Orientations Toward Parents and Political Efficacy

• DOI: 10.1177/106591297202500405
• Published date: 01 December 1972
• Author: John Fraser
• Date: 01 December 1972
• Subject Matter: Articles

ORIENTATIONS TOWARD PARENTS
AND POLITICAL EFFICACY
JOHN FRASER
University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee
~NCE
the importance of feelings of political efficacy for explanations of politi-
~~~ cal participation is now virtually inescapable,’ in recent years some political
S scientists have directed their attention to attempts to explain why the sense of
political efficacy varies across individuals. ~’Ve are now reasonably certain that social,
economic, political, and attitudinal variables account for variance in political effi-
cacy.~ To date, however, we have failed to assess adequately the impact on the sense
of political efficacy of the political actor’s relationships with his parents.
Some psychoanalytically inclined political scientists have attributed enormous
explanatory power to these relationships, especially to relationships with the father.
Lasswell argued, for example:
The state is the symbol of authority, and, as such, is the legatee of attitudes which have been
organized in the life of the individual within the intimate interpersonal spheres of the home
and friendship group. At one phase of childhood development the wisdom and might of the
physical symbol of authority, typically the father, is enormously exaggerated by the child.’
A
modern student of politics in the psychoanalytic tradition, E. Victor Wolfen-
stein, has argued in a similar vein:
leaders
...
crave, relish, and have confidence in their own power and authority. Now it may be
hypothesized that these characteristics result from, in large part, the leader’s relationships to
his father. His father is the first model of power and authority, strength and rectitude, a model
he seeks to emulate.’
Both theorists, of course, were principally interested in explaining political dis-
positions of elites in these passages, but the concept of confidence in one’s own power
appears to be related to the concept of political efficacy which has repeatedly played
a major role in explanations of political participation among non-elites. Several
political scientists have recently studied the effects of relationships with parents on
political efficacy among non-elites. The results of these studies have been somewhat
inconclusive, however. For example, Lane argued on the basis of his extended inter-
views with fifteen New Haven residents that &dquo;damaged father-son relations tend to
produce low political information and political cathexis&dquo; as well as &dquo;the belief that
1
For a partial bibliography of important studies of political efficacy see David Easton and Jack
Dennis, "The Child’s Acquisition of Regime Norms: Political Efficacy," American Politi-
cal Science Review, 61 (1967), 25-38.
2
See ibid. Also (and as a mere sample of the literature) see Robert Lane, Political Life (Glen-
coe : Free Press, 1959), 149-55; Lester W. Milbrath, Political Participation ( Chicago :
Rand McNally, 1965), pp. 57-58; Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), chapter 11 : and William H. Form and
Joan Huber, "Income, Race, and the Ideology of Political Efficacy," Journal of Politics,
33 (1971), 659-88.
2
Harold Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics (new edition: New York: Viking Press, 1960),
p. 173.
4

E. Victor Wolfenstein, Personality and Politics (Belmont, California : Dickenson Publishing
Company, 1969), p. 32.
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it may be useless to rebel or petition authority.&dquo; The questions left open here are
the effects of damaged mother-son relationships and those of damaged parent-
daughter relationships (all Lane’s subjects were men). In any event, the concept of
&dquo;damaged relations&dquo; is somewhat obscure and not necessarily related...