Political Issues and Trust in Government: 1964-1970

American Political Science Review

Volumn 68, Issue 3, 1974, Pages 951-972

  Miller, Arthur H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84976179259     PISSN: 00030554     EISSN: 15375943     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1959140     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. William A. Gamson, Power and Discontent (Home-wood, III: Dorsey Press, 1968), chapter 9.
2. Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), chapter 14.
3. Gamson, pp. 42–48.
4. For a discussion of the dimensions of political alienation, see Ada W. Finifter. “Dimensions of Political Alienation, ” American Political Science Review, 64 (June, 1970), 389–410.
5. Philip E. Converse, “Change in the American Electorate, ” in The Human Meaning of Social Change, ed. Angus Campbell and Philip E. Converse, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972).
6. John Robinson, Jerrold Rusk, and Kendra B. Head, Measures of Political Attitudes (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Institute for Social Research, 1969), pp. 626–647.
7. Donald E. Stokes, “Popular Evaluations of Government: An Empirical Assessment” in Ethics and Bigness: Scientific, Academic, Religions, Political and Military, ed. Harlan Cleveland and Harold D. Lasswell (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), p. 64.
8. See Joel D. Aberbach, “Alienation and Political Behavior, ” American Political Science Review, 63 March, 1969), 36–99 for a discussion of the importance of a specific referent when measuring political alienation. See also Kenneth Keniston, The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), pp. 453–455.
9. Cynicism and efficacy correspond very closely to Seeman's conceptualizations of normlessness and powerlessness and have been treated as theoretically separate components of political alienation by a number of analysts. Melvin Seeman in “On the Meaning of Alienation, ” American Sociological Review, 24 (December 1959), 783–791 defines normlessness as “… a high expectancy that socially unapproved behaviors are required to achieve given goals.” Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1965) have emphasized the difference between these two concepts by drawing the distinction between “input affect, ” that is, political efficacy, and “output affect, ” or political cynicism (discussed in terms of trust), Gamson, in Power and Discontent, p. 42, has likewise stressed their conceptual differences. He notes that the efficacy dimension of political alienation refers to “people's perception of their ability to influence.” There currently exists an extensive body of literature dealing with the conceptual problem of studying political trust, political efficacy and, more generally, political alienation. See, in particular, Aberbach, “Alienation and Political Behavior, ” and Finifter, “Dimensions of Political Alienation.”
10. The empirical literature investigating trust is characteristically lacking in two respects: longitudinal considerations are rarely entertained, and little use is made of political issues as explanatory variables. Furthermore, an overwhelming majority of those few studies dealing with any form of relationship between issues and cynicism were either based upon restricted populations, such as college students or particular cities, or done under special conditions, such as at times of riots. Some studies that have dealt with issues but used limited samples are: William A. Gamson, “The Fluoridation Dialogue: Is it an Ideological Conflict?, ” Public Opinion Quarterly, 25 (Winter 1961), 526-537; Edgar Litt, “Political Cynicism and Political Futility, ” Journal of Politics, 25 (May, 1963), 312-323; Joel D. Aberbach and Jack L. Walker, “Political Trust and Racial Ideology, ” The American Political Science Review, 64 (December. 1970). 1199–1219.
11. V. O. Key, Jr., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 27–76.
12. For an insightful study of what various people perceive to be violence, see Monica D. Blumenthal, Robert L. Kahn, Frank M. Andrews, and Kendra B. Head, Justifying Violence: Attitudes of American Men (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Institute for Social Research, 1972).
13. Angus Campbell, White Attitudes Toward Black People (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Institute for Social Research, 1971).
14. Patricia Gurin, Gerald Gurin, Rosina Lao, and Muriel Beattie, “Internal-External Control in the Motivational Dynamics of Negro Youth, ” Journal of Social Issues, 25 (July, 1969), 29–53, investigates whether an individual places the blame for social or economic failure among blacks on the individual or the system.
15. Two pieces of information lend credence to this interpretation. First, the very substantial decrease in the percentage of respondents saying “don't know” corresponds more closely to the percentage increases in the middle and withdrawal categories than it does to the percentage fluctuation found in the escalation category. Second, as Milton Rosenberg, Sidney Verba and Philip E. Converse point out in Vietnam and the Silent Majority: The Dove's Guide (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970), p. 55, it is the “hawks” who have been the more informed on the Vietnam issue; hence, their attitudes on Vietnam would be more crystalized and less susceptible to change. What these data suggest, therefore, is that while there had been a trend toward support of withdrawal from Vietnam, there had not been a concurrent reduction in the polarization of attitudes on Vietnam policy. Continued conflict over Vietnam policy is understandable, given continued dissent among opinion leadership——identified by Richard A. Brody and Sidney A. Verba in “Hawk and Dove: The Search for an Explanation of Vietnam Policy Preferences, ” Acta Politica, 7 (July, 1972), 285–322, as among the most important independent variables in explaining opinions on Vietnam —as well as changes in official policy, a factor which tends to reduce the impact “current policy” would have on a converging policy preference.
16. Milton Rosenberg, Philip E. Converse, Sidney Verba, Vietnam and the Silent Majority; as well as Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, Jerrold Rusk and Arthur Wolfe, “Continuity and Change in American Politics: Parties and Issues in the 1968 Election, ” American Political Science Review, 63 (December, 1969), 1083-1105.
17. Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg, The Real Majority (New York: Coward, McCann and Geohegan, Inc., 1971). The implications of their major premise—that a presidential candidate must move to the center in order to win—is that a centrist policy is preferred by a majority of the voters.
18. For a definition of social control, see Gamson, Power and Discontent, pp. 11–19.
19. Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1960), p. 178.
20. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1957), p. 39.
21. Between 1970 and 1972 the cynicism PDI value for whites increased from 0 to 7, while trust continued to decline for blacks. The change in cynicism between 1970 and 1972 for blacks was, however, much slower than it had been between 1968 and 1970, going from a 1970 PDI value of “31 to —39 in 1972.
22. Gamson, Power and Discontent p. 52.