Political

Alienation
David C. Schwartz

Alienation will lead to short-run stagnation in American politics.

t is clear that the assassinations, riots, policy failures, and of political alienation and the behavioral correlates of each
I political scandals of recent American experience have form were derived from a national survey of 827 American
turned increasing numbers of Americans against the prac- adults in October 1973. This study, replicated in 1975, per-
tices, personnel, and institutions of government. Indeed, this mits identification of at least five separate forms of aliena-
dramatic increase in political alienation has provoked a vast tion; it also allows us to relate these forms of alienation to
outpouring of scholarly and popular commentary devoted to four different types of political activity.
discussing the dimensions and causes of alienation.
Less clear, and far less commented on, are the conse- Five Forms of Political Alienation
quences of alienation. What difference, if any, does an indi-
vidual's attitudes of suspicion, estrangement, and/or hostility We focused our research on five types of political aliena-
toward government typically make in his political activities? tion: (1) estrangement, (2) negative evaluation of the Ameri-
What difference does the level of alienation (or the level of a can political system, (3) negative evaluation of the compe-
given type of alienation) make in the operation of a political tence of public officials, (4) negative evaluation of the mo-
system such as ours? These crucial questions have too often tives of public officials, and (5) rejection of the institution of
been neglected by scholarly investigators and too unsys- elections.
tematically explored by popular commentators. Estrangement is an attitude of fundamental separation be-
tween self and polity. It is characterized by an individual's
Method and Data Base
lack or withdrawal of identification from the political system,
A tripartite method of providing an adequate answer to and a feeling that--despite native birth and extensive
these questions is to identify the different forms or types of socialization----one is an outsider, unrepresented in the politi-
political alienation existing in the polity; to note the political cal process, an alien. This form of alienation is one of the
behaviors--if any--which are systematically associated with most traditional, well-studied attitudes of negativity toward
each form of alienation; and to reason from its behavioral the political system and one of Melvin Seeman's five classic
correlates to the likely influence of alienation on the opera- dimensions of alienation. In our study estrangement from the
tion of the political system. whole of American government and politics was investi-
The data employed to establish both the typology of forms gated.

July/August 1976 27
 Recent usage of the t e r m " political alienation" has moved viewee's attitudes of alienation, batteries of questions were
away from the estrangement idea, emphasizing negative also included on our survey instrument to measure people's
evaluations of political actors and institutions (for example, sense of civic duty, degree of political interest, perceived
distrust or hostility) rather than a distancing from the polity. powerlessness, level of partisanship, liberal versus conserva-
Accordingly, to contrast the behavioral consequences of the tive ideology, and a wide range of other political attitudes.
estrangement type of alienation with the consequences of To test the hypothesis that a small number of separable
other negative evaluations of various political phenomena, types of alienation exists in the attitude sets of the American
four other forms of alienation were considered. people (i.e., to determine whether the types of alienation
Negative evaluation of the American political system is an sketched above could be empirically isolated and shown to be
attitude in which American government and politics is separable both from each other and from other attitudes),
evaluated as bad, unclean, sick, unsatisfactory, a source of factor analytic operations were performed on the data. As a
pain. This form of alienation is similar to our estrangement result five distinct types of alienation emerged, and five
dimensions in that (1) both pertain to the American political factors were yielded which correspond closely to the ones
system as a whole and (2) both express negativity toward the indicated above.
polity. They differ, of course, in that negative evaluations of
the political system need not be, and often are not, associated Consequences of Alienation
with estrangement or attitudinal withdrawal from politics.
Negative evaluation of public officials is an attitude
One of the principal objectives of our research was to
wherein public officials (in this study federal officials-- contrast the behavioral consequences of estrangement with
congressmen, administrators, and federal judges) are nega- those of the other forms of alienation. We hypothesized that
tively evaluated. This form of alienation is of great interest estrangement should have broader and more powerful conse-
because of the frequently stated hypothesis that alienation quences and a larger number of broader behavioral conse-
from the personnel of the government has less fundamental quences than the other forms. As people whose personal
and fewer behavioral consequences than alienation from the linkages or identification with their organized society are
institutions and/or system of American politics (i.e., it results attenuated, estranged individuals should be more likely to
in the electoral defeat of role incumbents without substantial adopt behaviors which do not conform to the norms of Amer-
effort to alter role structures).
ican society than persons who view elections, politicians,
In our study we were able to identify two specific kinds of and government as bad.
negative evaluation of public officials: negative evaluation of In other words, we hypothesized that the estrangement
the competence of public officials and negative evaluation of form of alienation represents the breakdown of the psychic
their motives (benevolent/malevolent).
barriers against political "deviance" which most of us are
Rejection of the institution of elections is an attitude in
taught as we grow up in America. Specifically, estrangement
which elections are perceived to offer no real choices, to
should bear significant association with nonparticipation in
afford the citizen no real access to the attention of public
traditional politics (voting, campaigning, petitioning one's
officials, to fail as guarantors of political freedom. In a representatives), be importantly and positively associated
with protest politics, and have substantially more frequent
The political system will represent an ever and powerful associations with political actions than other
forms of alienation. Most but not all of these hypotheses were
smaller sector of society. confirmed by the data.
We examined the consequences of alienation for two fun-
society such as ours, where political power is legitimized damental orientations to politics and four different kinds of
almost exclusively in procedural (i.e., electoral) rather than political behavior. First, we inquired about the influence of
substantive (i.e., policy) terms, rejection of the electoral alienation on the individual's attitudes toward reformism
institution on the grounds indicated above can be a rejection (willingness to support appreciable changes in the policies,
of the sustaining political myth. procedures, parties, and institutions of American politics and
Measuring the degree to which individuals hold these government) and withdrawal of attention from politics (the
putatively different attitudes was done via standard tech- desire to forget about politics and government, to screen out
niques. The degree of individual estrangement and alienation political stimuli).
from electoral institutions was assessed via survey items of Second, we explored the degree to which an individual's
agree-disagree format (most of which were extensively pre- "score" on the different forms of alienation correlated with
tested and validated in earlier studies). The negative evalua- the likelihood of his having voted, campaigned for a party or
tions of public officials and polity were measured by asking candidate, petitioned his representative, and participated in a
interviewees to rate both the personnel and the system on a protest march or rally. These behaviors were measured on a
relevant series of attributes. self-report battery which allowed interviewees to record their
In addition to survey items designed to elicit the inter- political activities for 1968, 1972, and "usually."

28 SOCI ETY
 Estrangement is far more powerfully associated with at- lance of power in the nation. Second, none of the forms bears
titudes of reformism and withdrawal than any other form of substantial association with age, sex, or social class. Thus the
alienation (by some interpretations two and three times more nonparticipation of the alienated will not affect political
powerfully linked to reformism and withdrawal than any battles fought on generational, sexual, or class lines in the
other form). Thus disbelief in the efficacy of elections, in the near future.
wisdom and/or goodness of public officials, and even in the But there is one group of people in the political process
American political system as a whole have modest associa- which is undeniably advantaged by the nonparticipation of
tion with reformist and/or escapist attitudes toward politics. the alienated--the " i n s . " By the " i n s " [ mean the center,
But estrangement has striking causal association with these the politically active, the well connected, those people whose
basic orientations to politics. interests--however diverse--are already represented in the
The estrangement form of alienation is far more strongly polity, who are already "on the agenda" and are being heard
associated with voting, campaigning, and petitioning than (if not always listened to).
other forms of alienation. The estrangement form is far more The " i n s " are at least temporarily advantaged by the
broadly associated with political behavior than other forms; it nonparticipation of the alienated because our political sys-
is significantly associated with all types of alienated behavior tem, perhaps any political system, rewards participation.
we studied, whereas no other form is associated with more Conversely, the American polity punishes--at least by
than one type of political behavior. ignoring--those people who do not write, call, visit, cam-
paign for, protest against, or even vote in the election of its
The estrangement form of alienation is far more frequently
leaders.
associated with political behavior than other forms of aliena-
tion, and is significantly associated with political phenomena
in almost every overlapping time frame we examined (no
other form has such association in more than one time frame).
Inhibitions against violence decrease as
Contrary to expectations, estrangement is negatively rather alienation increases.
than positively linked to protest behavior. Alienation leads to
diminished political activity.
If the alienated opt out and stay out, they leave the field to
Short-Run Influence those people who opt in and stay in. Under these cir-
cumstances the political system wi.ll come to represent an
Political alienation, then, opens people both to reformist
ever smaller sector of the society. The elite will deemphasize
attitudes and to attitudes of withdrawal/escapism; but in
or even fail to address the policy problems that caused the
behavioral terms the alienated choose overwhemingly to
alienateds to drop out. An extremism of the center, a narrow-
withdraw, to opt out, to engage in fewer and less frequent
ing of the problems and alternatives considered in the polity,
political activities than the nonalienated. Thus alienation can
will result.
create psychological potential for reformist political activity,
and it is true that persons having the most negative views of Superstability and Episodic Violence
public officials' motives protest more often than others. But
Thus the short-run systemic consequences of alienation
the behavioral effect of every other form of alienation di-
will not be the reformism, revolutionism, or other sociopolit-
minishes political participation---even protest participation.
ical changes recently discussed. Rather, alienation will cause
What do these relationships portend? What can we expect a " s u p e r s t a b i l i t y , " an era of deadlock or paralysis,
as profound political alienation in America, already massive foreshadowing little substantive change in American poli-
(approximately 25 percent in our 1973 data) mounts further tics.
(by 3.6 percent in our 1975 study--most of the increase in I do not mean that we shall soon become a peaceful polity;
estrangement and in negative evaluations of politicians' mo- far from it. Indeed, current levels of political alienation in the
tives)? The consequences of alienation typically envisioned populace almost guarantee a continuation or expansion of
in scholarly and popular commentary on the topic vary from civic violence because--given the traditionally high degree
left-wing revolution to right-wing coup and encompass al- of intergroup hostility in American social life--trust in gov-
most every reformist viewpoint in between. Observers are ernment as a regulator of group interests (diffuse support for
united only in their prediction of change. But we disagree government) has long functioned to inhibit violence.
with this prediction. As alienation increases, the inhibitions against violence
Alienation of our time and place will lead to increased decrease. But because alienation leads predominantly to
short-run stability in American national politics for two rea- withdrawal rather than involvement, social violence is likely
sons. First, none of the forms of political alienation outlined to be sporadic or episodic, not sustained or strategic.
here bears significant association with liberal or conservative Alienation in America will lead to violent skirmishes, but
ideology. Thus it is doubtful that the nonparticipation of the not to social war. Superstability with episodic violence is not
alienated will soon appreciably alter the philosophical ba- a stable state; but neither is contemporary America.[]

July/August 1976 29