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CHOICE Review

Research in American political behavior has been based almost entirely on structural-functionalist assumptions and expressed in quantitative terms. This book is no exception. Its goal is to define more precisely ``political apathy'' and to evaluate its causes and effects by reworking previously collected data from sources such as the University of Michigan Survey Research Center. The functionalist-empiricist approach has its own limitations in its consistent intellectual focus on the needs of ``system maintenance'' and its fixation with mathematical methods. Even within this framework, however, Bennett's findings are unremarkable. Using selected survey results, he constructs a ``Political Apathy Index'' for the 1960 to 1984 period and examines its correlates. He makes no claims to new discoveries, but modestly aspires to more exact measurements based on clearer operational definitions. And indeed he finds nothing new: citizen political interest is related to sense of duty, political efficacy, and partisanship; education is its most important predictor. Politically apathetic citizens are less informed and less active. Where he has no data, he speculates-often too strenuously. There is a tendency throughout the book to make variations in his index figures match his impressionistic analyses of political events since 1960. His conclusions on the connection between apathy and democracy-the basic theoretical focus of all such studies-are ambivalent in the extreme. If anything, perhaps too much has been written in this field, mostly because of its amenability to statistical analysis. Bennett's book is most useful for its concise and well-written survey of this literature; beyond that, it does not really say anything that has not been said before on the subject of political apathy.-M. Engel, Westfield State College