Measuring Political Efficacy: An identity-based approach.

Implicit in the gender, religion, and race literatures is the notion that identity figures prominently in models of political behavior, dictating a wide range of opinions, attitudes, and beliefs about politics. Political efficacy also contributes independently to individual political behavior, playing a significant role in determining levels of political engagement. While studies of identity and politics conceptualize political behavior as inherently a collective enterprise, measures of political efficacy maintain a myopic vision of political engagement. This study attempts to reconcile this incongruity in two ways: it advances a theory of identity and political engagement, and develops a measure of identity-based political efficacy. Based on a survey of a representative sample of Americans, this study shows that, after controlling for identity-based political efficacy, traditional measures of political efficacy become insignificant. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]