Clustering Ideology-threat associations: revisiting the multi-Dimensionality of Political Ideology and Its Effects on International threat Perceptions

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study explores how the covariance of political ideologies affects international threat perceptions in the Australian, UK, and US contexts. By synthesizing prior research, it develops multidimensional models of political ideologies, revealing four clusters: uni-valence, ambivalence, alienated ambivalence, and indifference. The results indicate that some respondents are active in simultaneously adopting multiple conflicting ideologies (ambivalence and its alienated variant), while others indicate either a lack of feeling towards any ideologies (indifference) or a positive response to a single ideology (uni-valence). More crucially, the findings of this study provide evidence for a non-linear and volumetric relationship between ideology and threat perception. Overall, threat perception is highest among respondents with a univalent, populist ideology, lowest in the ambivalent group, and somewhere between these two in the indifferent and alienated ambivalent groups. The study contributes to: 1) the multi-dimensionality school of ideology studies, by adopting new methods for incorporating multi-perspective elements, 2) the constructivist school of threat perception in international relations, by demonstrating a more complex relationship between ideology and threat perception, and 3) attitudinal theory in political psychology, by re-theorising political neutrality.