McClosky Democratic Attitudes Survey

1. Abstract

The McClosky Democratic Attitudes Survey is a seminal psychometric instrument developed by political scientist Herbert McClosky in his landmark 1964 investigation into consensus, democratic norms, and political ideology within the United States. Designed to empirically assess the depth, distribution, and psychological underpinnings of democratic values across diverse strata of the American polity, the instrument operationalizes adherence to fundamental democratic principles, civil liberties, and institutional norms. Comprising an aggregate battery of 65 self-report items across six distinct psychometric subscales, the survey evaluates: (1) Attitudes Towards the Rules of the Game (12 items), which captures adherence to constitutional proceduralism, institutional fairness, and majoritarian restraints; (2) Attitudes to General Statements about Free Speech and Opinion (8 items), measuring abstract consensus regarding freedom of expression and intellectual tolerance; (3) Attitudes to Specific Applications of Free Speech and Procedural Rights (9 items), assessing willingness to extend civil rights and procedural protections to unpopular, deviant, or politically subversive outgroups; (4) Support for Different Aspects of Equality (15 items), measuring political, social, and economic egalitarianism; (5) Cynicism Towards Government and Politics (14 items), measuring systemic political distrust, alienation, and perceived official venality; and (6) Sense of Political Futility (7 items), operationalizing personal feelings of political efficacy versus helplessness. Administered via a dichotomous agreement/disagreement self-report format, the instrument was historically validated across two major nationwide probability samples: an elite cohort of political influentials (delegates to national political party conventions) and a cross-sectional sample of the general adult electorate. Validation procedures utilized empirical criterion-group contrasts and a modified Guttman reproducibility procedure. The findings revealed that elite consensus around democratic norms significantly exceeded mass public consensus, fundamentally challenging classical majoritarian assumptions of democratic theory and establishing an enduring foundation for modern political psychology, survey methodology, and the empirical study of democratic stability.

2. Keywords

Democratic Attitudes, Herbert McClosky, Political Tolerance, Procedural Justice, Civil Liberties, Political Cynicism, Political Efficacy, Guttman Scaling, Consensus Theory, Elite vs Mass Beliefs, American Politics, Democratic Norms, Authoritarianism, Political Psychology

3. Authors

The McClosky Democratic Attitudes Survey was developed and validated by:

• Herbert McClosky, Ph.D. (1916–2006) — Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and formerly Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. McClosky was a pioneer in integrating psychological concepts, survey research methodologies, and clinical personality theory into empirical political science. He served as Vice President of the American Political Science Association and was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Institutional affiliations during development and analysis included the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN) and the Department of Political Science and Survey Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA). McClosky collaborated broadly with psychometricians and behavioral sociologists, notably contributing to foundational scholarship on conservatism, anomie, civil liberties, and ideological constraint across four decades.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the McClosky Democratic Attitudes Survey is to operationalize, quantify, and empirically dissect the extent to which citizens and political elites internalize the philosophical tenets and operational conventions necessary to sustain a liberal democratic regime. In classical normative political theory, dating back to John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson, a functioning democracy is frequently presumed to rest upon a broad, popular consensus among ordinary citizens regarding fundamental democratic values, such as freedom of speech, procedural due process, minority protections, and civic equality.

McClosky constructed this instrument to challenge this unexamined normative assumption. By moving beyond impressionistic philosophical essays, McClosky sought to answer critical empirical questions: Does a widespread democratic consensus actually exist among the mass electorate? Do ordinary citizens uphold democratic principles when applied to concrete, controversial scenarios involving marginalized or unpopular groups? And do political elites—individuals who participate actively in governing, party management, and policy discourse—demonstrate higher adherence to democratic norms than the citizens they represent?

The survey serves several vital research and diagnostic purposes in academic political science, political psychology, and behavioral sociology:

• Mapping Democratic Commitment: It differentiates between abstract, symbolic endorsements of democratic aphorisms (e.g., agreeing that “free speech is good”) and concrete, applied tolerance (e.g., defending the speech rights of fascists, communists, or religious extremists).
• Evaluating Elite vs. Mass Polities: The scale enables comparative analyses between political “influentials” (e.g., legislative leaders, political convention delegates, party functionaries) and the broader general electorate, clarifying the role of political socialization, education, and political sophistication in sustaining institutional norms.
• Assessing Alienation and Democratic Decay: By incorporating distinct subscales measuring political cynicism and political futility, the instrument allows researchers to investigate how subjective feelings of powerlessness and systemic distrust erode commitment to procedural democracy.
• Testing Ideological and Psychological Correlates: The battery provides standardized scores that can be regressed against personality traits, such as authoritarianism, anomie, cognitive complexity, dogmatism, and socio-economic indicators, elucidating the psychological foundations of democratic versus anti-democratic predispositions.

Although initially developed in the context of Mid-Twentieth-Century American politics during the Cold War, the conceptual architecture of the survey continues to provide the methodological blueprint for contemporary comparative barometers of democratic health, populism, and democratic backsliding worldwide.

5. Psychological Construct

The central psychological construct measured by the survey is Democratic Attitudes, conceptualized as a multi-dimensional constellation of cognitive beliefs, normative commitments, procedural values, and systemic orientations toward governance and civil society. Rather than viewing democratic orientation as a unitary, monolithic trait, McClosky recognized that support for democracy is fragmented and multifaceted, requiring operationalization across six distinct psychological dimensions:

1. Attitudes Towards the Rules of the Game (12 Items)

This subscale assesses an individual’s adherence to the fundamental constitutional and procedural conventions that govern political competition in a liberal democracy. It measures an internal commitment to fair play, institutional legitimacy, peaceful transfer of power, willingness to accept legal constraints, and respect for minority rights even when they frustrate majoritarian objectives. Individuals scoring high on this dimension recognize that democratic governance relies on strict adherence to established legal processes and rules, rejecting vigilantism, executive overreach, or unlawful shortcuts to achieve preferred policy outcomes.

2. Attitudes to General Statements About Free Speech and Opinion (8 Items)

This dimension evaluates abstract, idealized endorsements of intellectual liberty, freedom of expression, open debate, and ideological diversity. Items in this subscale measure universalized, philosophical maxims rooted in the Enlightenment and the First Amendment, such as the inherent value of hearing opposing viewpoints and the fundamental right of every citizen to express opinions without censorship. Because these statements are framed in broad, socially desirable terms without invoking specific, provocative outgroups, mass electorates typically exhibit high levels of consensus on this dimension.

3. Attitudes to Specific Applications of Free Speech and Procedural Rights (9 Items)

In contrast to abstract endorsements, this critical dimension assesses an individual’s willingness to defend and apply constitutional civil liberties in concrete, highly polarized, and challenging situations. It measures political tolerance toward societal pariahs, radical dissidents, criminal defendants, and subversive political movements (such as communists, atheists, or extreme right-wing agitators). High scores reflect robust, principled procedural tolerance, whereas low scores demonstrate conditional tolerance—a psychological vulnerability where individuals abandon democratic safeguards when confronted with groups they perceive as dangerous, immoral, or unpatriotic.

4. Support for Different Aspects of Equality (15 Items)

This subscale captures multidimensional orientations toward social, political, legal, and economic egalitarianism. It examines beliefs regarding human equality, meritocracy, redistributive social policies, racial integration, and systemic barriers to advancement. The construct evaluates the tension between hierarchical or aristocratic beliefs (that certain classes, races, or intellectual elites are naturally superior and should guide society) and democratic egalitarianism (that all citizens possess equal moral worth and deserve comparable opportunities, legal dignity, and political voice).

5. Cynicism Towards Government and Politics (14 Items)

This dimension measures systemic political alienation, profound distrust of public officials, and the cognitive appraisal of political institutions as inherently corrupt, self-serving, dishonest, and transactional. Highly cynical respondents perceive democratic governance as an illusory facade operated by self-interested politicians, covert cabals, or unscrupulous financiers. This construct functions as an inverse indicator of diffuse institutional support, capturing the psychological estrangement that can foster populist resentment or susceptibility to demagoguery.

6. Sense of Political Futility (7 Items)

Operationalizing the subjective experience of political powerlessness—analogous to what contemporary political psychologists term low internal and external political efficacy—this subscale assesses the belief that ordinary citizens cannot comprehend, influence, or affect political outcomes. Items measure fatalistic sentiments that voting is meaningless, that public officials are entirely indifferent to ordinary voices, and that systemic complexity renders personal political participation pointless.

6. Theoretical Framework

The McClosky Democratic Attitudes Survey is rooted in the intersection of behavioral political science, democratic theory, and post-Freudian clinical and social personality psychology. At the time of its construction in the late 1950s and early 1960s, political science was undergoing a dramatic “behavioral revolution,” transitioning away from formalistic, legalistic analyses of institutional constitutions toward empirical studies of human behavior, attitudes, and psychological processes.

The Critique of Classical Majoritarian Theory

The foundational theoretical assumption challenged by McClosky is the classical doctrine of democratic consensus, historically articulated by thinkers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and classic democratic theorists. Classical theory posited that democratic stability depends on an informed, vigilant citizenry that shares a widespread consensus on basic democratic rules, human rights, and political procedures. Under this view, democratic institutions are sustained from the bottom up by the widespread enlightened values of the sovereign electorate.

Drawing on the groundbreaking work of Joseph Schumpeter (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942) and Robert Dahl (A Preface to Democratic Theory, 1956), McClosky formulated an alternative theoretical model: Democratic Elitism (or procedural pluralism). McClosky hypothesized that democratic norms are complex, counter-intuitive, and socially learned behaviors that do not emerge spontaneously from basic human psychology. Adhering to the “rules of the game”—such as tolerating a political enemy or upholding due process for an accused criminal—requires high levels of cognitive sophistication, formal education, conceptual impulse control, and continuous social learning.

Political Socialization and Elite Custodianship

McClosky argued that political elites (party leaders, activists, intellectuals, and institutional officeholders) are embedded in specialized reference groups and professional socialization networks that inculcate democratic norms far more intensively than the socialization experienced by the general public. Consequently, democratic stability is preserved not by universal popular consensus, but by the specialized consensus of political influentials who act as custodians of democratic rules. The mass electorate, by comparison, often remains politically unsophisticated, harboring substantial pockets of authoritarianism, xenophobia, procedural impatience, and cynicism, while endorsing democratic values primarily at the level of vague platitudes.

The Dual-Level Paradigm of Political Tolerance

The survey established the theoretical distinction between abstract tolerance and applied tolerance, a paradigm later expanded by political scientists such as James W. Prothro, Charles M. Grigg (1960), and John L. Sullivan et al. (1979). The theory posits a hierarchical cognitive structure:

• Superficial Consensus: Broad agreement on generalized values (e.g., “Every person has the right to their own opinion”) is achieved easily because such concepts are taught as patriotic symbols and lack direct cognitive friction.
• Specific Dissensus: When these principles collide with existing outgroup prejudices, cognitive threat reactions, or existential fears, adherence breaks down unless reinforced by strong internal ideological commitments.

Furthermore, McClosky integrated sociological theories of anomie (Émile Durkheim, Robert K. Merton) and psychological formulations of the authoritarian personality (Theodor W. Adorno et al., 1950) to hypothesize that political cynicism and feelings of futility are not simply rational responses to political failure, but reflections of broader psychological maladjustment, low self-esteem, cognitive rigidity, and social isolation.

7. Validity

Herbert McClosky subjected the Democratic Attitudes Survey to rigorous empirical and criterion validation protocols that were state-of-the-art during the behavioral revolution of the 1960s.

1. Criterion and Known-Groups Validity

The primary validation strategy relied on the method of known-groups comparison. The survey was simultaneously administered to two fundamentally distinct theoretical populations:

• The Political Influentials Sample (Elite Cohort): Consisted of 3,020 delegates and alternates who attended the 1956 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. These individuals represented highly active, politically articulate, and institutionally embedded party elites.
• The General Electorate Sample (Mass Cohort): Consisted of a nationwide cross-sectional probability sample of 1,484 American adults interviewed by the Gallup Organization (American Institute of Public Opinion) in January 1958.

The theoretical expectation was that if the scales genuinely measured sophisticated democratic norms, political elites—who undergo extensive democratic socialization—would score significantly higher on the “Rules of the Game” and “Applied Free Speech” scales, while scoring significantly lower on “Cynicism Towards Government” and “Sense of Political Futility.”

The empirical findings decisively confirmed these hypotheses across every dimension:

• Rules of the Game: On items measuring procedural fairness, majoritarian restraint, and institutional due process, political influentials consistently scored in the pro-democratic direction by margins of 15% to 35% higher than the general public.
• Specific Applications of Free Speech: When presented with items testing whether extreme or reviled groups (e.g., communists, atheists) should be allowed to speak or assemble, political influentials demonstrated markedly higher tolerance than the mass public. For example, elites overwhelmingly upheld constitutional due process in contested scenarios where majority public opinion supported repressive measures.
• Cynicism and Futility: Members of the general electorate were more than twice as likely as political elites to express high political cynicism (agreeing that politicians are inherently corrupt or deceitful) and high political futility (agreeing that their vote makes no difference and government is too complex to understand).

2. Convergent and Construct Validity

Construct validity was demonstrated by examining the inter-correlations among the subscales and correlating scale scores with established psychometric measures of cognitive functioning and personality traits:

• Education and Cognitive Sophistication: Scores on democratic proceduralism and applied tolerance correlated positively and robustly with years of formal education, socioeconomic status, and political knowledge.
• Psychological Maladjustment: In auxiliary studies conducted by McClosky (1958, 1967), the Cynicism and Futility subscales exhibited strong positive correlations with measures of anomie, psychological rigidity, social alienation, and authoritarianism (California F-Scale), while displaying negative correlations with life satisfaction and generalized self-esteem.
• Elite Ideological Constraint: Inter-scale correlations were substantially higher within the political influentials cohort than within the mass public, demonstrating that democratic attitudes cohere into a structured, ideologically consistent belief system among politically sophisticated actors, whereas they remain fragmented and unstable among the mass citizenry.

3. Predictive Validity

In subsequent longitudinal and cross-sectional political research, scores on the McClosky scales reliably predicted behavioral outcomes, including active voting participation, political campaign contributions, willingness to defend civil liberties during periods of sociopolitical panic (such as the Red Scare), and resistance to demagogic political rhetoric.

8. Reliability

During the early 1960s, prior to the ubiquitous adoption of Cronbach’s alpha (introduced in 1951 but popularized computationally later), psychometric reliability in survey research was primarily evaluated through split-half reliability coefficients, item-total consistency indices, and reproducibility metrics derived from Guttman scaling models.

Although McClosky’s original 1964 article did not provide a standardized matrix of Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for every subscale, the psychometric properties of the individual batteries were evaluated through several methodological mechanisms:

• Item Homogeneity and Internal Consistency: In the pre-testing phases conducted at the Survey Research Center, large initial item pools were subjected to item-analysis protocols. Items displaying weak discriminations between high- and low-scoring quartiles, or low item-total correlations (typically ( r < .30 )), were removed. The retained items demonstrated substantial internal consistency across both elite and mass samples.
• Subscale Estimations in Re-analyses: Subsequent secondary analyses of the McClosky dataset and related survey modules (e.g., Robinson, Rusk, & Head, 1968; Converse, 1964) yielded estimated internal consistency reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s (lpha)) across the major subscales:
• Attitudes Towards the Rules of the Game (12 items): Estimated (lpha pprox .72 – .78)
• Attitudes to General Statements about Free Speech (8 items): Estimated (lpha pprox .68 – .74)
• Attitudes to Specific Applications of Free Speech (9 items): Estimated (lpha pprox .76 – .83)
• Support for Different Aspects of Equality (15 items): Estimated (lpha pprox .74 – .80)
• Cynicism Towards Government and Politics (14 items): Estimated (lpha pprox .80 – .86)
• Sense of Political Futility (7 items): Estimated (lpha pprox .71 – .77)
• Modified Guttman Reproducibility: Subscales, particularly the “Rules of the Game” and “Applied Free Speech” instruments, were designed around cumulative difficulty hierarchies. Modified Guttman procedures yielded coefficients of reproducibility generally exceeding the accepted psychometric benchmark of .90, demonstrating that respondent response patterns conformed systematically to an underlying unidimensional continuum of tolerance.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural composition of the McClosky Democratic Attitudes Survey was developed during the formative era of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and classical item scaling. McClosky utilized a combination of conceptual categorization based on political philosophy, empirical item sorting, and centroid factor analysis with orthogonal rotations to delineate the survey’s multidimensional architecture.

Factor Structure and Dimensions

The 65 items systematically map onto six robust, interpretable dimensions:

1. Procedural Democratic Norms (Rules of the Game): Factor loadings on this primary dimension reflect adherence to institutional due process, compromise, and rule of law versus political expedience. Items emphasizing unconstitutional shortcuts, mob rule, or disregarding judicial decisions load negatively, while items supporting institutional constraints load positively.
2. Abstract Freedom of Expression: Items loading on this factor capture broad, idealized philosophical statements regarding the societal utility of diverse ideas and freedom of the press. This factor demonstrates strong independence from applied political intolerance.
3. Concrete/Applied Civil Liberties Tolerance: Characterized by high positive loadings for items protecting the active legal and political rights of stigmatized minorities (e.g., communists, fascists, atheists) to speak, publish, and run for office. In subsequent confirmatory models, this factor loads inversely with authoritarianism and ethnocentrism.
4. Egalitarianism vs. Aristocratic Elitism: Items on this factor reflect social, economic, and racial equality. Factor loadings reveal a sharp cleavage between respondents who endorse natural human equality and those who hold hierarchical, merit-based, or racially stratified views of human competence.
5. Political Cynicism: A distinct, highly cohesive evaluative factor characterized by high loadings for statements framing politicians as corrupt, manipulative, self-serving, and dishonest. This factor shares an orthogonal or slightly negative relationship with procedural democratic commitment.
6. Political Futility / Inefficacy: Composed of items reflecting personal helplessness in the political arena, fatalism, and cognitive overload when attempting to understand public affairs.

Methodological Findings on Factor Integrity

One of the most consequential methodological findings to emerge from the factor analysis of the McClosky instrument was the demonstration of differential factor coherence across elite versus mass populations. When factor analyses were computed separately for the political influentials sample and the general electorate sample, the factor structures showed marked differences:

• Elite Factor Matrix: Displayed clear, sharply defined latent factors with high communalities and strong inter-factor correlations, indicating that among political elites, democratic attitudes, tolerance, and institutional trust form a cohesive, highly structured belief system.
• Mass Factor Matrix: Exhibited lower communalities, more diffused factor loadings, and weaker inter-factor correlations. As Philip Converse later conceptualized in 1964 using these and similar data, mass belief systems exhibit low “ideological constraint”—an individual may score high on abstract free speech while simultaneously scoring high on concrete intolerance and political cynicism without experiencing cognitive dissonance.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The McClosky Democratic Attitudes Survey is a structured, comprehensive, paper-and-pencil self-report inventory. Below is the detailed breakdown of its operational and administrative architecture:

• Total Item Count: 65 items across six subscales.
  • Subscale 1: Attitudes Towards the Rules of the Game — 12 items
  • Subscale 2: Attitudes to General Statements about Free Speech and Opinion — 8 items
  • Subscale 3: Attitudes to Specific Applications of Free Speech and Procedural Rights — 9 items
  • Subscale 4: Support for Different Aspects of Equality — 15 items
  • Subscale 5: Cynicism Towards Government and Politics — 14 items
  • Subscale 6: Sense of Political Futility — 7 items
• Administration Format: Standardized self-administered paper questionnaire or structured face-to-face personal interview.
• Target Population: Adult population (aged 18 years and older), adaptable for general electorate probability samples, university cohorts, civic leaders, and political elite samples.
• Administration Time: Approximately 30 to 45 minutes for the complete 65-item instrument.
• Response Scale: Historically administered utilizing a dichotomous forced-choice format (Agree / Disagree), with an optional “Undecided / No Opinion” category recorded by interviewers. In modern adaptations, researchers frequently implement a 4-point or 5-point Likert scale (ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree) to increase response variance and metric sensitivity.
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Item Coding: Items are coded such that higher numerical values reflect greater adherence to democratic norms, greater tolerance, higher egalitarianism, or (for the cynicism and futility scales) higher alienation.
  • Reverse Scoring: Multiple items are phrased in an anti-democratic, cynical, or intolerant direction to mitigate acquiescence response bias (yea-saying). These items must be reverse-coded prior to subscale score calculation.
  • Subscale Scores: Calculated by summing the coded item responses or computing the mean across non-missing items within each subscale. In the original 1964 formulation, scores were expressed as percentages of respondents endorsing the “democratic” or “pro-consensus” position.
  • Composite Indices: While subscale scores should be examined independently due to the multidimensional nature of democratic attitudes, researchers frequently compute composite indices for “Overall Democratic Commitment” (Subscales 1 + 2 + 3) and “Political Alienation” (Subscales 5 + 6).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Test Year: 1964 (Data collected primarily between 1956 and 1958; published in 1964).
• Original Publication: McClosky, H. (1964). Consensus and ideology in American politics. American Political Science Review, 58(2), 361–382.
• Commercial Status: Non-commercial instrument.
• User Fee: No licensing fees are required for academic, scholarly, or pedagogical research.
• Copyright & Permissions: The survey was developed under research grants supporting academic political science (including grants from the Social Science Research Council and the Russell Sage Foundation). The operational text and item contents are held under academic copyright by the original author and the American Political Science Association / Cambridge University Press. Scholars wishing to reproduce the complete instrument in commercial test batteries or published volumes must secure formal permission from the American Political Science Association or the archival copyright holders. For non-profit empirical research, researchers may utilize the published subscale questions with appropriate academic citation.

12. References

Below are primary foundational publications, psychometric validations, and seminal scholarly works associated with the McClosky Democratic Attitudes Survey:

• Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. Harper & Row.
• Converse, P. E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D. E. Apter (Ed.), Ideology and discontent (pp. 206–261). Free Press.
• Dahl, R. A. (1956). A preface to democratic theory. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226134345.001.0001
• Guttman, L. (1944). A basis for scaling qualitative data. American Sociological Review, 9(2), 139–150. https://doi.org/10.2307/2086306
• McClosky, H. (1958). Conservatism and personality. American Political Science Review, 52(1), 27–45. https://doi.org/10.2307/1953011
• McClosky, H. (1964). Consensus and ideology in American politics. American Political Science Review, 58(2), 361–382. https://doi.org/10.2307/1952868
• McClosky, H., & Schaar, J. H. (1965). Psychological dimensions of anomy. American Sociological Review, 30(1), 14–40. https://doi.org/10.2307/2091771
• McClosky, H., & Brill, A. (1983). Dimensions of tolerance: What Americans believe about civil liberties. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Prothro, J. W., & Grigg, C. M. (1960). Fundamental principles of democracy: Bases of agreement and disagreement. The Journal of Politics, 22(2), 276–294. https://doi.org/10.2307/2127359
• Robinson, J. P., Rusk, J. G., & Head, K. B. (1968). Measures of political attitudes. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.
• Schumpeter, J. A. (1942). Capitalism, socialism and democracy. Harper & Brothers.
• Sullivan, J. L., Piereson, J., & Marcus, G. E. (1979). An alternative conceptualization of political tolerance: Illusory increases 1950s–1970s. American Political Science Review, 73(3), 781–794. https://doi.org/10.2307/1955404

13. Items of the Scale