Educated, urbanized – and narrow-minded? A comparative analysis of political ideology in local parties

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the strength and causal determinants of ideological thinking within political parties. The degree of “ideologization” includes two dimensions: “horizontal couplings”, as they are manifested in intercorrelations between different beliefs or opinions; and “vertical couplings” as they appear in the degree to which specific beliefs are related to more abstract concepts like “left” and “right” The results presented show shockingly high trends of ideologization at least on the left-center section of the spectrum, especially in the vertical dimension. Urbanization stands out as a major causal factor: On both sides of the spectrum, ideological constraints are significantly higher in larger than in smaller communities, and more pronounced in suburban settings than in villages far from the next city. Only in rather small communities, it is found that ideologization correlates positively with the educational level and the modern occupational background of party members, with the exposition of the local sections to the programs of supralocal mother parties, and with the number of other local parties with which they have to compete. In communities of given site, ideological thinking is more pronounced when parties possess a small share of political power (or none at all). Finally, there is evidence that ideological constraints in party policy has increased since the late eighties of the last century, and that it may increase further because younger age cohorts are more prone to clustering issue positions tightly and for relating them closely to abstract notions of “left” and “right”. In contradiction to most conventional wisdom, we may tentatively conclude that political thinking is more “rational” (or at least more flexible and pragmatic) at the peripheries than in the more central spheres of modern societies.