Ideological Identity Research Articles

Dalit-Renaissance in Bengal: Relocating Namasudras’ Literature and Culture in Colonial Bengal

The present essay investigates how the monolithic and mono-dimensional aspect of the Bengal-Renaissance which was pioneered and vanguarded by the so called upper-caste people somehow failed to address and attest crucial issues and multiple voices of the lower castes and other depressed and dispossessed people of Bengal province. One of the central postulates of this article is to foreground and put forward countless measures initiated by the Namasudra community in colonial Bengal through their socio-political and cultural assertions. It further critically engages with an investigative reading of existing archives and historiographies of Bengal that tend to explicate Namasudras’ ideological aspiration and identity consciousness as inseparable and integrative within the hegemonic dominance of upper-castes’ framework. Hence, it intends to provide a counter analysis against this approach by mapping countless Dalit political imaginative manifestos embedded within Namasudra movement during the latter half of the nineteenth century in undivided colonial Bengal province. The primary concern of this article, therefore, is to locate their sociocultural reform movement and other perceptions by tracing their fundamental texts— Sri Sri Harileelamrita and Sri Sri Guruchand Charita, Namasudras’ tracts, booklets, and their festivities, kabigaan, Harisangeet, and so on.

Is it better to strike a balance? How exposure to congruent and incongruent opinion climates on social networking sites impacts users’ processing and selection of information

The growing significance of social networking sites (SNSs) as venues for political exchanges between citizens raises questions on the consequences of their use. This pre-registered experiment ( N = 704) aexamined to what extent a gradual variation of congruence between users’ opinions and the opinion climate they encounter on SNSs affect their strength of opinion and selective exposure. No effects were found from the level of congruence on selective exposure, while exploratory analyses suggested that exposure to overly congruent opinion climates can lead to marginally stronger opinions. Building on research into political social identities which suggests polarizing effects of the latter, interaction effects of users’ ideological identities and exposure to opinions on SNS were additionally investigated. However, the present work found no indication that effects of congruence are modulated by identity salience. Taken together, findings of this study suggest that socially divisive effects of like-minded or non-like-minded opinion climates conveyed by SNS may be limited.

Эволюция чилийских правых во время Холодной войны: журнал «Estanquero» и чилийский национализм

The history of right-wing political forces in Chile is an important part of the history of this country. The ideological and organizational identity of the right in Chile is of greater historiographical interest. This work is devoted to a little-studied stage in the formation of the “new right” in Chile at the beginning of the Cold War. It analyzes the ideological and political platform of a group of right-wing politicians and publicists united around the magazine “Estanquero”, headed by Jorge Prat, a prominent figure of the right sector. This group united the dissidents of traditional right-wing and proto-fascist groups, becoming a link between the conservatives and nationalists who were experiencing a crisis and the “new right”, which became the dominant force in the country in the 70-80s.

The Impact of Undecided Voters in Israeli Elections

This paper examines the impact of undecided voters in elections campaigns in Israel. The question asked here is if undecided voters can break the political dead-lock which became evident in four consecutive elections in just two years – between 2019 and 2021. The paper argues that the crucial role of undecided voters is the result of four main developments. The first is the multi-party parliamentary system, which allows the voters to swing between different parties and influence on handful of options to form coalition government. The parliamentary system emphasizes the excessive and crucial role of small parties to determine who will be in power – which means that they are in a position to impose their extreme ideology on the entire society. The second is that participation in elections is constantly declining, increasing the impact of motivated voters who follow the campaigns closely before making their final decision. The fact that this audience is persuaded by specific events and not by ideology or social identity allows to maximize the impact of their vote. The third is related to technological and cultural changes. Digital and social media have become popular among Israeli young people and first time voters, allowing them to promote new social and political behavior and bypass the censorship of traditional media and the traditional ideology of non-first time voters and the old political establishment.

Political socialization, political gender gaps and the intergenerational transmission of left‐right ideology

AbstractWhile left and right are the main terms to distinguish political views in Western Europe, the family socialization of citizens has mainly been studied in terms of partisan preferences rather than identification with these ideological blocks. Therefore, this study investigates the intergenerational transmission of left‐right ideological positions in two European multiparty systems. To investigate expectations regarding gendered patterns in political socialization, ideological transmission between mothers, fathers, daughters and sons are analyzed, making use of German and Swiss household data. The results underline the relevance of the family in the transmission of political ideology in multiparty systems, showing high contemporary parent–child concordance in ideological positioning in line with classic work in political socialization. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the gender‐generation gap in political ideology is consequential for this process. Young women consistently place themselves on the left of men across all combinations of parental ideology, which indicates that the gender‐generation gap trumps other gendered patterns in intergenerational transmission. Consequently, daughters are less likely than sons to take over their parents’ rightist positions, while parent–son transmission is equally large on the left and the right. This also means that left‐leaning parents have a general advantage over right‐leaning parents in having their ideological identification reproduced by their daughters. The study highlights the importance of differentiating between the transmission of left‐ and right‐wing ideology in political socialization processes. Moreover, it demonstrates that the distinction by offspring gender is imperative when studying the intergenerational transmission of traits that display gender differences within and between parental and offspring generations. The findings point at the active role of especially female offspring in the political socialization process, as they seem to be more strongly impacted by influences outside the family that sustain generational processes of further gender realignment.

The Impact of Ideological Ambiguity on Terrorist Organizations

Organizations that have a clear and unambiguous focus acquire greater legitimacy, which raises their capacity for mobilization. Using data on terrorist organizations, this paper explores two empirical implications of this claim: A terrorist organization’s survival and lethality will be threatened to the extent that it has an ambiguous ideological identity. Analyses using panel data from the Extended Data on Terrorist Groups (EDTG) test these arguments for 474 global terrorist organizations observed over 1970–2016. The key empirical predictions are that ambiguity inhibits lethality and curtails survival. This paper finds support for these claims, controlling for competition from rivals and allies, ethno-nationalist or Islamic ideological orientation, and a variety of other measures of organizational capacity.

ARTICULATION OF THE JAVANESE ISLAMIC MYTHIC IDEOLOGY IN THE KRUCIL KEDIRI PUPPETS

The Cipto Manunggal Kebatinan Community is a mystical community that has developed in the Kediri area of ??East Java, which strengthens its ideological identity through the Krucil puppet art. Krucil is constructed as a performing art from the kebatinan community, which displays the concepts in the kebatinan teachings they profess. The main concepts in kejawen teachings are reconstructed through symbols in the Krucil puppets, so that the core concepts in kejawen teachings have new meanings. This study uses a critical ethnographic approach to dissect the ideological concepts in the wayang Krucil which is used as an ideological representation of the Cipto Manunggal community. The results of this study indicate that there are 3 main aspects in Cipto manunggal's kebatinan teachings that acquire new meanings,
 Keywords: ideology, Javanese Islam, wayang Krucil

Value Disagreement and Partisan Sorting in the American Mass Public

Decades ago, research described American political culture in terms of consensus. Contemporary research, however, reaches opposite conclusions, arguing that the “culture war” that now defines American politics stems from value disagreements among partisan and ideological groups. What factors are at work in this transition from consensus to dissensus? This manuscript pulls from two literatures—one on American core political values and another on partisan-ideological sorting and affective polarization—and argues that the term dissensus best describes value preferences among individuals whose partisan and ideological identities are aligned. Among others, however, preferences on core political values are largely in consensus. First, using data from 2006 and 2019 and fitting geometric models of value preferences, I show that strong value disagreements exist primarily among sorted partisans. Next, I explore possible implications of such alignments and find that relationships among value preferences, political attitudes, and political behaviors are significantly stronger in sorted partisans. I close with a discussion of how theories undergirding affective polarization and partisan-ideological sorting can help the discipline better understand value conflict in the American mass public.

Самоидентификация молодежи Московского региона как фактор конструирования образа будущего России

The article is based on the study “Political identification of youth in the Moscow region” conducted in May-June 2021 on the basis of the Center for Political Science of the ISPR FCTAS RAS. It describes the features of the political and ideological identification of youth in Moscow and the Moscow region, which are considered as the most important factor in political behavior and civil activity. The authors identified the groups of young people according to their self-identification, based on a civilizational approach. Revealing the positions of different groups of young people regarding the present and future of Russia demonstrates a high level of social optimism among those who demonstrate adherence to the Russian cultural matrix. In turn, in the groups where orientations towards the Western culture prevail, there is a more pessimistic attitude towards both their future and the prospects for the country’s development.

Mechanisms of 3N Model on Radicalization: Testing the Mediation by Group Identity and Ideology of the Relationship between Need for Significance and Violent Extremism

This paper seeks to examine the mechanisms of the 3 N model (need, narrative, and network) by testing a serial mediation model of group identity and ideology. We propose two rival hypotheses: need for significance predicts violent extremism, and its relationship is serially mediated by (1) group identity and ideology (Model 1); (2) ideology and group identity (Model 2). To test the hypotheses, we conducted a survey of 137 terrorism detainees from prisons across Indonesia. The results revealed that Model 1 had a better fit than Model 2, suggesting the important role of group processes in developing violent extremism’s ideology.

Demand without supply? Mass partisanship, ideological attachments, and the puzzle of Guatemala's electoral market failure

The demand for an ideologically based party system is not always met with a supply. As a country where a large majority of adults identify on the ideological scale but whose weak political parties primarily function as short-lived personalist platforms, Guatemala represents an extreme case of a demand supply mismatch. Using six AmericasBarometer surveys from 2008 to 2018, we analyze the supply-side (partisanship) and demand-side (ideological identification) effect on voter turnout to identify whether the manifestation of this market failure applies evenly to voters across the ideological scale. We report a nuanced outcome: partisanship and identification on the right of the ideological scale increase turnout, but identification on the center or the left display no significant effect. The absence of parties that effectively represents left-wing or centrist voters—or that at least induce them to turn out to vote—points to a supply-side problem in Guatemala's political representation market.

What shapes cognitions of climate change in Europe? Ideology, morality, and the role of educational attainment

Cognitions about climate change are of critical importance for climate change mitigation as they influence climate-relevant behaviors and the support of climate policy. Using about 30,000 observations from a large-scale representative survey from 23 European countries, this study provides two major findings. First, important policy-relevant climate change cognitions do not only differ by individuals’ ideological identity (left versus right) but—independently—by their moral identity, that is, the pattern of endorsement of the moral foundations: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity/Sanctity. In particular, controlling for ideological position, the cognitions that the world climate is changing, that climate change is human-made, and that climate change impacts are bad are significantly negatively related to stronger endorsement of the Authority and Sanctity foundations while being positively related to stronger endorsement of the Loyalty and Fairness foundations. Second, not only the ideology-related cognitive divide but the morality-related divide is larger in individuals with tertiary education, consistent with the idea that individuals with greater science literacy and numeracy use these skills to adjust their cognitions to their group identity. The finding that better education may amplify rather than attenuate the ideology and morality dependence of decision-relevant climate change cognitions sheds doubt on the proposition that better education unambiguously furthers the prospects for climate change mitigation.

The Making of Radical‐Right Voters: Persuasion and Contrast Effects in a Dynamic Political Context

Under what circumstances do first‐time radical‐right party (RRP) voters become more identified with the right‐wing label? Also, when do they perceive the center‐right party as more left wing and evaluate it more negatively? To answer these two intertwined questions, this article leverages the dynamic political context of Germany during the 2013–17 election cycle. In this election cycle, the political arena became abruptly polarized, as the refugee crisis took place and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) broke into 13 subnational parliaments. Using a unique longitudinal dataset, I find that first‐time AfD voters experienced a persuasion effect in such a polarized environment, as they became slightly more right wing. In addition, I find a contrast effect among these voters, as they came to perceive the Christian Democratic Union as more left wing and judged it more negatively. These findings have important implications for understanding the psychological processes of first‐time RRP voters in a multiparty system, as they show how a polarized environment can shape RRP voters' ideological identity and motivate them to see the mainstream center‐right party as an outgroup.

Becoming an Ideologue: Social Sorting and the Microfoundations of Polarization

This article elaborates and tests the hypothesis that the sociopolitical segregation of interpersonal networks (i.e., social sorting) is at the root of recent polarization trends in the United States. After reviewing recent trends, the article outlines the micro-level pathways through which social sorting along sociopolitical lines leads individuals to become more ideological in their identities and attitude structures. It then tests these pathways using panel data from the General Social Survey, which includes detailed measures of individuals’ social ties, ideological identification, and attitudes across a wide array of issues. Results show two dominant pathways through which more socially sorted individuals become more ideological: a short pathway directly linking social sorting to more extreme ideological identities, and a longer pathway linking social sorting to more extreme ideological identities through an increasingly ideological alignment of individuals’ attitude structures. The shorter pathway predominates among conservatives and the longer pathway among liberals. These micro-level pathways are shown to generalize to different macro-level polarization trends in identities and attitude structures for conservatives and liberals. Findings therefore uphold core sociological principles while providing stronger social-structural foundations for a growing body of mainly psychological research on ideological asymmetries.

ПОЛИТИКА И ИДЕОЛОГИЯ В ВОСПРИЯТИИ СТАРШЕКЛАССНИКОВ

The article presents the results of an empirical research: an expert survey of teachers of history and social studies in schools in the Ulyanovsk region and an online survey of high school students in grades 9-11. The school at present, due to the lack of a significant part of the humanitarian subjects in higher education, lays the foundations for the political and ideological identification of young people. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to study students’ ideas about politics and modern political ideologies. The article concludes that there is a lack of practical extracurricular activities to involve high school students in social and political activities at school and at the local level, and as a result, we can observe the lack of formation of the political identity of school graduates as an integral part of the civic identification of young people.

The mode of theatricality in the work of representatives of “Bu-Ba-Bu” group

The article deals with the phenomenon of theatricalization of the artistic picture of the world in the works of authors-representatives of the group “Bu-Ba-Bu”, (Yuriy Andrukhovych, Viktor Neborak, Oleksandr Irvanets) who carry out a large-scale renewal of Ukrainian literature by dramatizing reality. That is why the mode of theatricality best shows the basic artistic principles of the group (burlesque-balagan-buffoonery). The relevance of the study is due to the need to analyze the work of representatives of Bu-Ba-Bu in the mode of theatricality. The subject of research is the poetic features, the system of characters and the principles of characterization of the group. The purpose of this article is to identify the ideological identity of the literary work of the group “Bu-Ba-Bu” in terms of revealing the theatrical discourse, which provides the research novelty. Research methods: comparative, comparative-historical and descriptive were used. Results of the research. Yu. Andrukhovych’s great prose and O. Irvanets’ drama are considered in the context of the postmodern concept of “theater society”, which treats various forms of social and cultural life as a kind of performance, as well as in connection with the concept of camp, which is characterized by ironic reflection on mass culture and aestheticization of everyday life. Dimensions of theatricality are realized by groups primarily in the form of carnival, which is a means of overcoming postcolonial trauma and a special space of existence (active involvement of the public in theatrical action, blurring the line between “theater” and real life). Addressing the main tenets of Bakhtin’s theory of carnival revealed the peculiarities of the aesthetics of “crisis periods” in prose and drama of modern authors (opposition to official discourses, total freedom and familiarity, accentuation of the bodily “bottom”). Particular attention is paid to corporeality, which reveals carnival features (grotesqueness, fluidity, dynamism) and at the same time becomes a means of rehabilitating human freedom and vitalistic energy, correlating with postcolonial social context. It is proved that the national originality of artists’ creativity is manifested primarily in the constructive nature of the carnival, which, formally correlated with the rhizome, implicitly affirms the value vertical.

Motivated reasoning, fast and slow

AbstractAre people more likely to (mis)interpret information so that it aligns with their ideological identity when relying on feelings compared to when engaging in analytical thinking? Or is it the other way around: Does deliberation increase the propensity to (mis)interpret information to confirm existing political views? In a behavioral experiment, participants (n= 1207, Swedish sample) assessed numerical information concerning the effects of gender quotas and immigration either under time pressure or under no time pressure. To measure trait differences in cognitive sophistication, we also collected data on numeric ability. We found clear evidence of motivated reasoning when assessing both the effects of gender quotas on companies’ financial results and the effect of refugee intake on crime rates. Subjects who prioritized equality over liberty on the labor market were 13 percentage points less likely to correctly assess numerical information depicting that companies that used gender quotas when hiring made less profit. Subjects who classified themselves as ‘Swedes’ rather than ‘World citizens’ were 14 percentage points less likely to correctly assess numerical information depicting that crime rates decreased following immigration. Time pressure did not affect the likelihood to engage in motivated reasoning, while subjects with higher numeric ability were less likely to engage in motivated reasoning when analyzing information concerning refugee intake, but more likely to engage in motivated reasoning when analyzing information regarding the effect of gender quotas. Together these results indicate that motivated reasoning is primarily driven by individual differences in analytical thinking at the trait level and not by situational factors such as time pressure, and that whether motivated reasoning is primarily driven by analysis or feelings depends on the topic at hand.

Economic well-being and self-placements on a Left-Right scale: evidence from undergraduate students in seven countries

ABSTRACT Despite its conceptual and empirical ambiguities, the Left-Right distinction of political preferences is a widely used tool in academic debates on voting and party behaviour, coalition formation and political culture. In a novel contribution to scholarship on the social construction of ideological identities, we investigate the context-dependent nature of the association between different conceptualizations of economic well-being and political orientations along a Left-Right scale. Our theoretical framework distinguishes economic well-being into a materialist and post-materialist dimension, and derives its hypotheses from Social Modernization Theory. Using multivariate analyses with original survey data from 3,449 undergraduate students in Bolivia, Brazil, Italy, Kenya, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, our results show clear patterns and large effect sizes in the association between respondents’ macro-economic context and their micro-level ideological orientations. In non-high-income countries, respondents’ Left-Right self-placements correlate with a materialist conceptualization of economic well-being, which centres on assessments of their family’s real-life economic status. In high-income countries, by contrast, respondents’ Left-Right self-placements are associated with a post-materialist conceptualization of economic well-being that is based on normative judgements about inequality aversion.

The Effects of Ideological and Ethnoracial Identity on Political (Mis)Information.

There is much concern today about the spread of fake news and the misinformation it can produce among the public. In this article, we investigate how the American public interprets accurate and inaccurate statements from the news. Moving beyond partisanship, we theorize that ideological and ethnoracial identities also shape individuals’ interpretations of the news. We argue that people have incentives to interpret information they encounter in ways that favor their ideological and ethnoracial ingroups and that these incentives are particularly strong when ideological and ethnoracial identities align. Using a survey that asks respondents to classify statements from news stories as facts or opinions, we find support for these hypotheses. Liberals and conservatives, and white, Black, and Hispanic respondents, more often classify as factual statements that favor their ingroup’s interests while classifying information opposing their ingroup’s interests as opinions. Holding cross-cutting ethnoracial and ideological identities diminishes these effects, while identities that align produce stronger ingroup biases in information processing, particularly among whites. Our study reveals that it is not only partisanship but also ideological and ethnoracial identities that shape how Americans interpret the news, and therefore how informed, or misinformed, they are.

Who are your people? – The effect of political ideology and social identity on climate-related beliefs and risk perceptions

ABSTRACT Persistent divides among American voters regarding climate change, especially climate skepticism among conservatives, have long been explained with reference to ideology, vested interests, and trends of political polarization. More recently, an alternative set of explanations for the opinion gap between conservatives and liberals has been gaining traction, arguing that these divisions are generated by social identities and their effects on individual beliefs and attitudes. Here, we focus on global citizenship as a specific social identity. Seeking to connect ideology and social identity approaches, we study how the interaction between a person’s ideological leanings and their social identity as a global citizen relates to beliefs and risk perceptions regarding climate change. Analyzing two kinds of survey data, we find that a global citizen identity moderates the relationship between a conservative ideology and a person’s climate-related beliefs and risk perceptions, while it does not seem to have the same effect for liberal individuals. In other words, a global citizen identity is associated with a potential decrease in the ideological divide between conservatives and liberals regarding climate change. We explore the implications of these findings for climate change communication and policy and other issue areas.