Modes and Types of Political Alienation

Abstract

Students of political behaviour have made a considerable effort to describe and explain the behaviour of politically alienated individuals.t This effiort, however, has not culminated in a systematic theoretical framework. The literature is still inconclusive and research findings are often contradictory. The range of activities from svhich the alienated are supposed to choose their course of actioll varies from conscious withdrawal to political violence. Milbrath maintains that alienated persons 'not only hesitate to take gladiatorial action, but they are likely to withdraw from spectator action as sve11'.1 Horton and Thompson on the other hand, report that the 'alienated systematically express their alienation, presumably as a negative attitude and a protest vote'.2 Gamson, rejecting the idea that the alienated withdraw from politics, suggests that alienation is highly related to political violence.3 Ransford has reinforced the 'violence proposition' by showing that participation in urban riots is highly correlated with political alienation.4 Traditionally, two explanations have been advanced to account for these contradictions. One is based on a distinction between levels of government: the political behaviour of alienated persons is said to vary with the level of government, so that withdrawal is characteristic at the national level while political nogativism is more commonplace at local levels.5 The secorld explanation introduces a situational factor as an intervening variable: the alienated, it is argued, are quiescent under ordinary circumstances but may be mobilized in extreme movements under certain circumstances. 6 Although theoretically plausible, these two explanations have not been empirically verified in models of political alienation and behaviour. In recent years, a categorically different approach to the study of political alienation has begun to emerge. This approach stems from the idea that political alienation is a multi-dimensional construct susceptible to mlultivariate analyses. The rationale underlying this notion is that thematic and empirical decomposition of ambiguous or multi-