The General Model of Political Action

Abstract

If this work has a single theme it is that political action arises from the way people evaluate their political system. These evaluations, conceived in the previous chapter as political satisfaction and dissatisfaction, have their origins in social structure. Here, age and education were found to be of primary importance. Political evaluations also have origins in social psychological processes. Here ideology and values were found to exercise a profound influence on the way people form their political judgements. All these factors also have a direct influence upon political behaviour. The task now is to bring together these five key factors — age, education, ideology, values and political judgement — into a general model of political action. By so doing, we will learn how this chain of social circumstances and social attitudes may be translated into a more complete understanding of political behaviour than has so far been achieved.