Surveying ideology in mass populations: a new conceptual method

Abstract

This paper develops a new method of examining ideology in mass populations. It presents results from an in-depth survey of 252 people examining their ideology, which is understood, following the account developed by Michael Freeden, as an interlinked series of conceptions of essentially contestable concepts. In contrast to the traditional left–right spectrum, measures of the presence of five ideological families in respondents thought behaviour (liberalism, socialism, republicanism, conservatism and libertarianism) were created. This was done by examining the degree to which they agreed with alternate conceptions of political concepts such as freedom, fairness and justice. This paper provides a short introduction, a theoretical framework, and presents the model used. Finally, it considers how the internal parts of the ideologies studied link to each other and to concrete policy preferences in aggregate data.