“People like me”? Introducing Group Political Efficacy

Abstract Political efficacy is a powerful predictor of political participation. Many traditional measures of efficacy in political science prompt survey respondents to think of “people like me”, thus evoking a group reference. However, without specifying which of multiple possible group memberships respondents ought to think of, answers may refer to completely different groups across respondents, resulting in imprecise measures. In this paper, we argue that political efficacy encompasses not only an internal and an external dimension, but also a third dimension, group efficacy, which reflects variation in degrees of system responsiveness to different groups. To empirically assess our argument, we developed new measures of political efficacy and conducted two large, register-based surveys among adolescents and adults in Germany. The results show that individuals have very different perceptions of group efficacy depending on their educational, economic, and migration backgrounds. With over 60%, a clear majority of respondents differentiate between group and external efficacy, suggesting that distinguishing these dimensions theoretically and empirically is important. Based on our evidence, we contend that a vague stimulus such as “people like me” blurs the differences between general and group-related dimensions of external political efficacy. We thus suggest that to adequately assess group efficacy, the concrete group of reference that the researcher is interested in should be specified, whereas no group reference should be made if the aim is to assess external efficacy.