Two Categories of Political Alienation

Political alienation, defined as attitudes of estrangement from the political system, is conceptualized as falling into two broad categories: political incapability and discontentment. In the first instance, alienation is forced upon the individual by his environment, whereas in the second case it is voluntarily chosen by him. Survey data indicates that incapability occurs most commonly among persons occupying various disadvantaged social statuses, while discontentment is most prevalent among those comprising the "old middle class." Neither category of alienation is markedly correlated with any form of political participation, but they do differ sharply in their relationships to party preference and voting. Persons with high incapability and low discontentment vote overwhelmingly Democratic, whereas those witlh high discontentment and low incapability largely vote Republican. Concern with alienation is not unique to our era. The idea has appeared throughout all of mankind's recorded literature,1 and it was a persistent theme in the writings of nineteentlh-century sociologists such as Marx, T6nnies, Durkheim, and Weber. In recent years, however, social scientists have "recliscovered" alienation-to use Daniel Bell's phrase2-and made it a dominant thlemiie in * This paper was partially drawn from my unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, "Political Assimilation, Social Opportunities, and Political Alienation," University of Michigan, 1965. I am particularly indebted to Professors William A. Gamson and Sheldon Stryker for their many helpful suggestions and criticisms. 1 For a brief but comprehensive survey of the history of the idea of alienation, see Eric Josephson and Mary Josephson, Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1962), pp. 9-53. 2 Daniel Bell, "The Rediscovery of Alienation: Some Notes Along the Quest for the Historical Marx," Journal of Philosophyi, 56 (November 1959), pp. 933-952. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.27 on Tue, 06 Sep 2016 04:37:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms POLITICAL ALIENATION 289 contemporary social theory. Of particular interest to both sociologists and political scientists has been alienation from the political systemwhich numerous writers view as a crucial factor in contemporary politics.3 Despite the current proliferation of writings on political alienation, many questions remain unanswered: How can political alienation best be conceptualized and measured? Are these attitudes simply an expression of the weltanschautng of the "working class" in modern society, or are there also "middle class" forms of alienation from politics? Does political alienation provide a useful predictor of participation in political activities, from informal discussions to partisan campaigning? And are various types of political alienation differentially associated with political party and voting choices? The twin purposes of this paper are (a) to suggest a conceptual framework and related measurement scales with which to study political alienation, and (b) to report empirical data based on this conceptualization that offer at least tentative answers to the above questions.