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Review your selected methods side by side; rows that differ are highlighted.
| Political Cynicism Scale× | Democratic Norms Support Measurement× | |
|---|---|---|
| Field | Political Psychology | Political Psychology |
| Family≠ | Latent structure | Process / pipeline |
| Year of origin≠ | 1961 | 2020 |
| Originator≠ | Robert Agger, Marshall Goldstein & Stanley Pearl | Matthew Graham & Milan Svolik; Christopher Claassen |
| Type≠ | Attitude scale for distrust of politics | Experimental and survey measurement of democratic commitment |
| Seminal source≠ | Agger, R. E., Goldstein, M. N., & Pearl, S. A. (1961). Political Cynicism: Measurement and Meaning. The Journal of Politics, 23(3), 477-506. DOI ↗ | Graham, M. H., & Svolik, M. W. (2020). Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 392-409. DOI ↗ |
| Aliases | Political Distrust Scale, Agger-Goldstein-Pearl Cynicism Measure, Cynicism Toward Government Scale, Political Disaffection Scale | Support for Democracy Tradeoff Experiment, Democratic Backsliding Tolerance Measure, Graham-Svolik Democratic Norms Design, Commitment to Democratic Principles Measure |
| Related | 3 | 3 |
| Summary≠ | The Political Cynicism Scale measures the disposition to hold politicians and politics in disrepute, viewing officeholders as dishonest, self-serving, and unresponsive. First operationalized by Agger, Goldstein, and Pearl in 1961, the construct captures a generalized distrust distinct from disagreement with particular leaders or policies. Cynicism scales sit alongside political trust and efficacy as core measures of citizens' orientation toward the political system, and they figure prominently in debates, sharpened by Jack Citrin, over whether low trust reflects deep alienation from the regime or merely dissatisfaction with current incumbents. | This approach measures how committed ordinary citizens are to democratic norms by observing the price they are willing to pay to uphold them. Rather than asking abstractly whether people value democracy, Matthew Graham and Milan Svolik's 2020 candidate-choice design confronts voters with a co-partisan candidate who violates a democratic principle and estimates how much electoral support that violation costs. Their finding that most Americans will tolerate undemocratic behavior by their own side when partisanship and policy stakes are high reframed the study of democratic backsliding around revealed, not professed, commitment. Christopher Claassen's parallel work links aggregate diffuse support for democracy to whether democracies survive. |
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