The City and Political Psychology

Abstract

Alternative theories—“social mobilization” and “urban anomie”— predict different relationships between urbanism and political involvement, i.e., that urbanism stimulates, or that urbanism alienates individuals. (Dahl has predicted a curvilinear association.) This study examines these theories using the 1968 Michigan S.R.C. election survey. Three methodological tools are employed— formulating a causal model among political psychological variables, distinguishing size of polity from size of urban area, and using path analysis—to answer three questions: the effect of urbanism, the effect of polity size, and the effect of their interaction. Overall, the results show little independent association be-tween the urban variables and involvement. Trends indicate that largeness may have slight mobilizing effects even though it also slightly reduces sense of political efficacy, and that the mobilization is a shift in involvement from local to national politics. A partial replication is obtained in the Almond and Verba data.