Political Disaffection and Alienated Politics: Explaining Declines in Support for the American State (Crisis).

This study began by observing that since the mid 1960's, support for America's political institutions has declined drastically, as growing proportions of Americans came to believe that their political institutions were not responsive to their problems, needs, and interests. It then examined two general approaches to explaining trends in support for political systems: (1) political disaffection theories, which posit that such trends reflect either (a) the "spirit of the times" brought about by large-scale historical events which affect the general population in a similar fashion, (b) changes in political personality and culture which result from demographic changes in the society, or (c) levels of satisfaction with politically-relevant issues and policies which have differential effects on various interest groups in the society; and (2) alienated politics theories, which argue that declines in support for the political system reflect the state's inability to engender the belief that its actions (which seek to facilitate capital accumulation for capitalists and corporations) are in the interests of all of the people. These formulations were tested empirically. Spirit of the times and political personality and culture theories were eliminated as viable explanations of the trends because of results which were contrary to their basic predictions. Partial support for political interest group and alienated politics theories was found. In light of these findings, an alternative model was proposed and empirically tested. This model posited that the driving force toward increasingly negative assessments of America's political institutions is increases in levels of economic misery. It argued that the capitalist state generally acts to support the interests of dominant groups; however, under conditions of economic contraction and stagflation (or disaccumulation), even those groups which do not ordinarily experience state policies as deleterious to their interests begin to see the political institutions as ineffective and unresponsive to their needs and interests. Other macro level factors (e.g., level of state indebtedness, welfare spending, and level of subsidy to industry), as well as sociodemographic characteristics, changes in the effects of sociodemographics over time, underdog group consciousness, political alienation, and period effects were also posited as factors which have affected changes in assessments of the state's legitimacy. Though not all relationships conformed to expectations, substantial support was found for this explanation, as findings were consistent with key propositions.Ph.D.SociologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160674/1/8520916.pd