Efficacy, Political

POLITICAL EFFICACY IS the subjective level of competence of an actor to engage in political life. To be politically efficacious is to be sufficiently knowledgeable and self-confident to exert a meaningful impact upon the political system, the regime, or the government. It is also to anticipate that such political institutions are fair and broadly responsive to the input of political demands. While the concept has been assessed at the individual level, it is also possible to refer to the political efficacy of a collectivity. Politically efficacious citizens believe that they can exert an impact, that they have the personal capacity to do so, and that the targeted authorities will pay attention.

The concept emerges from the empirical political science of the 1950s, and became best known through the work of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in their comparative study of political cultures, The Civic Culture (1965). As part of a cross-national survey of individual political cognitions, affects, and evaluations, Almond and Verba referred to political efficacy as “subjective political competence.” They regarded satisfactory levels of political efficacy as indicators of the more advanced political cultures, known as civic cultures, in which substantial numbers of people were fully participant in the democratic process, rather than isolated or merely obedient to its authoritative outputs.

Critics of the original concept have since divided it into two more meaningful scales: internal efficacy and external efficacy. Internal efficacy relates to the extent to which an individual feels politically skilled and empowered. External efficacy is an assessment of the fairness of political procedures and outcomes, and needs to be distinguished from political trust, which assesses the extent to which leaders respond to political demands. External political efficacy and political trust are conceptually close and are highly correlated in most studies.

Contemporary scales of external political efficacy are based on questions that tap into the extent to which people believe they have a say in what the government does, the extent to which they believe public officials care what they think, and the extent to which elected officials and governments are responsive to their input. Contemporary scales of internal political efficacy seek to uncover the extent to which individuals believe they understand politics, their feelings of qualification to be involved in political life, their assessment of their potential for public service, and their self-assessed level of political information. Internal efficacy varies among individuals, and is positively related to political knowledge, political interest, and political participation as individual-level variables, and to socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity as social structural variables. While internal efficacy has remained constant, external efficacy has been declining.