Exploring the Origins of Political Efficacy in Taiwan：The Explaination of Civic Education in School

[[abstract]]As Abramson（1983: 135）noted: Next to party identification, no political attitude has been studied more extensively than feelings of political effectiveness. The aim of this article is to explore the origins of political efficacy in Taiwan from the view of civic education in school. First, the findings show that people with higher levels of education tend to have higher sense of political efficacy. Second, people educated in authoritarian period tend to have higher sense of political efficacy than who educated in democratic period. Third, people who had high school degree and the degree above, and educated in democratic period had higher sense of political efficacy than others. Moreover, the empirical result shows that civic education in school played an important role when we mentioned the origins of political efficacy. In addition, we demonstrate some factors influencing the internal efficacy and external efficacy, for example, sex, political sophistication, political trust, party identification, ethnic identification and so on.