . . 196 . . . . 222 . . . . 235 . . . . 242 DILEMMA OF ALIENATION: AN UNRESOLVED ISSUE 245 Footnotes--Chapter VIII . . The Questionnaire . The Sample . . . . . Regression Interaction Analysis viii . . . . 257 . . . . 259 . . . 275 . . . 284 . . 300 Table III-l. III-2. III-3. III-4. LIST OF TABLES Page Finifter's Typology of Political Behavior Associated with Combinations of Two Types of Political Alienation (Hypothetical) . . . 71 Merton's Typology of Modes of Individual Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Comparison of the Merton and Finifter Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Dubin' 5 Extension of the Merton Typology of Deviant Behavior . . . . . . . . 80 Varimax Rotation Analysis for Alienation Items; Rotated Factor Loading MNC (N=l48) . . 115 Varimax Rotation Analysis for Alienation Items; Rotated Factor Loading Stratum I (N=363) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Varimax Rotation Analysis for Alienation Items; Rotated Factor Loading Stratum II (N=297) O O O O O O O O O O O O O 117 Correlations Between the Six Measures of Alienation for all 822 Respondents . . . . 139 Means and Standard Deviations of School Alienation for Sampling Subgroups . . . . 143 Means and Standard Deviations of Political Cynicism for Sampling Subgroups . . . . . 145 Means and Standard Deviations of Political Efficacy for Sampling Subgroups . . . . . 147 Means and Standard Deviations of Political Relevance for Sampling Subgroups . . . . . 149 Means and Standard Deviations of Personal Cynicism for Sampling Subgroups . . . . . 151 ix Table V-lO. VI-l. VI-2. VI-3. VI-4. VI-S. VI-6. VI-7. VI-8. VI-9. VI-lO. VII-l. VII-2. Page Means and Standard Deviations of Personal Efficacy for Sampling Subgroups . . . . . 152 Fifteen Participation Items Rank Ordered in Terms of "Difficulty" of Activity with "Easiest" Activities Listed First, with Their Respective Means and Standard Deviations (N=822) . . . . . . . . . 169 Factor Loadings (Varimax Rotation) of 15 Participation Items for Total Sample (N=822) . 173 Factor Loadings (Varimax Rotation) of 15 Participation Items for MNC Subsample (N=l48) 174 Factor Loadings (Varimax Rotation) of 15 Participation Items for Stratum I (N=363) . . 175 Factor Loadings (Varimax Rotation) of 15 Participation Items for Stratum II (N=297) . 176 Average Activist and Protest Participation Scores by Sampling Subgroups with Standard Deviations . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Product-Moment Correlation of Scores for the Three Participation Subtypes (N=822) . . 182 Zero-Order Correlations Between the Various Participation and Alienation Scores (N=822) . 184 Correlations of the Four Political Efficacy Items to General Political Participation and Political Cynicism (N=822) . . . . . 187 Correlations Between Protest Participation and Selected Variables (N=822) . . . . . 190 Means and Standard Deviations of the General Participation Scores for all 822 Respondents Broken Down by High and Low Political Cynicism and Political Efficacy . . . . . 200 Means and Standard Deviations of General Participation Scores for Upper and Lower Segments of the Political Cynicism and Efficacy Scales (N=426) . . . . . . . . 205 Table VII-3. VII-4. VII-5. VII-6. VII-7. VII-8. VII-9. Page Means and Standard Deviations of Partici- pation Subtype Scores for all 822 Respon- dents According to High and Low Political Cynicism and Efficacy . . . . . . . . 208 Means and Standard Deviations of General Participation Scores Broken Down by High and Low Categories of Political Cynicism and the Individual Political Efficacy Items (N=822) . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Means and Standard Deviations of General Participation Scores for Sampling Sub- groups Broken down into Categories of High and Low Political Cynicism and Political Efficacy . . . . . . . . . 216 Means and Standard Deviations of Partici- pation Scores Broken Down by High and Low Categories of Political Cynicism, Politi- cal Efficacy, and Political Relevance (N=822) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 Arithmetic Differences Between the High and Low Relevance Scores for each of the Typological Categories for each of the Participation Measures (N=822) . . . . . 229 Means and Standard Deviations of Partici- pation Scores for Upper and Lower Segments of Political Cynicism and Efficacy Scores, and High and Low Categories of Political Relevance (N=426) . . . . . . . . . . 230 General Participation Scores Comparable to Finifter's Five Types of Political Participation . . . . . . . . . . . 233 xi CHAPTER I THE PROBLEMATIC CONCEPT OF ALIENATION: AN INTRODUCTION Perhaps the point has already been belabored, but ours is a troubled time.1 We seem to be beset from all sides by outcriescfifdecay, demoralization, destruction, and doom. As one political scientist has written: There is no dearth of pertinent cultural criticism, reformist literature, political polemics, and exposes of American public life. In recent years it has been plausibly intoned that Americans are status seekers (Packard), lonely members of crowds (Riesman), and above all conformists (Fromm). Their income is unfairly distributed (Harrington); they are governed by the higher immorality (Mills); they are burdened by the conventional wisdom (Galbraith). Their class structure is frozen (Warner), their culture inane (Macdonald), their urban life deadly (Mumford), and their politics without purpose (Morgenthau). They grow up absurd (Goodman), pollute their environment (Carson), make their way through God's own junkyard (Blake), cannot achieve communion (Henry), and after death, are handed over to an industry primed to exploit the sentimentality of the survivors (Mitford). Since the above paragraph was written in 1966, Americans have been told of their pursuit of loneliness (Slater), the unsavory aspects of their professional sports heroes (Bouton, Meggassey, Bolt, and others), the unheavenly nature of their cities (Banfield), and the commercialized selling and packaging of political candidates (McGinnis). During this time also, Presidential commissions have investigated civil disorders, obscenity, crime, and campus unrest. In addition, numerous individuals have warned of potential "eco-cide" from the ravages we have carelessly wrought upon our own environment (Commoner, Udall, and others), the population bomb (Ehrlich, Borgstrom), and radiation poisoning from nuclear waste-products (Bryer- ton). Our government leaders have been accused of war crimes (Russell), arrogance of power (Fulbright), of being "new mandarins" (Chomsky), and of fashioning police riots (Walker) and "Pentagonism" (Bosch). On the social scene, Americans are assaulted with word of a counter-culture (Roszak), future shock (Toffler), revolution for the hell of it (Hoffman), radical men (Hampden-Turner), the "greening" of America (Reich), and a revolution without Marx or Jesus (Revel). On a more personal note, we are informed of human sexual inadequacy (Masters and Johnson) and of numerous and varied sorts of sexual liberations, castration, and imprisonment (Freidan, Beauvior, Greer, Mailer, etc.). Meanwhile, our schools, which have tradi- tionally been regarded as a means of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, are described as leading children to death at an early age (Kozol), stifling them (Holt), treat- ing students as "niggers" (Farber), and allowing, and in some cases even encouraging, teachers to undertake sub- versive activity (Postman and Weingartner). In this sort of setting, it is not unexpected that alienation should be a common and recurring theme. Robert Nisbet in The Quest for Community has said that: At the present time, in all the social science, the various synonyms of alienation have a foremost place in studies of human relations. Investigations of the 'unattached,‘ the 'marginal,‘ the 'obsessive,' the 'normless,‘ and the 'isolated' individual all testify to be the central place occupied by the hypo- thesis of alienation in contemporary social science.3 On a similar note, Lewis Feuer has stated: Every age has its key ethical concepts around which it can best formulate the cluster of its basic prob- lems . . . . Twenty-five years ago, the concept of "exploitation" was the focus of most socialist and liberal political philosophy. Today many thinkers would replace it with the concept of "alienation."4 Other writers have called alienation "the central problem 5 "the central fact of human existence,"6 of our time," and as nearly equivalent to the history of man.7 The literature on alienation is enormous. The range of factors which has been associated with alienation is very broad, extending to such diverse topics as Catholic fertility,8 marital status among black G.I. veterans,9 mobility orientations,lo attitudes on foreign affairs,11 student intellectualism,12 legal com- pliance,l3 hoboism,l4 work situations,15 and the university .social structure.16 Social theorists as diverse as Milovan Djilas and R. D. Laing concur in regarding alienation as a natural, if not an essential, condition of humanity.17 From his perspective as an important neo-Marxist theoretician, Djilas writes that: Man is man in so far as by his actions he moves away--"alienates" himself--from the condition of life which nature has given him.1 Every human action which creates something new is, at the same time, an alienation from the old, from the existing . . . . Man becomes man by alienating himself. "I alienate myself" means: "I am man." 9 Speaking in similar terms, Laing, an influential existen- tialist psychoanalyst and author-poet, writes that: No one can begin to think, feel or act now except from the starting point of his or her own aliena- tion . . . . Our alienation goes to the roots. The realization of this is the essential spring- board for any serious reflection on any aspect of present interhuman life.20 The condition of alienation . . . is the condition of the normal man. These two authors are writing from very different perspec- tives, to be sure: Djilas is saying that man should not conceive of himself as a "noble savage" indifferent to the idea of actively reshaping his world and society to suit his goals, while Laing is arguing that given the "alienating" condition of the world today, a sane and socially aware man cannot help but be alienated. In spite of their different perspectives and messages, the use of the term alienation by both authors is not coincidental and also not necessarily contradictory. Alienation, after all, serves as the label for a large and versatile family Of phenomena. ' --— u '- --._ ... ‘ ..- 'v. > \. s ‘. .... The idea that alienation is a "natural" state of mankind has been linked with the emphasis on alienation among the youth of today in a variety of commentaries. Often these commentaries on alienation and youth deal with the notion of the "generation gap"--a notion which has been with us at least since Aristophanes 2400 years ago and since then frequently re-emphasized.22 Some rather persuasive writers have been "inclined to argue that there are profound psychological reasons why this [generation gap] should be a more or less permanent feature of the human situation."23 The temptation to identify alienation with the "generation gap" will be avoided in this study. I would like to begin this inves- tigation of alienation with as few of the existing conno- tative biases as possible, conceiving of alienation as neither natural nor anomolous, permanent nor generational, pernicious nor essential to the human condition. Writing of college students, Robert Lane has said that there seems to be a: . . . need to present the self as, if not "bad," at least a little alienated, or as able to see the worst in oneself and to tell all, or, in the end, as suffering from a sickness of the soul, a malaise that can only be suggested.24 (emphasis added) This phrase "a malaise that can only be suggested" charac- terizes well what alienation often appears to be: a "sickness" difficult to pinpoint and to describe but :nevertheless seemingly ever—present and troublesome. The difficulty of explicitly defining alienation calls to mind similar problems in the defining of the concept of power. In attempting to define power, Robert Dahl writes: [T]o define the concept "power" in a way that seems to catch the central intuitively understood meaning of the word must inevitably result in a formal definition that is not easy to apply in concrete research problems; and therefore, Operational equiva- lents of the formal definition, designed to meet the needs of a particular research problem, are likely to diverge from one another in important ways.25 A similar statement can, I think, be made for "alienation." The point is that numerous definitions for alienation have been put forth, many of them appearing but once in the literature with specific application to a given contex- tual situation, making it difficult to equate the usage of the term in one instance with other instances. The result is a term with many variations on a theme, some variations quite unlike others and some not fully developed. So it is that alienation has been referred to as "a many-sided malaise . . . (not) a specific and isolable condition clearly distinguishable from other moral-psychological states,"26 "a perspective rather than a concept,"27 "a process,"28 "an omnibus of psychological disturbances hav- ing similar root . . . (in) modern social organization."29 Given the conceptual ambiguity surrounding the term, it is not unexpected that Joel Aberbach is able to find empirical research both associating and not associat- ing alienation with:30 a. Lack of interest in politics b. Lack of faith in other people c. Failure to vote Low participation in political activities Race (i.e., being black) Low socio-economic status Age kQH'tTDQ-a Similar contradictory conclusions concerning alienation and the conditions necessary for the survival of democracy are made by two highly respected social scientists, Sebastian de Grazia and Robert Lane. De Grazia is of the Opinion that a nation cannot survive unless it maintains the bonds of interpersonal allegiance that hold together the cultural community.3l Lane, on the other hand, differs from: . . . those like Erich Fromm, William Kornhauser, and Sebastian De Grazia who argue that the loss of community, the Gemeinschaft society, and an integrated and coherent belief system have created malaise, anomie, and alienation. Our findings and theory . . . suggest that it is the very absence of community that makes democracy possible . . . In a nation-state, some identity diffusion and a touch of anomie is necessary for democracy to sur- v1ve. Writing on a more obviously ideological plane than the former two authors, two others also differ in the usage of alienation. Duane Smith writes that "the most characteris- tic feature of the radical Left is the blatant alienation of its advocates and this alienation has set the general tone of the social and political criticism of the past ten years."33 Smith believes that the disaffection and opposition of the radical Left arises from personal alienation characterized in terms of "estrangement" and "resentment," which transferred to politics results in expressed opposition and disaffection from the existing political system. Writing on the same topic, Theodore Roszak also believes that alienation is "the root problem" of the new Left: But not alienation in the sheerly institutional sense, in which capitalism (or for that matter any advanced industrial economy) tends to alienate the worker from the rewards of production; but rather alienation as a deadening of man's sensitivity to man; a deadening that can creep into even those revolutionary efforts that seek to eliminate insti- tutional forms of alienation.34 For Roszak, alienation "deadens" a person's receptivity to new Left positions, while for Smith, alienation is regarded as the opposite, as an impetus to support new Left doctrines. The use of the term alienation by so many researchers applied to so many different situations and in so many dif- ferent ways poses a problem for a researcher. But however differently the term is used, the focus of all its usages suggests erosion of some kind-~either moral, social, per- sonal, or institutional. Alienation suggests that some- thing that was, no longer is; that something has been lost. This sense of loss is not without its social consequences. As a result of feeling alienated, of the feeling of having lost something, people are motivated to action, though not necessarily always, to make amends, to compensate, so to speak, for their loss. The question of why some peOple are motivated to action because of their alienation while others are not, is a concern that this study will investi- gate. That alienation is a motivating force in the poli- tical sphere is undeniable given the numerous occasions in recent years in which alienation has been associated with important and disturbing political events--the demonstrations at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention, the 1972 McGovern and Wallace presidential campaigns, the political violence of recent years, which has included assassinations, "trashing" of public build- ings, the rise of organized extremist groups both on the left and the right, political civil disobediences, and any number of strikes, marches, and protest demonstrations. Whether alienation is related to participation is not the question here, for I assume that there is a relationship. The question of interest focuses on the nature of the rela- tionship between alienation and participation. If aliena- tion is useful in explaining participation as the fre- quency of its usage in this connection would suggest, then different types of participation, it seems, would be associated with different types and intensities of aliena- tion. Objectives of the Study This study can be described as having two basic objectives. The first deals with the conceptualization and measurement of alienation, in particular political alienation, and the second with the relationship between alienation and participation. 10 The first objective centers around the fact that because alienation has been used by so many people in so many different guises that unless the term is explicitly defined, it is, as someone has called it, a "mind-soften- ing" concept whose function is to simplify in lieu of an explanation. This initial problem of defining and measur- ing alienation is difficult because of the breadth and richness of the term, but it is facilitated by a wealth of previous work on the topic. My conceptualization of alienation is guided by a belief, supported by a good deal of both theoretical and empirical literature, that alien- ation is a multi—dimensional concept, and that the way to operationalize the concept is to first uncover its compo- nent parts. The conceptualization problem is discussed in chapter two of this study, following a definitional schema for alienation laid out by Kenneth Keniston.35 The Kenis- ton schema is useful because it is a systematic develOp- ment of alienation readily amenable to empirical applica- tion and because it is inclusive enough so that it can be adopted by virtually anyone working with the concept, regardless of his particular focus or emphasis. This latter feature of Keniston's schema allows for the possi- bility of placing in perspective some of the bewildering number of related concepts frequently used interchangeably with alienation--estrangement, homelessness, frustration, anomie, isolation, powerlessness, maladjustment, 11 misanthropy, nonconformity, etc. A procedure in line with Keniston's ideas is used to operationalize alienation and is presented in Chapter V. The data for this study consists of responses to mail questionnaires collected during the spring of 1971 from over 800 Michigan State University undergraduates. A copy of the questionnaire itself appears in Appendix A and the procedures used in distributing and collecting the data are explained in Chapter IV. The systematic operationalization of alienation enabled me to proceed with my second objective, an examina- tion of the relationship between alienation and political participation. The effect of various types and intensities of alienation on the nature of political participation is of crucial importance especially in a democratic political system, for participation in politics is not only a reflec- tion of the present health and developing pressures on a political system, but is also inseparable from the concept of democracy. Without participation, even if only indir- ect, a political system cannot be called a democracy.36 Ideally, I suppose, an effective and legitimate democratic system would be expected to have a high level of partici- pation generally supportive of the regime and marked with a minimum of disruptive, revolutionary activity. _Too much participation directed against established authorities or too little participation may be taken as an indicator of governmental failure, popular dissatisfaction or disinterest 12 in government. More important, besides serving as a baro- meter of political health and sickness, political partici- pation is instrumental in fashioning government policies. Participation is a dynamic force working to maintain or change the extent, direction, and style of governmental action. It is the effect of alienation in shaping the pattern of participation among individuals and the result- ing effect of participation that makes alienation of interest to political scientists. The basic framework for the hypothesized relation- ship between alienation and participation is introduced in Chapter III in the form of what I call the Finifter typology. This typology suggests that a variety of wide-ranging styles of political participation are associated with dif- ferent combinations of alienation subtypes. Political participation, the main dependent variable in this study, is operationalized in‘Chapter VI in a manner which encom- passes more than just the usual, conventional types of par- ticipation such as vo ing and keeping informed about politics. In Chapter II, the main hypotheses related alienation to participation are examined, followed in Chapter VIII by a discussion of some implications relating to the findings reported. 12 in government. More important, besides serving as a baro- meter of political health and sickness, political partici- pation is instrumental in fashioning government policies. Participation is a dynamic force working to maintain or change the extent, direction, and style of governmental action. It is the effect of alienation in shaping the pattern of participation among individuals and the result- ing effect of participation that makes alienation of interest to political scientists. The basic framework for the hypothesized relation- ship between alienation and participation is introduced in Chapter III in the form of what I call the Finifter typology. This typology suggests that a variety of wide-ranging styles of political participation are associated with dif- ferent combinations of alienation subtypes. Political participation, the main dependent variable in this study, is operationalized in Chapter VI in a manner which encom- passes more than just the usual, conventional types of par- ticipation such as vo ing and keeping informed about politics. In Chapter II, the main hypotheses related alienation to participation are examined, followed in Chapter VIII by a discussion of some implications relating to the findings reported. [I- FOOTNOTES - -CHAPTE R I lMurray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964), p. 13, states that all times seem troubled, especially since the popularization of the newspaper. ' 2Henry S. Kariel, The Promise of Politics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966), P. 98. 3Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study of the Ethics of Order and Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 15. 4Lewis Feuer, "What is Alienation?: The Career of a Concept," New Politics, 1, 3 (Spring, 1962), p. 116. 5Eric and Mary Josephson (eds.), Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society (New York: Dell, 1962), p. 10. 6Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, as cited in Josephson (eds.), ibid. 7Erich Kahler, The Tower and The Abyss (New York: Braziller, 1957), p. 43. 8Arthur Neal and H. Theodore Groat, "Alienation Correlates of Catholic Fertility," American Journal of Sociology, 76, 3 (November, 1970), pp. 460-473. 9James Fendrich and Leland J. Axelson, "Marital Status and Political Alienation Among Black Veterans," American Journal of Sociology, 77, 2 (September, 1971), pp. 245-261. loSumati N. Dubey, "Powerlessness and Mobility Chientations Among Disadvantaged Blacks," Public Opinion Quarterly, 35, 2 (Summer, 1971), pp. 183-188. 11Charles Farris, "Selected Attitudes on Foreign Affairs as Correlates of Authoritarianism and Political Anomie," Journal of Politics, 22, 1 (February, 1960), PP- 50-67. 13 14 12Jan Hajda, "Alienation and Integration of Student Intellectuals," American Sociological Review, 26, 5 (October, 1961), pp. 758-777. 3Harrell R. Rodgers, Jr. and George Taylor, "Pre— Adult Attitudes Toward Legal Compliance: Notes Toward a Theory," Social Change Quarterly, 51, 3 (December, 1970), pp. 539-551. l4Morton Grodzins, The Lgyal and the Disloyal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), as cited in Dwight G. Dean, "Alienation: Its Meaning and Measure- ment," American Sociological Review, 26, 5 (October, 1961). PP. 735-758. 15See, for example, Leonard I. Pearlin, "Alienation from Work: A Study of Nursing Personnel," American Sociolo- gical Review, 27, 3 (June, 1962), pp. 314-326. 16Robert F. Arnove,"The Impact of University Social Structure on Alienation: A Venezuelan StudY'(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford, 1969). 17This view that alienation is a natural, if not essential, condition of mankind and of a democracy is opposite that implied by Robert E. Lane, who suggests that alienation is an anomolous situation. See Lane, Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What he Does TNew York: Free Press, 1962), p. 162, passim. 18Milovan Djilas, "On Alienation," Encounter, 36, 5 (May, 1971), p. 13. 19 Ibid., p. 14. 20R. D. Laing, TherPolitics of Experience (New York: Ballantine, 1967), "Introduction" {no pagination]. 21Ibid., p. 28. For a similar statement, see Irving Sarnoff, Society with Tears (New York: Citadel Press, 1966), p. 181. 228. N. Eisenstadt, From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1956). 23Address by Lionel Robbins, "Present Discontents of the Student Age Group," p. 51, cited in Abraham Kaplan (ed.), Individuality and the New Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970). 15 24Robert E. Lane, Political Thinking_and Conscious- ness (Chicago: Markham, 1969), p. 216. 25Robert A. Dahl, "The Concept of Power," Behav- ioral Science, 2 (July, 1957), p. 202. 26Herbert McClosky and John Schaar, "Psychologi- cal Dimensions of Anomy," American Sociological Review, 30, 1 (February, 1965), p._40. 27 Nisbet, op. cit. 28Gwynn Nettler, "A Measure of Alienation," Ameri- can Sociological Review, 22, 6 (December, 1957), p. 677ff. 29Nathan Glazer, "The 'Alienation' of Modern Man," Commentary, 3, 4 (April, 1947), p. 380. 30Joel Aberbach,'Alienation and Race"(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1967), pp. 23-25. 31Sebastian de Grazia, The Political Community: A Study of Anomie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948). 32Lane, Political Ideology, op. cit., pp. 226-227. 33Duane E. Smith, "Alienation and the American Dream," in The Radical Left: The Abuse of Discontent, edited by William P. Gerberding and Duane E. Smith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), pp. 354-355. 34Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1969). p. 14. 35Kenneth Keniston, The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society (New York: Dell, 1965), pp. 451-475. 36See, among others: Henry B. Mayo, An Introduction to Democratic Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960); and Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (New York: Praeger, 1962). CHAPTER II FRAMEWORK FOR THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF POLITICAL ALIENATION AND ITS SUBTYPES This chapter will outline the groundwork for achieving the first of the two main objectives of this study, that of the conceptualization and measurement of political alienation. In this regard, this study seeks (to paraphrase Seeman)l to take advantage of the tradi- tional interest and accumulated knowledge on the topic of alienation to make a sharp empirical statement about the nature of the concept. The basis of this effort is a definitional schema developed by Kenneth Keniston.2 As mentioned earlier, the Keniston schema is empirically oriented, systematic, applicable to a wide variety of» circumstances, and conceives of alienation as a multi- dimensional concept, an orientation with which I agree. In constructing an instrument to measure alienation, an attempt was made to develop one which would have appli- cability to political alienation in the general American Public, in spite of the fact that the instrument is to be aPplied in this study only to college undergraduates. 16 17 Preface to the Conceptualization of Political Alienation: Limiting the chpe of the Concept To avoid possible confusion between political alienation and related concepts, let me begin by delineat- ing the sc0pe of what is meant in this study by the term political alienation. The focus of this study is political, hencetflmaneed to differentiate political alienation from other types of alienation. Basic to the conceptualization of alienation is the notion of separation or estrangement £59m some social entity or ideal.3 With political aliena- tion, individuals are conceived to be in some way separated or estranged from the political system. This is not to suggest that political alienation is unrelated to other types of alienation which involved separation from some- thing other than the political system, but rather to sug- gest, as will be seen later, that there is some utility in distinguishing alienation vis-a-vis the political system from alienation vis-a-vis other social entities. At the same time, this is not to suggest that all non-political types of alienation are unrelated to political behavior. Indeed, because these associations between political alienation and non-political alienation, and between non- political alienation and political behavior are recognized as deserving of investigation, special care will be taken to distinguish and isolate various types of alienation frOm each other. 18 A distinction important in this study is that between political alienation and political radicalism. As it will be developed in this study, political aliena- tion will not be used to distinguish between extreme and moderate political views, either of the left or right. It is likely that individuals of widely divergent politi- cal leanings will be found across the range of values for each of the various political alienation measures. Stated conversely, it is unlikely that political alienation will be useful in separating Democrats, for example, from Republicans, or socialists from right-wing libertarians. A conscientious effort was made to eliminate from the measure of political alienation all references to specific events, issues, and personalities. Furthermore, opposition or approval of the policies and platforms of the major political groups in the nation, the political parties included, will not be the basis for determining the extent of an individual's alienation. By avoiding reference to specific events and issues, the measure of alienation will have the added desirable feature of not being directly affected by differences in the respondents' level of information about events and issues. Political alienation will also not be measured in terms of political activism or radicalism. It seems to me unfortunate that studies of college student alienation have often focused upon specific and very visible forms 0f eactivism such as membership in radical groups, 19 participation in protest rallies and demonstrations, civil disobedience, or upon selected opinions about the war in Southeast Asia or the military draft, relating and, in some instances, equating varying degrees and forms of militancy with alienation.4 In this regard, it will be the aim of this study to define alienation as a general attitudinal variable not limited by reference to particular issues and personalities. It would be woefully misleading to equate political radicalism or militancy with aliena- tion, for this would imply, among other things, that everyone who participates in radical or militant political activity does so for political reasons. A great many people,it would seem to me, participate in radical or militant politics for entirely non-political reasons, such as for companionship, for excitement, for want of something better to do, or for social acceptance and even status. At the same time, the opposite is also true, that a great many people with radical or militant views may often find themselves not participating in political activities because of personal and otherwise non-political reasons. Another pitfall to avoid in defining alienation is to define it so ambiguously that it takes on a chameleon- 1ike character which allowsit to assume whatever coloration the situation requires of it. Keniston writes that: It is always possible, like Humpty Dumpty, to have words mean what one chooses them to mean. And so it is always possible to define "alienation" in such a way that the civil rights marcher, the peace demonstrator, or Berkeley activists are, by defini- tion, "alienated."5 20 To have alienation assume too "plastic" a quality detracts from the specificity required in operationalizing the concept. With its demonstrated capacity to assume a wide variety of guises, alienation often becomes, as noted in Chapter I, an "all-purpose" expediter of numerous plausible and sometimes contradictory explanations. Alienation's changeable "Humpty-Dumpty" character and its usually pejorative connotation combine to add to the frequency of its use (and misuse) as well as to the difficulty of applying it to quantitative empirical research. One step in making alienation more amenable to operationalization would be to reduce the tendency of attaching a priori connotative judgments to it. It must be understood that alienation cannot be judged apart from the society that produces it.6 Connotations placed upon alienation reflect society and our views ot it. Though alienation is usually associated with undesirable social conditions, in a good many cases, it can be plausibly argued that alienation may have positive consequences both for society and for individuals. For example, it has fre- quently been associated with individual creativity and with possibilities for renewing and transforming social institutions.7 In this spirit, this study will be Sympathetic to an approach which seeks to: . . . understand alienation . . . to be better able to understand some of the most perceptive students---not in order to "cure" them, for alienation is a condition that in itself neither 21 seeks nor needs cure, but in order to help them find personally meaningful and culturally protec- tive ways of focusing and expressing their alienation.8 Another important conceptual distinction is that between alienation and anomie. Though the two terms are frequently used synonymously,9 a useful distinction between them is widely recognized. Nettler has stated the distinc- tion well: Anomie . . . refers to a societal condition of relative normlessness, alienation to a psycho- logical state of an individual . . . . Aliena- tion and anomie are undoubtedly correlated; at least it is difficult to conceive of any notable degree of anomie that would not result in alienation but this seems poor reason for confusing the two.10 I shall adhere to this distinction, using anomie to refer to societal conditions and institutions, and alienation to refer to individuals. Related to both alienation and anomie is the concept of reification, a concept resurrected a few years ago by Daniel Bell and described by him as follows: The idea of alienation as derived from Marx, and employed by intellectuals today, has a double meaning which can best be distinguished as estrangement and reification. The first is essen- tially a socio-psychological condition in which the individual experiences a sense of distance, or a divorce from his society or his community; he cannot belong, he is deracinated. The second, a philosophical category with psychological over- tones, implies that an individual is treated as an object and turned into a thing and loses his identity in the process; in contemporary parlance, he is depersonalized. The two shades of meaning, of estrangement and depersonalization, are socio- logically quite distinct.11 22 Estrangement is a subjective feeling on the individual level, while reification is a judgment, not necessarily directed at himself, that an observer makes about a whole society or segment of society. Estrangement, being a subjective feeling which arises from within a person, does not demand from each individual an explicit and elaborate conceptualization of what man is and what he ought to be; a person simply feels estranged or not. Even without being able to articulate precisely how or why he is estranged, a person can validly claim he is estranged because like sorrow or joy, estrangement is a feeling which is not necessarily intersubjective. Reification, on the other hand, requires a greater degree of explication of what man is and ought to be, because those who speak of reification speak not only of themselves but of a mass of people. Their claim is that they observe something about human society which differs from their conception of how man ought to live. This difference, if it does indeed exist, is external to the individual and hence supposedly observable to others and can be communicated to others. Occasionally the difference between estrangement and reification is stated in terms of "subjective" and "objective" alienation, respectively. Reification is said to be objective because "'objective' standards about the quality of human life established by the investigator"12 are used to determine whether or not a society is "reified." 23 What a person feels has nothing to do with whether or not society is "reified," so long as an investigator can point to societal conditions that indicate reification as he defines it. Individuals in a reified society who don't feel alienated are sometimes accused of "false conscious- 13 Such individuals are said to be blind to their ness." "true" needs and circumstances--in a sense, "brain-washed" into believing that they are happy and content when really they shouldn't be and would so realize if only they would wake up to be "realities" of their situation. Under these circumstances, reification may be "objective" but only to those who share certain basic value assumptions about the human condition. Because it may be defined differently by each person who has a different vision of man and society (and what person does not have his own views of man and society?), reification must be carefully distin- guished from other concepts with a more empirical grounding. Though difficult, it is possible that reification in Spite of its normative overtones might be developed into a useful empirical concept capable of providing a means for comparing the condition of different societies or communi- ties.14 While intriguing, the appeal of this line of investigation is outside the focus of this study. Reifica- tion is of concern because the terms alienation and anomie are sometimes used in situations in which reification might be more appropriate. For example, when Erich Fromm writes that "alienation . . . in modern society is almost total,"15 24 we should recognize that he is really talking about reifica- tion. He is assuming that alienation can be evaluated by an "objective" criterion which stipulates that when certain conditions are met, alienation is total or near total. Fromm's criterion for judging alienation is based on his normative conception of what the world should be like and his comments are compelling to the extent that we agree with his value assumptions. Used in this sense, alienation defined as reification, to quote Feuer,"remains too much a concept of political theology which bewilders rather than clarifies the direction of political action."16 The fact that reification is recognized as a concept with definite though usually hidden normative biases does not obviate the fact that biases of one sort or another are present in all types of research, empirical research included. Facts, after all, as Easton has reminded us, are merely particular renderings of reality according to given theoretical frame- works.l7 Our awareness, however, of what reification is may make us more cognizant of the framework within which we may be operating at any given time. A further explanation for alienation's conceptual nebulousness is our human ineptness for describing our own inner feelings and motivations. What a gulf between impression and expression! That's our ironic fate---to have Shakespearian feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to pg Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teenagers or college professors. We practice alchemy in 25 reverse---touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.18 If Shakespeare's ability to capture in verse the essence of human feelings could be transferred to some contemporary social scientist, then perhaps we might begin to capture the subtletiescf alienation inherent in our "feel" of the concept. But our verbal craftsmanship not being Shakes- peare's, we suffer with what we have: an approximation, albeit imperfect, of a human "feeling," which we call alienation. What we call alienation then is a stand-in for what we are all too often at odds to describe adequately, "a distinctive emotivefdramatic metaphor to experiences of "19 social frustration. To quote Keniston: In practice, . . . "alienation" has become an increasingly rhetorical and at times entirely emotive concept, often synonymous merely with the feeling that "something is wrong somewhere," and that "we have lost something important."20 Conceived of in such vague and all-encompassing terms, it becomes easy to suggest that: Alienation lies in every direction of human experience where basic emotional desire is frustrated, every direction in which the person may be compelled by social situations to do violence to his own nature. To accept alienation as such a nebulous concept is to do an injustice to its potential utility in empirical research and to disregard the work of those social scientists who have demonstrated that alienation can be systematically opera- tionalized so as to take into account its many applications and nuances. 26 Alienation as an Attitude Alienation in this study will be described as an attitude, "a relatively enduring organization of beliefs around an object or situation predisposing one to respond in some preferential manner."22 Since an attitude by definition is integrated into a cognitive system in which a change in any part affects other parts, a particular attitude may be said to affect all other attitudes and values held by an individual.23 As such, it is understand- able that alienation may be said to elude "fixed dimensions because it is as multipotential as the varieties of human experience."24 Fortunately, its multipotential character can be delimited when examined systematically within given frameworks of analysis. One such framework is provided by the massive psychological literature on attitudes. The study of attitudes has long been prominent in the field of psychology25 and as early as 1935, Gordon Allport was able to state that: The concept of attitude is probably the most distinctive and indispensible concept in contemporary American psychology. No other term appears more frequently6in experimental and theoretical literature. Before progressing further, consideration of the concept of alienation as an attitude would be useful. In this regard, Melvin Seeman's approach to alienation merits attention because of its widespread influence among those interested in the study of alienation, even though it 27 represents a line of thinking less acceptable today than in 1959 when Seeman wrote his article, "On the Meaning of Alienation." In this seminal article, Seeman repeatedly defines his various types of alienation in terms of "expectancies." This term is specifically used by Seeman in defining four of his five types of alienation, i.e., powerlessness, isolation, meaninglessness, and normless- ness.27 For example, in defining isolation, Seeman states that his definition was developed in a context "in which we seek to maintain a consistent focus on the individual's expectancies or values . . . ."28 Elsewhere in this article, Seeman reiterates that he has "chosen to focus on expectancies."29 My objection to the use of the term expectancy is that Seeman, in spite of his avowedly "distinctly socio-psychological View" of alienation, seems to be saying that alienation is solely the result of a calculated, rationalistic, and unemotional view of the world and denying the role of affective feelings and desires. He seems to be trying to deny the notion that alienation is not only the realization that one is, for instance, powerless, but that one also feels frustrated and disillusioned by that realization. On this point, Seeman is quite explicit: . . . this version of powerlessness does not take into account, as a definitional matter, the frus- tration an individual may feel as a consequence of the discrepancy between the control he may expect and the degree of control he desires--- that is, it takes no direct account of the value of control to the person. 28 In this version of powerlessness, then, the individual's expectancy for control of events is clearly distinguished from . . . the individual's sense of a discrepancy between his expectancies for control and his desire for control.-50 (emphasis added) In believing it is possible to distinguish and Separate a person's cognitive expectancies and his affec- tive desires for power, Seeman was in keeping with the scholarship of his time which did emphasize the distinc- tion between the cognitive and the affective aspects of attitudes. Beliefs or cognitive aspects of thought, at that time, were differentiated from attitudes on the basis that beliefs were perceptually linked judgments about matters of fact,while attitudes involved not only beliefs but also value judgments and affective evaluations on matters of personal preference or taste. Today this once widely held distinction between beliefs and attitudes on the basis of cognitive and affective components is no longer generally accepted. Rokeach31 points out that even such psychologists as Krech, Crutchfield, and Fishbein, who once held to this distinction between beliefs and attitudes, have over the years changed their minds. According to Rokeach, . . . any belief considered singly, representing as it does a predisposition to respond in a preferential way to the object of the belief, can be said t3 have an affective as well as cognitive element.3 Seeman's distinction between cognitive expectancies and affective desires with regard to alienation might best be 29 set aside then, in light of more contemporary psychological literature on attitudes.33 This melding of cognitive and affective elements in attitudes allows the definition used in this study to remain consonant with other definitions of alienation which have described the term as a "feeling" or "feeling state,"34 a "mental state,"35 "a mode of experience,"36 or "an emergent response to social structure . . . a . "37 react1on. By defining the term as an attitude and given the massive literature on attitudes, alienation is placed in an arbitrary, perhaps, but nevertheless helpful context which provides guidelines as to what characteristics of the concept need to be studied to make it more fully understood. Two characteristics of attitudes--attitude focus and salience--will be mentioned first only in passing and discussed more fully later.* Attitudinal focus is the idea that attitudes are organized around objects or situa- tions of one sort or another. In this study, the chief objects of focus for the attitude of alienation are the political system, the self, and school, with primary attention given to the political system. Attitude salience *The idea of attitudinal focus will be discussed more fully later in this chapter when discussing Keniston's approach to the conceptualization of alienation and also in Chapter IV on the measurement of alienation. Attitude salience will be discussed more fully in this chapter in the section on the concept of political relevance. .__-—~‘. fan _4 _M r--..—— —— h...- 30 is the degree to which an attitude is central to a given individual's priority of values. For purposes of this study, an attempt will be made to determine how salient or important the political system is to the respondents. It will be assumed that if respondents do not regard the political system as salient to their needs and aspirations, this will be reflected in their political participation patterns. As an attitudinal variable, an aspect of alienation we are reminded of is whether or not it will be "directive" or "dynamic" in nature. As directive only, they (attitudes) would channel the existing level of energy into one kind of behavioral outlet rather than another, or toward one target rather than another. If attitudes are dynamic also, they affect the absolute level of energy as well as determine its channel of expre551on. In this study, alienation will be regarded as a dynamic attitude affecting both the level and channel of the behavioral response. Treating alienation as a dynamic attitude is to choose the more complex of the two alterna- tives and to make it desirable that the dependent variable being related to alienation be able to reflect this differ- ence of quality and quantity. The main dependent variable in this study is political participation and an attempt will be made to measure it in such a way so as to reveal both its qualitative and quantitative variations.* ¥ *This attempt to develop a satisfactory measure for political participation will be dealt with more fully in Chapter VI on the nature of political participation. 31 As a motivating or energizing influence, alienation can be regarded as creating in the individual a predisposi- tion to respond "with the understanding that a response may be either verbal expression of an opinion or some form of nonverbal behavior."39 This does not stipulate that a response will be made, only that there will be a "pre- disposition" to respond or, for that matter, not to respond-- failure to respond being a kind of response in itself. It is reasonable, I think, to assume as Rokeach has done that "all attitudes are here assumed to be 'agendas for action' or to have a behavioral component. . . ."40 This should not lead one to expect that all attitudinal predispositions will lead to readily observable responses or that we will be keen enough to recognize and accurately record these responses. The crucial point is that attitudes can be thought to have behavioral manifestations whose intensity and likelihood of occurrence is based at least in part on the intensity of the attitude held.41 The utility of this examination of some of the Characteristics of attitudes is to guide our thinking about Vfllat alienation as an attitude is and how it might best be jInvestigated. From this examination, we are reminded of SCNne of the more important features of attitudes which aFKPly to this study of alineation. We are reminded that attitudes have foci and different degrees of salience, the latter characteristic hypothesized to be related to the pattern of behavioral responses. We are also informed 32 that as an attitude alienation can be expected to have a variety of verbal or nonverbal, directive or dynamic behavioral ramifications. A Framework for the Conceptualization of Political Alienation Of the several attempts to conceptualize alienation systematically,42 the schema offered by Kenneth Keniston seems particularly well suited for ease of empirical appli- cation and wide-ranging adaptability. As Aberbach notes: The Keniston schema is valuable for empirical and theoretical purposes because it stimulates defini- tional and measurement refinements (i.e., looking at alienation in terms of form [subject] and focus [object], and emphasizes the place of the various types of alienation in a chain of sources and consequences. The schema basically consists of four questions:44 1. Focus: Alienation from what? 2. Replacement: What replaces the old relation- ship? (This might more crisply be referred to as the form of the alienation.) 3. Mode: How is the alienation manifest? 4. Agent: What is the agent (cause) of the alienation? The first question (though the order here is some- Whaterbitrary) to ask about alienation according to KGiniston is that of focus. As stated earlier, implicit in 45 tiue notion of alienation is the idea of separation. As Kertiston has said, "the concept of alienation in every Variation suggests the loss or absence of a previous or deSirable relationship."46 The principal focus of this 33 study is the political system, with attention also being given to types of alienation whose foci are the self and school. By the political system, I mean the collective sum of all political powers, regardless of level or func- tion, which affect the individual citizen's life. Generally speaking, the study will proceed on the assump- tion that most citizens, students included, when asked about politics, do not differentiate consistently and clearly between politics as a general phenomenon and politics of a particular governmental level, such as the national or the local level, or politics as rooted in any set of governmental institutions, differentiating here kxetween the legislative, for example, and the executive jhevel. It is difficult to imagine that most citizens VflDuld have distinct impressions and attitudes of each of ‘Uae various levels and types of political units. However, since it seems desirable in the long run 'UD specify more concretely the object of political alien- ‘ation in terms other than "the political system," let me Pingmunt the focus of alienation in this study as the nEttional political system, for that, I think, is what moStpeople would point to if asked to designate "the ENDlitical system." There are several reasons for this Ckloice, three of which stand out. First, national politics Fnfiasents the most visible and evocative image of politics today. It stirs the highest and most extreme form of ‘patriotism and obligation, as well as the most intense 34 varieties of hate and sedition.47 It furthermore encom- passes the broadest range of political behavior and hence in terms of applicability of this study's findings, allows for the widest theoretical application. Secondly, it offers a common ground for individual comparisons among respondents in this study. Since respondents in this study identify with numerous different state and local governments, the designation of the national government provides a common focus. Finally, the national political system is the predominant unit of government in American politics. It is generally recognized as ultimately responsible for the overall regulation and coordination of the mechanisms of justice, security, and economic well- being. The next item on Keniston's investigative outline is the Eggm of alienation. Eggm refers to the nature of the relationship between the alienated individual and the Sfiocus of alienation, in this case, the political system. rI‘his aspect of alienation has been widely discussed in the literature. One of the most inclusive and perhaps the IWDSt frequently cited discussion of the forms of alienation i£5 Seeman's five—fold delineation of powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self- €355trangement.48 Recently this five-fold delineation was ehlarged by Seeman to include a sixth form of alienation, Cultural estrangement, which is to be distinguished from Self-estrangement.49 These forms of alienation as developed 35 by Seeman have been focused upon the political system by Finifter and in the process, reduced to four in number: political powerlessness, political meaninglessness, per- ceived political normlessness, and political isolation.50 Of these forms, two--politica1 powerlessness and perceived normlessness--are of particular pertinence to this study. For purposes of this study, I have chosen to use the terms political efficacy and political cynicism in place of political powerlessness and perceived political normless- ness, respectively, in an attempt to use what seems to be the more common terminology. On this point, it is worth noting that political efficacy and political cynicism, though labelled variously-- e.gu, powerlessness, mistrust, potency, normlessness, iJicapability, discontent--have been used together in one rmanner or another in at least 15 different, largely eunpirical political science studies,51 practically to the (exclusion of the other forms of political alienation. In Spite of this rather overwhelming consensus among political SCientists that these two forms of alienation are of Eflarticular value in explaining political behavior, sur- lxrisingly little has been done to examine the interrelation- Ships between these two forms of alienation and to suggest hCnv interaction between them is related to political events and behavior. An illustration of the conceptual fuzziness sur- rOmnding these forms of alienation is found in a study by 36 McDill and Ridley,52 who, paraphrasing very closely the words of Thompson and Horton,53 leave nebulously defined the relationship between political inefficacy, apathy, political alienation, and political distrust.54 McDill and Ridley state that: A feeling of political inefficacy . . . is linked to a feeling of political alienation . . . . Political alienation involves not only apathy as a response to political power- lessness but also a general distrust of political leaders who are wielders of this power.5 Compare the remarkable similarity of this statement to that of Thompson and Horton, who write that: The suggestion is that political inefficacy may result in political alienation which involves not only apathy or indifference as a response to awareness of powerlessness, but also diffuse displeasure at being powerless and mistrust of those who do wield power. lfliile the above two statements make it fairly clear that political alienation is the most inclusive phenomenon and tfliat it involves feelings of inefficacy and cynicism, it is not clear whether or how apathy is related to cynicism éhld how inefficacy and cynicism are related to each other, Cfiflier than that their additive effect makes negative \KDting more likely. No attempt is made to suggest whether efficacy or cynicism is the dominant factor in determining VOting pattern or turnout. Since the time of these two articles, there have beernefforts seeking to clarify the relationships among efficacy, cynicism, and voting. In one such effort, Janda 37 found that efficacy and cynicism are helpful in explaining different aspects of voting behavior--efficacy being related to voting turnout and cynicism to the direction of the vote-~but that the combination of efficacy and cynicism offer "no improvement in the explanation of voting turnout and voting choice . . . ."57 In this study, attention will be directed toward the effect of the combination of efficacy and cynicism, not on voting since most of the respondents could not vote at the time of the survey, but on political participation. Political efficacy will be defined as an indivi- dual's belief that he can influence government decision- making and affect the course of government policy-making. An inefficacious individual sees himself distant and often (even cut off from the sources of political power. He Exerceives himself lacking access to political power and regards the resources at his personal disposal insufficient to affect the powers that be. In other words, Political decisions, which determine to a great extent the conditions under which the individual lives, may appear to be happening to the indi- viduals who feel powerless, independent of or in spite of their own judgment or wishes.5 I’Olitical inefficacy produces the feeling that a barrier Seiparates the individual from government and that the QNJVernment is no longer his since he cannot influence it. C