Alienation : a barrier to political participation?

The effects of two measures of alienation on political participation were examined. The hypotheses were contained in a theoretical model which predicted a relationship between powerlessness, meaninglessness, knowledge seeking and participation.Powerlessness was found to be an inadequate prediction of participation and was subsequently excluded from the model.Political knowledge seeking was found to be highly related to participation.Meaninglessness contributed only moderately to the predictive ability of the model.The thesis suggests that an individual's ability to comprehend his political environment and/or the comprehensibility of the political environment must be improved in order to boost citizen participation.Thesis (M.A.