A Re-Assessment of the Concept of Political Support

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 5, Issue 4, 1975, Pages 435-457

  Easton, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84976013021     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400008309     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. The Economist, 23 March 1974, p. 12.
2. Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, unabridged (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam, 1968).
3. D. Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965).
4. W. F. Murphy and J. Tanenhaus in‘Public Opinion and the United States Supreme Court’, Law and Society Review, II (1968), 357-84, carefully remove such awareness as a central condition for specific support of the Supreme Court.
5. E. N. Muller,‘The Representation of Citizens by Political Authorities: Consequences for Regime Support’, American Political Science Review, lxiv (1970), 1149-66, at p. 1152.
6. See D. Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1958) where peasants prefer to blame fate or the weather rather than some vague eminence over the hills.
7. For a comprehensive collection of these objections see J. Wahlke,‘Policy Demands and System Support: the Role of the Represented’, British Journal of Political Science, I (1971), 271-90, pp. 274 ff.
8. T. R. Dye, Politics, Economics and the Public: Policy Outcomes in the American States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966) and the voluminous literature around the issues raised in that book.
9. G. Loewenberg,‘The Influence of Parliamentary Behavior on Regime Stability’, Comparative Politics, III (1971), 177-200, p. 187.
10. Murphy and Tanenhaus,‘Public Opinion and the United States Supreme Court’, p. 360.
11. See, for example, J. Fraser,‘Impact of Community and Regime Orientations on Choice of Political System’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, xiv (1970), 413-33, pp. 417 and 426.
12. S. Verba and N. H. Nie, Participation in America; Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 117.
13. Verba and Nie, Participation in America, p. 116.
14. Verba and Nie, Participation in America, p. III.
15. Verba and Nie, Participation in America, Chap. 7,‘The Rationality of Political Activity: A Reconsideration’.
16. For the Verba and Nie finding, see. Participation in America, pp. 36-7, Fig. 2-3: Example 1, Circle D (‘Contacf-15 per cent;’Both-15 per cent). the ‘42 per cent’ figure is drawn from a study of political attitudes and behavior conducted in 1973 at the National Opinion Research Center by N. H. Nie, S. Verba, A. Greeley and J. Petrocik, and is cited here with their kind permission.
17. Easton, A Systems Analysis, p. 399.
18. Muller,‘Representation of Citizens’, p. 1152, italics in original.
19. Muller,‘Representation of Citizens’.
20. See in a similar vein Wahlke,‘Policy Demands and System Support’, p. 288.
21. Muller,‘Representation of Citizens’, p. 1156. It may be interesting to note that, if this typology is sustained, diffuse support which Murphy and Tanenhaus define as‘the degree to which people think a court carries out its overall responsibilities in an impartial and competent fashion’ (‘Public Opinion and the United States Supreme Court’, p. 370) becomes just a variety of specific support in Muller's terms. This is an important consideration in the interpretation of their findings by Murphy and Tanenhaus as they themselves would probably be the first to recognize (see their fn. 20). If they are in fact testing for specific rather than diffuse support, this would help to account for the unexpectedly high correlation between their measure and policy issue clusters.
22. Loewenberg,‘The Influence of Parliamentary Behavior on Regime Stability’, p. 184. Davidson and Parker share this point of view when they write that‘the distinction Easton makes between specific and diffuse support is based on the underlying motivation for support. Clearly such motives would be difficult to detect empirically. We have chosen to avoid such an empirical problem by regarding support as’an aggregate characteristic of the population‘-a strategy which eliminated the need to measure individual motives for supportive actions.’ R. H. Davidson and G. R. Parker,‘Positive Support for Political Institutions: the Case of Congress,’ Western Political Quarterly, xxv (1972), 600-12, p. 602.
23. See for example S. C. Patterson, J. C. Wahlke and G. R. Boynton,‘Dimensions of Support in Legislative Systems’ in A. Kornberg, ed., Legislatures in Comparative Perspective (New York: McKay, 1970), 282-313 at p. 297 where the authors state that‘specific and diffuse support are not strongly related’. See also the numerous other references there to research and publications in which thesameauthors have participated. G. R. Boynton and G. Loewenberg,‘The Development of Public Support for Parliament in Germany 1951-59’, British Journal of Political Science, m (1973). 169-89, P-172.
24. D. Eastern, A Systems Analysis, p. 273. For one of the most direct applications of the concept of diffuse support as positive or negative evaluations, undifferentiated into subdimen-sions, see J. Dennis,‘Support for the Party System in the Mass Public’, American Political Science Review, lx (1966), 600-15.
25. For some discussion of the relationship see Patterson, Wahlke and Boynton,‘Dimensions of Support in Legislative Systems’, p. 297.
26. See my interpretation of the forced relocation of the Japanese-Americans during World War II in the U. S., in‘Theoretical Approaches to Political Support’, in manuscript.
27. See J. C. Davies,‘Toward a Theory of Revolution’, American Sociological Review, xxvii (1962), 5-18 and related literature.
28. See Boynton and Loewenberg,‘Development of Public Support for Parliament in Germany’, and also their‘Sources of the Growth of Public Support for the Federal Republic in Postwar Germany’ (manuscript, 1973); and Muller,‘Representation of Citizens’, Table 2 ff. and pp. 1163-5 where he demonstrates that instrumental and expressive performance are associated with legitimacy, one form of diffuse support.
29. C. E. Merriam, Political Power (New York: McGraw-Hill. 1934).
30. Eastern,‘Theoretical Approaches to Political Support’.
31. W. Gamson, Power and Discontent (Homewood, III.: Dorsey, 1968), p. 54.
32. As reported in Wahlke,‘Policy Demands and System Support’, p. 288.
33. See Easton, A Systems Analysis, p. 278 ff.; Garrison, Power and Discontent, p. 43; and T. Parsons, Sociological Theory and Modern Society (New York: Free Press, 1967).
34. ‘[Mistrust] of government has a “political” basis; people are cynical of public officials when they disapprove of what they are doing.’ Also, measures of political trust‘are strongly colored by evaluations of incumbent authorities’. J. Citrin and D. J. Elkins,‘Political Disaffection in Great Britain: Some Data from Student and General Population Samples’, in manuscript at p. 60.
35. Citrin and Elkins,‘Political Disaffection in Great Britain’, pp. 25 and 32.
36. Citrin and Elkins,‘Political Disaffection in Great Britain’, pp. 10-11.
37. See Easton, A Systems Analysis, pp. 278-310 for an extended discussion.
38. Easton, A Systems Analysis, p. 278.
39. For the table and its analysis, see Easton, A Systems Analysis, p. 287 ff. For an application of this typology about legitimacy, see Muller,‘Representation of Citizens’, p. 1163 ff.;‘Correlates and Consequences of Beliefs in the Legitimacy of Regime Structures’, Midwest JournalofPolitical Science, xiv (1970), 392-412; and‘A Test of a Partial Theory of Potential Political Violence’, American Political Science Review, lxvi (i 972), 928-59. It is also instructive to examine the way in which a belief in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court is defined and measured by W. F. Murphy and J. Tanenhaus in The Study of Public Law (New York: Random House, 1972) and in many other publications by them about support for the courts.
40. G. R. Boynton, S. C. Patterson and R. D. Hedlund,‘The Structure of Public Support for Legislative Institutions’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, xn (1968), 163-80, p. 169 and the publications of J. Dennis with others on public support for political parties and regime norms. See also Wahlke,‘Policy Demands and System Support’, p. 285; Boynton and Loewen-berg,‘Development of Public Support for Parliament in Germany’, at p. 171; and Patterson
41. J. Dennis and D. McCrone,‘Preadult Development of Political Party Identification in Western Democracies’, Comparative Political Studies, m (1970), 243-63, p. 244.
42. See J. Dennis, L. Lindberg, D. McCrone and R. Stiefbold,‘Political Socialization to Democratic Orientations in Four Western Systems’, Comparative Political Studies, 1 (1968), 71-101, p. 73. For positive support generated in processes of socialization and interpreted as contributing to the growth or decline of legitimating attitudes, see D. Easton and J. Dennis, Children in the Political System: Origins of Political Legitimacy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969).
43. Muller, for example, in‘Correlates and Consequences of Beliefs in the Legitimacy of Regime Structures’ considers trust to be a synonym for personal legitimacy.
44. S. C. Patterson, G. R. Boynton and R. D. Hedlund,‘Perceptions and Expectations of the Legislature and Support for It’, American Journal of Sociology, lxxv (1969), 62-76; Boynton, Patterson and Hedlund,‘Structure of Public Support for Legislative Institutions’; and Patterson, Wahlke and Boynton,‘Dimensions of Support in Legislative Systems’.
45. See, for example, A. W. Finifter, ed., Alienation and the Social System (New York: Wiley, 1972) and D. C. Schwartz, Political Alienation and Political Behavior (Chicago: Aldine, J972).
46. A. W. Finifter,‘Dimensions of Political Alienation’, in Finifter, Alienation and the Social System, 189-212.
47. Citrin and Elkins,‘Political Disaffection in Great Britain,’ pp. 7-8.
48. Finifter, Alienation and the Social System, p. 191.
49. Finifter, Alienation and the Social System.
50. I. K. Feierabend, R. L. Feierabend and B. A. Nesvold,‘Social Change and Political Violence: Cross-National Patterns’ in I. K. Feierabend, R. L. Feierabend and T. R. Gurr, Anger, Violence and Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp. 107-24 esp. at p. 109.
51. See Easton,‘Theoretical Approaches to Political Support’, in manuscript.