Humility and political efficacy
Empirically oriented political scientists conceptualize and measure a widely studied construct they call political “efficacy.” Efficacy comes in distinct “internal” and “external” varieties.
External political efficacy measures people's beliefs that they can influence the political system—e.g., that elected officials will listen and respond to their input. Internal political efficacy measures people's sense of competence to participate in politics—e.g., that the policy process is not too complicated for a person like them to understand. In principle, the two concepts can swing independently of each other as an empirical matter: e.g., one might believe that government officials should be responsive to me because I am politically competent, and yet believe that such officials will not, in fact, be responsive.Obviously internal political efficacy is related to cognitive humility vis-a-vis democratic citizenship. Heretofore, there has been some confusion in the literature because political scientists have assumed that humility is univalent—those who are cognitively humble do not think of themselves as especially competent, and hence there would be a negative relationship between cognitive humility and internal efficacy. But on the bi-valent conception of cognitive humility, the relationship becomes more complex. Presumably one should express levels of internal political efficacy appropriate to one's actual level of political competence. If so, then the relationship between humility and efficacy is open to further exploration, and may even exhibit “unfolding” properties—i.e., rather than relating in a linear fashion, the relationship would follow an inverted U shape, since one might be inappropriately matched in either direction: excess or deficiency.
Additionally, most political science literature casts high levels of political efficacy as a good thing.
Democratic legitimacy hinges on reasonable levels of external political efficacy, and democratic engagement relies on people believing that they are competent to participate (Neblo et al., 2010). But given the augmentation of humility with sophrosγne, one should generally “mind one's own business” and remain vigilant about “what one knows and does not know,” rather than assuming more self-confidence is always a good thing. This divergence might result from modern politics reversing which vice is more common: whereas in most cases people have too high an opinion of themselves (e.g., 90% of people believe that they are above average drivers), in modern mass politics, many people feel disempowered and overwhelmed by the complexity of the policy process. Conditional on entering the process they may tend toward over-assertiveness, but many are hesitant to begin in the first place.In the empirical literature, Gronlund et al. (2010) hypothesized that deliberation would increase both kinds of political efficacy by increasing people's political knowledge. Instead, they found that deliberation led to a slight decrease in internal political efficacy, though Morrell (2005) and Nabatchi (2010) found positive effects. Esterling et al. (2011) found that deliberation between elected officials and members of the public increased external political efficacy for the public, but did not affect internal political efficacy either way (though this null finding might be a result of people more appropriately estimating their political competence—i.e., that those who were excessively high on internal political efficacy were humbled somewhat, and those who were excessively low experienced a better sense of their potential). Interestingly, Himmelroos et al. (2017) found that “enclave” deliberation—i.e., among like-minded people— significantly increased internal political efficacy among marginalized groups with few political resources.This discussion of political efficacy suggests potential reforms of standard democratic practices as well.
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