The City and Political Psychology

Alternative theories—“social mobilization†and “urban anomie†— predict different relationships between urbanism and political involvement, i.e., that urbanism stimulates, or that urbanism alienates individuals. (Dahl has predicted a curvilinear association.) This study examines these theories using the 1968 Michigan S.R.C. election survey. Three methodological tools are employed— formulating a causal model among political psychological variables, distinguishing size of polity from size of urban area, and using path analysis—to answer three questions: the effect of urbanism, the effect of polity size, and the effect of their interaction. Overall, the results show little independent association be-tween the urban variables and involvement. Trends indicate that largeness may have slight mobilizing effects even though it also slightly reduces sense of political efficacy, and that the mobilization is a shift in involvement from local to national politics. A partial replication is obtained in the Almond and Verba data.