IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v86y1992i01p149-166_08.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Political Legitimacy

Author

Listed:
  • Weatherford, M. Stephen

Abstract

Political legitimacy is a key concept in both macro and micro theories. Pioneers in survey-based research on alienation and system support envisioned addressing macro questions about legitimacy with the sophisticated empiricism of individual-level methodology but failed; and a succession of innovations in item wording and questionnaire construction only led to an excessive concern with measurement issues at the individual level. I return to an enumeration of the informational requirements for assessing legitimacy in hopes of finding a conceptualization that better utilizes available survey indicators to tap relevant macro dimensions. I specify formal measurement models for both conventional and revised conceptualizations of legitimacy orientations and compare the fit of the two models systematically on data from the U.S. electorate. The revised model appears preferable on both theoretical and empirical grounds.

Suggested Citation

  • Weatherford, M. Stephen, 1992. "Measuring Political Legitimacy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(1), pages 149-166, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:86:y:1992:i:01:p:149-166_08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400087037/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:86:y:1992:i:01:p:149-166_08. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.