The (Dis)Connection Between Political Culture and External Efficacy

Theories of political culture have traditionally been based on how the mass public views the role of government, yet scholars have rarely studied this issue. Using American National Election Studies(ANES) data from 1952 to 2008, I track cultural changes in external efficacy, a measure of the public's beliefs about government responsiveness. The aggregate- and individual-level results indicate that external efficacy varied across political cultures until around 1980, when the differences dissipated. These findings should cause scholars to question some of the underlying theoretical basis of political culture, as well as the measurement of external efficacy.