Collective efficacy, support for democratization, and political participation in Hong Kong

Public opinion studies have conventionally treated political efficacy as a two-dimensional concept involving internal and external efficacy. The former refers to people's beliefs about their individual abilities to understand politics, and the latter refers to people's beliefs about government responsiveness. The present study reexamines and goes beyond this two-dimensional view. It proposes that collective efficacy, defined as a citizen's belief in the capabilities of the public as a collective actor to achieve social and political outcomes, can be considered as a third dimension of political efficacy. Based on this three-dimensional view, the relationship between political efficacy, support for democratization, and political participation in Hong Kong is examined. Analysis of a representative survey (N = 800) shows that both support for democratization and political participation are positively related to collective efficacy and negatively related to external efficacy. Internal efficacy, on the other hand, has only a limited relationship with the dependent variables, though high levels of internal efficacy are found to be a condition for collective and external efficacy to exert stronger impact on political attitudes and behavior. It is argued that two characteristics of the Hong Kong society-as a transitional society and a collectivist culture-contribute to the significance of collective efficacy in the public opinion process. But the relevance of collective efficacy to other contexts is also discussed.