External Political Efficacy Research Articles

Value orientation and external political efficacy: assessing the relationship between traditional values, progressive politics and political responsiveness

Values are often used to explain phenomena associated with problematic political behaviours. For example, the election of far-right parties is often attributed to traditional values. The ‘Cultural Backlash’ thesis (Inglehart and Norris in Cultural backlash: trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2017a) is prominent in this field of research and explains such behaviour by a predominance of progressive issues as the result of Value Change. It is assumed that this causes traditional individuals to perceive the political system as less responsive, which can also be understood as low external political efficacy; however, there is little in the way of empirical research that tests the connection between one’s value orientation and one’s sense of external efficacy (Inglehart and Norris in Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash, 2016; Inglehart and Norris in Cultural backlash: trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017a; Inglehart and Norris in Perspect Polit 15(2):443-453, 2017b). This study aims to fill this gap by examining the effects of traditional values on perceptions of external efficacy, particular attention to the role of predominantly progressive politics. For this purpose, the relationship between values and external efficacy is brought into cross-national context in order to analyse the moderating effect of the degree of progressivity of the respective national political system. To test these assumption with multilevel mixed-effects model, this study uses European Social Survey data from 23 European countries and from the Manifesto Project. The results show that traditional values are negative associated with external political efficacy. They also show that this effect is partially intensified the more progressive the party manifestos are.

External political efficacy and populist attitudes: Understanding the demand for populism in North Macedonia

This paper focuses on the underlying factors driving the demand for populism in North Macedonia. It presents an argument on populist attitudes, illustrating empirically that within this specific context, they are primarily driven by heightened dissatisfaction with state institutions. This dissatisfaction is manifested as perceived lack of external political efficacy, with state mechanisms failing to foster citizen inclusion in political processes. Additionally, this paper demonstrates that populism in this country of South East Europe is also significantly influenced by adherence to traditional values and beliefs in conspiracy theories. These findings are discussed in relation to the dominant theories on populist demand found in current literature. The objectives of this paper are twofold. Firstly, it seeks to examine the applicability of current theories to the case of North Macedonia. Secondly, it proposes a perspective on the factors stimulating populism within this context. To assess the effects of different factors on populist demand, we employ OLS regression modeling using survey data collected in June 2021. This study contributes to the existing literature on the demand side of populism, presenting findings from a region not frequently examined in this regard-Southeast Europe, specifically North Macedonia.

The Political Significance of Overeducation: Status Inconsistency, Attitudes towards the Political System and Political Participation in a High-Overeducation Context

This article examines the impact of overeducation on attitudes towards the political system and political participation. Using survey data from Spain, diagonal reference models were estimated to contrast hypotheses based on the theory of status inconsistency. The evidence links overeducation to political attitudes (lower satisfaction with the functioning of democracy, lower external political efficacy) and political participation (greater participation in protests, higher membership in associations). Most of these effects are modest and some of them are moderated by age. Overall, the findings indicate that overeducation has relevant political consequences, mainly among young, university-educated workers doing jobs with low educational requirements. However, overeducation does not pose a major threat to political stability.

Political Disaffection in the Digital Age: The Use of Social Media and the Gap in Internal and External Efficacy

This work analyzes the relationship between social media use and the development of internal and external political efficacy, using five 1,650-person polls conducted in 2017–2021 in the 10 most populated municipalities of in the Valparaiso Region in Chile, a country characterized by high levels of political discontent and social protests, especially in 2019. With Structural Equation Models, we report positive impacts of different magnitudes of the civic use of social media on internal and external efficacy and no effect of the non-civic use of social media on either type of efficacy. As lower internal and external political efficacy feeds political disaffection, the differentiated use of social media can deepen the gap between engaged and disaffected citizens.

The Influence of Political Efficacy on Voter Turnout in South Africa

ABSTRACT South Africa's recent democratic elections have witnessed a decline in political participation. Yet few studies examine the influence of political efficacy on the decision to participate. Using 2014 and 2019 post-election public opinion survey data captured after these respective national and provincial elections, the paper addresses a research gap by demonstrating a relationship between a respondent's level of internal and external political efficacy and their likelihood of voting across two consecutive elections. It finds that external political efficacy, and to a lesser extent, internal efficacy shapes the decision to vote. The responsiveness of the political system is a key determinant of voting even after other key predictors of participation are accounted for. It concludes that years of state-based failures have eroded citizen perceptions of political system responsiveness which has, in turn, undermined how citizens perceive the utility of their vote.

Agamben’in İstisna Hali Olarak Pandemi Döneminde Dışsal Siyasal Etkililik: Sosyal Etki Teori Çerçevesinde Bir İnceleme

Bu çalışmada Agamben’in “İstisna Hali” kavramından yola çıkılarak pandemi döneminde alınan ve uygulamaya konan önleyici ve ihtiyati tedbirlerin Sosyal Etki Teorisi çerçevesinde üniversite öğrencilerinin Dışsal Siyasal Etkililik duygularında nasıl bir değişiklik yarattığı sorusunun cevabını bulmaya yönelik olarak hazırlanmıştır. Bu çerçevede bir üniversite öğrencileri üzerinde alan araştırması yapılmış ve elde edilen veriler SPSS 23 yazılımı yardımıyla uyum analizi kullanılmak suretiyle değerlendirilmiştir. Bu değerlendirmeler sonucunda siyasal iktidara ve dolayısıyla kazanan partilere yakın duran bireylerin dışsal siyasal etkililikleri yüksek iken muhalif siyasal partilere destek verenlerin düşük olduğu gözlemlenmiştir. Ancak açık uçlu olarak sorduğumuz sorulardan anlaşıldığı kadarıyla da öğrencilerin bu süreci genel olarak siyasetin dışında, olduğundan çok daha kapsamlı bir “istisna hali” olarak algıladıkları anlaşılmıştır.

Consultative referendums and democracy - assessing the short-term effects on political support of a referendum on a municipal merger

ABSTRACT Local consultative referendums are a widely used democratic innovation. Nevertheless, there is still limited knowledge about the local effects following a referendum, especially in terms of how the public reactions varies given if a citizen has been on the winning or on the losing side of the referendum. The purpose with this study is therefore to add to this line of research by assessing how a local referendum about a municipal merger affects external political efficacy and political trust within a local community. By analysing two cross-sectional datasets collected in a bilingual Finnish municipality before a merger referendum, in 2018 (N = 6,686), and after the referendum, in 2020 (N = 3,133), as a pseudo-experiment of effects of a municipal merger, we show that the aggregated levels of external political efficacy and political trust have increased and vary based on being on the winning or losing side of the referendum.

The Impact of News Trust and Scandal Knowledge on Political Efficacy

The Trump-era political environment in the United States is characterized by changes to our information environment, specifically discourse surrounding so-called "fake news," and knowledge of political scandals. We explore whether news trust or knowledge of Trump administration scandals impact individuals’ levels of internal, information, and external political efficacy. We find significant and surprising relationships between these measures and political efficacy outcomes. Results contribute to our understanding of how political efficacy is responsive to changes in the political environment.

Cognition and protest in democratic and authoritarian regimes, 1981–2020

Whereas most theories of why the masses protest in democratic and authoritarian regimes involve some psychological or ‘cognitive’ element, major theories that include them (a) de-emphasize the structural conditions and (b) posit an explicit structure and cognition model but lack data to test its propositions across nations and time. This article synthesizes cognition-themed theories of democratic culture, political process theory’s cognitive liberation, and the structural cognitive model’s incentives. I test this synthetic theory in a specific way: that democratization and social spending interact with cognition in terms of external political efficacy and support for equitable economic redistribution to increase protest potential. I employ a three-level cross-national time-series model on the World Values Survey/European Values Study integrated dataset (1981–2020), consisting of democratic and authoritarian-leaning countries. I find that the three cognitive theories are complementary and that the interaction of structural changes with micro-level cognition has nuanced associations with protest potential.

Health and Disability Gaps in Political Engagement: A Short Review

This review presents a short overview of the current state of research in the field of health, disability, and political engagement. I focus on the individual-level relationship between health and political behaviour or political attitudes. Most of the existing studies have analysed the effects of health or disability on electoral turnout, and almost all of these studies have found a negative association between poor health, disability, and turnout. The relationships between health and other forms of political participation are more complex; poor health and disability can actually promote certain types of participation (e.g., signing petitions or participation in social media). However, studies of political attitudes show that poor health and disability are connected to lower levels of trust and external political efficacy and that this disengagement may even lead, for example, to increased support for right-wing populist parties. In general, political actors and researchers need to be encouraged to implement new, more inclusive solutions to bridge the health and disability gaps in political engagement.

Lethal Engagement: The Relationship Between Contextual Exposure to Police Killings and External Political Efficacy

Lethal Engagement: The Relationship Between Contextual Exposure to Police Killings and External Political Efficacy

The Effects of COVID-19 on External Political Efficacy

Significant scholarship examines the effects of disasters and disaster management on political behavior and attitudes. Yet, no research has assessed how health crises might shape people’s levels of external efficacy, nor how disaster response affects external efficacy beyond localized extreme-weather events. Using the United States as a case study, we seek to fill these gaps in the literature by exploring how individuals’ external political efficacy is affected by assessments of the federal COVID response. With an original collection of survey data from April 2020, we find that respondents who view the government’s handling of COVID more positively report higher levels of external efficacy. In a secondary analysis, we performed an experiment in February 2021 where people were given different narratives about government management of the pandemic response. The experimental results strongly suggest that disaster management—in this case the handling of the pandemic—shapes individuals’ efficacy.

Urbanisation and the shifting conditions of the state as a territorial‐political community: A study of the geographies of political efficacy

AbstractIn this paper, we contribute to recent debates on the geographies of discontent by examining the implications of urbanisation on the state as a territorial‐political community in the European context. Building on an Arendtian conception of politics, we argue that the emergence of the “urban” as a dominant spatio‐political imaginary has led to a narrowing of the conditions of politics and political agency within states. The urban imaginary has provoked selective spatio‐political discourses, geopolitical strategies, and policy practices that have resulted in the exclusion of certain social and spatial fractions of society from a shared sense of community and political agency within the state. To demonstrate this point, we empirically analysed the experience of political efficacy in Europe. The results of our analysis show that perceived external political efficacy is weakest in more rural settings and in regions with low GDP and a declining population. Accordingly, we suggest that policy measures ought to be directed against this sort of political alienation and should be used to create a stronger sense of political belonging and community.

How Context Matters: The Significance of Political Homogeneity and Language for Political Efficacy

The extent of political efficacy within a community reflects the general state of affairs within that community, with higher levels of political efficacy presumably related to other kinds of socially preferable attitudes. High levels of political efficacy could further be regarded as a glue that keeps a political community together and should be even more important within minority communities. As political efficacy differs across minority communities, it indicates that individual levels of political efficacy is not only an individual trait but something also affected by the local contextual features. To explore the relationship between varying local contexts and political efficacy within a minority population, we use data from Barometern 2019 (N = 3,913), which is a survey measuring the opinions and attitudes of the Swedish‐speaking population in Finland, i.e., the Swedish‐speaking Finns. This study, thus, analyses the role of contextual‐ and individual‐level determinants (e.g., age, education and gender) as well as linguistic identity (Swedish and bilingual) and political interest on both internal (subjective sense of political understanding) and external (political responsiveness) political efficacy. We find that context matters for political efficacy within a minority context but that the effects differ between the internal and external types of political efficacy. The findings presented will contribute to increasing our knowledge about political efficacy within a minority context.

The System Works Fine: The Positive Relationship Between Emphasis on Individual Explanations for Inequality and External Political Efficacy

This article addresses the largely overlooked question of whether explanations for inequality are related to appraisals of the political system. It posits a positive relationship between individual explanations for inequality and three indicators of appraisals of the political system: satisfaction with democracy, political trust, and external political efficacy. Individual explanations for inequality are a form of system justifying belief and constitute part of a wider ideological view of the status quo social order as just and defensible. This positive view of the functioning of society may flow over into appraisals of the political system, imply a positive disposition towards high-status groups including politicians, and remove the motivation to blame the political system for ongoing inequality (which is instead seen in a positive, meritocratic light). The relationships between explanations for inequality and appraisals of the political system are tested for the first time in the United States, using 2002 ANES data, and in Great Britain, using data from a survey fielded in 2014. The results in the United States show few consistent or significant relationships between explanations for inequality and any of the appraisals of the political system. However, the results in Great Britain show consistent, robust, and statistically significant positive relationships between individual explanations for inequality and external political efficacy. The inconsistency in these results may stem from the differing temporal and national contexts of the surveys. It is also likely that the ranking measures of explanations for inequality in the GB data distinguished respondents for whom individual explanations are particularly important, who have a less negative appraisal of external political efficacy. However, more work is required to investigate the effects of question format, the impact of national and temporal context, and the causal direction of the relationship between explanations for inequality and appraisals of the political system.

Social Media Use and Political Efficacy: Structural Effect of the Voting Decision of New Voters

This paper explores the effect of social media use and political efficacy (internal and external efficacy) on voting decisions among new voters. The favored hypothesis states that increased social media usage and political efficacy help shape voting decisions among new voters. The decision to lowering the voting age to 18 years by the parliament has cast doubt on political efficacy that leading to voting decisions among new voters. Social Media has proven to be a catalyst for social change in Malaysia since the 2004 election. Since the importance of social media use and political efficacy as a source of a healthy democracy, this study examines the effect of social media usage and political efficacy dimensions such as internal political efficacy and external political efficacy to voting decisions among new voters. A survey was used for data gathering among 384 school students and Higher Education Institution students in Melaka. The data analyzed descriptively and inferentially using SPSS and SEM AMOS to provide an empirical understanding of social media use and political efficacy contribution towards the decision to vote. This study presents the significant effect of social media use and political efficacy from internal and external political efficacy to voting decisions among new voters. Surprisingly, educated young people claimed from the previous study have little interest in politically engaging in social media.

Exploring Protest in Europe with a Multi-Level Cross-National Test of the Structural Cognitive Model

To explain protest potential, the Structural Cognitive Model (SCM) suggests (i) a multi-level interaction between economic and political contexts (“structure”) and individual-level social psychological factors (“cognitive”) such that (ii) macro-level factors can amplify or dampen individual and group protest potential. This model has few cross-national tests because many of the cognitive concepts it suggests are not available in the major international survey projects. This paper explores the possibilities to test SCM with the European Values Study (33 countries, 2017–2018). I explain protest potential as a result of, at the macro level, economic inequality and the degree to which the Political Opportunity Structure is open or closed. Individual-level factors include economic structural disadvantage and being both politically interested and organizationally embedded. Cognitive factors include external political efficacy and internal social efficacy. I find that external political efficacy is sensitive to the political context and internal social efficacy is not. These results suggest that, to test SCM, the distinction between external political efficacy and internal social efficacy is essential because they have different relationships with the economic and political contexts. Overall, I find that the European Values Study can be used to explore SCM in cross-national perspective.

The Political Orientation of Japanese Online Right-wingers

Since the early 2000s, Japan has witnessed the growing salience of so-called netto uyoku (online right-wingers). This group is characterized by strong anti-China and anti-Korea sentiments, nationalistic political views, and online political engagement. While online radical right movements in Europe are often regarded as support bases for radical right candidates or parties, few studies have investigated whether this assumption applies to Japanese online right-wingers. The present study sought to shed light on this issue by conducting a large-scale web survey with 77,084 respondents living in the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. Respondents were registered monitors for a research company. The large sample size enabled multivariate analyses to clarify the characteristics of online right-wingers in comparison to other respondents. The results indicated that 1.5 percent of the respondents (1,167) could be classified as online right-wingers and, in contrast with the political discontent hypothesis, most online right-wingers had a high degree of external political efficacy and lower levels of populist attitudes relative to other respondents. This suggests that online right-wingers trusted and remained satisfied with the current political conditions. Furthermore, they were more likely to vote, especially for established conservative parties, suggesting an affinity among online right-wingers for traditional conservative parties and candidates. These findings indicate that, unlike in Europe, Japanese online right-wingers are not a support base for radical right candidates and parties. In Japan, which is under a right-leaning government, online right-wingers have not become a driving force for emergent radical right parties.

Political efficacy and political trust among descendants: The significance of perceived public hostility towards Muslims and refugees

How do ethnic minorities integrate politically when they experience a hostile political climate towards non-western immigration? We study this important yet underexplored question through a unique Danish survey from 2018 among 20-30-year-old descendants of immigrants and a control group of Danish origin. This study goes further than earlier studies and analyzes the correlation between young adults’ own perception of public hostility against Muslims and refugees and their political efficacy and political trust. The analysis shows a notably stronger correlation among Muslim descendants, and especially among the most religious of them, but only related to their external political efficacy and political trust. Internal political efficacy is rather unaffected, which indicates an unexploited potential for political mobilization.

Psychological transformation of youth after engaging in non-radical and radical political activities

Although the links between political attitudes and political participation have been extensively studied, there is limited understanding of attitudinal transformation following different types of political engagement. This study differentiates between non-radical and radical political participation and explores their respective impact on political interest, external political efficacy, and internal political efficacy. A three-wave dataset collected from a sample of Hong Kong youth was adopted to assess three cross-lagged models. Regarding the link between attitudes and participation, we only found that internal political efficacy played a positive role in predicting radical political participation. Regarding the link between participation and attitudes, the results showed that radical political engagement positively predicted political interest and negatively predicted external political efficacy; non-radical political engagement promoted internal political efficacy. Our findings offer valuable implications for Hong Kong policy makers, educators, and social workers who care about the positive development of local youth following their engagement in political activities and hope to promote effective political communication.