Ideological Labels Research Articles

Rethinking 'Attitudes' in the Attitudinal Model: Using Cultural Theory to Explain Judicial Decisions

Judicial ideology as conceptualized in the attitudinal model (AM) developed by Jeffrey Segal and Harold Spaeth remains the dominant explanation for US Supreme Court decisions. However, while there is consensus that judicial ideology is crucial in explaining Court behavior, the AM remains under-theorized, time-limited, and unresponsive to scholarly advances in the study of ideology. This paper argues that the cultural theory (CT) developed by Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky, and others can help address these problems. CT promises to advance the study of judicial behavior by providing a theory of ideology, rather than only the application of ideological labels, and by providing a two dimensional account of ideological behavior that avoids the anomalies that arise from relying on the AM’s one dimensional, liberal-conservative conception. To illustrate problems with the AM and the plausibility of our proposed CT solution, we compare explanations provided by both approaches for Court interpretations of First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In each constitutional area, the attitudinal orientations specified by CT — that is, egalitarian, hierarchical, and individualistic cultural biases valuing equality, order, and liberty, respectively — provide a richer and more valid account of judicial attitudes and legal change than liberalism and conservatism alone.

Same blueprint, different bricks: reexamining the sources of the gender gap in political ideology

Since the 1990s the ideological gap between men and women has grown, but scholars debate whether this difference is driven by diverging opinion on individual issues or differences in ideological reasoning. Utilizing Item Response Theory, we test for gender differences in multiple aspects of ideological thinking: ideological constraint, stability, the importance of individual issues to ideology, and the degree to which people base their self-reported ideological identity on policy issues. In contrast to existing studies showing that men and women privilege different sets of issues when choosing an ideological label, we find that men and women organize their opinions in much the same way. The gender gap in ideology reflects differences of opinion, but not political reasoning. Our results call for a shift away from research that searches for ways in which men and women reason differently about politics and focuses instead on why ideological thinking is so similar between the sexes despite difference in social experiences and on the elements of gender that explain basic differences in opinion.

Ideological Labels in America

This paper extends Ellis and Stimson’s (Ideology in America. New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2012) study of the operational-symbolic paradox using issue-level measures of ideological incongruence based on respondent positions and symbolic labels for these positions across 14 issues. Like Ellis and Stimson, we find that substantial numbers—over 30 %—of Americans experience conflicted conservatism. Our issue-level data reveal, furthermore, that conflicted conservatism is most common on the issues of education and welfare spending. In addition, we also find that 20 % of Americans exhibit conflicted liberalism. We then replicate Ellis and Stimson’s finding that conflicted conservatism is associated with low sophistication and religiosity, but also find that it is associated with being socialized in a post-1960s generation and using Fox News as a main news source. Finally, we show the important role played by identities, with both conflicted conservatism and conflicted liberalism linked with partisan and ideological identities, and conflicted liberalism additionally associated with ethnic identities.

Estabilidad y conciencia ideológica en la opinión pública mexicana

<p>El uso de un continuo de izquierda-derecha no sólo facilita la comprensión de la compleja competencia política, sino que, además, la identificación con esas etiquetas ideológicas suele conectar a un número importante de electores con los partidos políticos de México. En este artículo se analizan la estabilidad y la consistencia ideológicas en el electorado mexicano y se discute su utilidad para entender algunas facetas de la opinión pública en el país.</p><p>Con la ayuda de datos de encuesta tipo panel, recopilados durante las campañas presidenciales del año 2000, se llevan a cabo pruebas de estabilidad y consistencia ideológicas a nivel individual, y se evalúa su efecto en las opiniones con respecto a la reforma energética.</p><p>Entre los hallazgos más notables destaca el hecho de que el electorado mexicano suele ser estable en sus orientaciones ideológicas y que dicha estabilidad acentúa la consistencia ideológica, lo cual repercute en la conformación de la opinión pública, y, por supuesto, en los patrones de apoyo partidista en el país. <span style="font-size: 10px;">Por ello se discuten también las implicaciones de esta investigación para la contienda presidencial en 2006.</span></p>

Framing the Right Suspects: Measuring Media Bias

This article examines ideological bias in six large daily newspapers and The Associated Press. The media examined are three to six times more likely to associate ideological labels (or frames) with organizations (think tanks) with a conservative orientation than think tanks having a liberal orientation. This tends to frame the analyses done by conservative think tanks as less objective than the analysis done by liberal think tanks. Regression results suggest that approximately three-fourths of the explained differential in framing rates is due to media bias. The rest is primarily explained by the differential in the “quality” of think tanks.

Individual and Contextual Constraints on Ideological Labels in Latin America

Ideological labels are theoretically useful tools with which individuals comprehend, discuss, and engage in politics. Their actual significance, however, varies. We assess how select individual and contextual factors systematically affect individuals’ use and understandings of the classic left–right dimension in Latin America. Using data from the 2010 AmericasBarometer survey, we show that although education, political interest, and political sophistication help citizens place themselves on the ideological continuum, context also matters such that polarization (positively), fragmentation (negatively), and volatility (negatively) affect left–right response. Our analyses further demonstrate that, generally speaking, placements on the left–right scale are linked to individuals’ stances on economic, democratic, religious, and social issues, but context matters in important ways here as well. In short, ideological labels in Latin America hold important potential for orienting citizens within the political arena, but their utility is constrained in important ways at both the individual and contextual levels.

Social Issues, Authoritarianism, and Ideological Conceptualization: How Policy Dimensions and Psychological Factors Influence Ideological Labeling

Ideology's crucial theoretical and empirical role in explaining political behavior makes it imperative that scholars understand how individuals conceptualize and apply ideological labels. The existing literature on this topic is quite limited, however, because it relies almost exclusively upon data from the 1970s and 1980s, and it does not examine how psychological factors influence conceptualizations of ideological labels. This article uses data from two original laboratory experiments to test the relative impact of four major policy dimensions on participants' evaluations of candidate ideology and to test authoritarianism's role in shaping ideological conceptualization. These analyses indicate that individuals most often define liberalism and conservatism primarily in terms of social policies closely associated with religious values, each of which invert traditional ideological orientations toward the appropriate size and role of government. The causal mechanism shaping this relationship is authoritarianism, because, I argue, the religious social policy dimension most clearly evokes the deep‐seated value conflicts associated with an authoritarian view of political conflict.

Framing the Right Suspects: Measuring Media Bias

This paper examines the political bias in six large daily newspapers. I find a substantial media bias. The media examined are three to six times more likely to associate ideological labels (or frames) with organizations (think tanks) with a conservative orientation than think tanks having a liberal orientation. This tends to frame the analyses done by conservative think tanks as being less objective than those done by liberal think tanks.

Comments-to-comments

The authors respond to commentaries about their paper Abstractions and Idealisations: The Construction of Modern Linguistics particularly with respect to their analysis of the role of idealisation in modern linguistics. They explain the application of their analysis to a specific paradigm and/or part of modern linguistics. They address criticisms about the nature of idealisation and the application of such concept to linguistics. They clarify their use of the ideological label in connection with how certain idealisations are motivated.

Contemporary and traditional localism: a conceptualisation of rural local food

The increasingly popular local food movement in the US has experienced wide-scale buy-in on behalf of the general public as well as in academic arenas. However, there have been recent efforts to critique this movement, typically for being inequitable and unfairly geared towards those with above-average financial means. In this article, I examine local food efforts and present a new conceptualisation of food localism. While geographically localised food consumption activities are taking place, some have ideological labels attached to them, whereas others do not. What I have termed contemporary and traditional localisms exist in the same physical but different social space. The contemporary local is represented by current local food initiatives and corresponding aspirations to support local farmers and to promote sustainability through local purchasing behaviour. The traditional local, on the other hand, is similar in that it represents food growing activities that are in close geographical proximity to consumption, but lacks the motivation associated with the contemporary local's programmatic literature; instead, it is guided by a motivation to obtain fresh and affordable food. I substantiate the contemporary/traditional localism framework with qualitative fieldwork findings from Grafton County, New Hampshire, USA, and describe the practical as well as conceptual implications of this framework.

Framing the Right Suspects: Measuring Media Bias

This paper empirically examines how political bias affects content in large daily newspapers and the source of the demand for that bias. Consistent with prior research, this paper finds media bias. The media examined are three to six times more likely to associate ideological labels with conservative think tanks than liberal think tanks. This tends to frame the analysis done by conservative think tanks as being less objective than the analysis done by liberal think tanks. A major contribution of this paper is identifying the source of bias. A detailed examination of the differences in the citation patterns across publications suggests that the sources of the bias are reporter/editor preferences rather than the preferences of publishers or customers.

The Congo as topos of dystopic transgression in fin-de-siècle literature

In this essay, I compare the representation of the Congo as a topos of dystopic transgression in Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902), and in a lesser-known novel entitled Tropenwee (Tropical agony) by the Dutch author Henri van Booven, published in 1904. The idea of the Congo as a locus of degeneration will be read, not so much as a Conradian theme, but rather, as an idea that had gained wide currency throughout Europe during the fin-de-siecle period. Particular attention will be paid to some of the narrative techniques that shape this idea and the ideological assumptions it conveys. Moreover, I hope to show that degeneration as reflected by the writings under investigation is at once a colonial and anti-colonial theme, and therefore its significance requires moving beyond singular and clear-cut ideological labels. Keywords : degeneration, colonialism, fin-de-siecle literature, Joseph Conrad, Henri van Booven. Tydskrif vir Letterkunde Vol. 46 (1) 2009: pp. 95-108

Authoritarianism without Dominant Ideology: Political Manifestations of Authoritarian Attitudes in Hungary

Since the publication of Adorno, Frenkel‐Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford's (1950) classic study, considerable debate has developed concerning the political and ideological correlates of authoritarianism. This paper examines relationships between authoritarianism, on the one hand, and self‐identification with ideological labels, attitudes toward political extremists, and party preferences, on the other hand. The survey data have been collected in Hungary between 1994 and 2002. Findings indicate that it is the center‐right ideology and political orientation that attracts most authoritarians, yet authoritarian extreme‐left also survives. The findings also show that liberal orientation and center‐left identification constitute the political counter‐pole of authoritarianism. Extreme‐right supporters are found to be attracted only to particular aspects of authoritarianism.

Qutbism: An Ideology of Islamic-Fascism

The recently published National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism (NMSP-WOT) is to be commended for identifying as al Qaeda's of (1) The identification of an ideology as the of gravity rather than an individual or group is a significant shift from a capture and kill philosophy to a strategy focused on defeating the root cause of Islamic terrorism. Accordingly, the plan's principal focus is on attacking and countering an ideology that fuels Islamic terrorism. Unfortunately, the NMSP-WOT fails to identify the ideology or suggest ways to counter it. The plan merely describes the ideology as This description contributes little to the public's understanding of the threat or to the capabilities of the strategist who ultimately must attack and defeat it. The intent of this article is to identify the ideology of the Islamic terrorists and recommend how to successfully counter it. Sun Tzu wisely said, Know the enemy and yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. (2) Our success in the War on Terrorism depends on knowing who the enemy is and understanding his ideology. While characterizing and labeling an enemy may serve such a purpose, it is only useful if the labels are clearly defined and understood. Otherwise, overly broad characterizations obscure our ability to truly know the enemy, they diffuse efforts, and place potential allies and neutrals in the enemy's camp. Unfortunately, the War on Terrorism's use of labels contributes a great deal to the misunderstandings associated with the latter. The fact is, five years after 9/11 the NMSP-WOT provides little specific guidance, other than labeling the enemy as extremist. (3) This inability to focus on the specific threat and its supporting philosophy reflects our own rigid adherence to political correctness and is being exploited by militant Islamists portraying these overly broad descriptions as a war against As David F. Forte states We must not fail ... to distinguish between the homicidal revolutionaries like bin Laden and mainstream Muslim believers. (4) Knowing the enemy requires an understanding of militant Islam's ideology and recognizing that it is the militants' center of gravity. (5) Their extremist ideology has been called many things, Militant Salafism, Islamism, Wahhabism, Qutbism, Jihadism, and even Islam. (6) Since most ideologies reflect the integration of various related concepts, theories, and aims that have evolved over time into a broader body of thought, no label is entirely perfect and all are subject to critique. However, it appears that President Bush has ended the debate and accepted as the ideological label. (7) While Islamic-Fascism immediately conjures up images of an evil to be resisted and is therefore useful as a public relations term, intellectually it does little for the serious students of Islam or the strategic planners charged with its defeat. So what is this ideology we label Islamic-Fascism? What are its sources, theories, aims, and who are its proponents? The answers to many of these questions can be found in a collection of violent Islamic thought called Qutbism. (8) Qutbism refers to the writings of Sayyid Qutb and other islamic theoreticians, e.g., Abul Ala Maududi and Hassan al Banna, that provide the intellectual rationale underpinning Islamic-Fascism. Qutbism is not a structured body of thought from any single person (despite its name), source, time, or sect; rather it is a fusion of puritanical and intolerant Islamic orientations that include elements from both the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam that have been combined with broader Islamist goals and methodologies. Qutbism integrates the Islamist teachings of Maududi and al Banna with the arguments of Sayyid Qutb to justify armed jihad in the advance of Islam, and other violent methods utilized by twentieth century militants. …

What Media Bias? Conservative and Liberal Labeling in Major U.S. Newspapers

This article tests the hypothesis that major U.S. newspapers disproportionately label conservative politicians. We quantitatively analyze ideological labels of U.S. congresspersons and senators in newspaper articles. We then qualitatively review these articles, seeking to discern if any patterns exist, and if so, why. Disproportionate labeling of conservatives exists but not in a way that constitutes “bias,” as newspapers often label liberals, at times more than they do conservatives. These labeling patterns may be explained by the rise of conservatives who entered Congress in 1994, the political pejorativization of the word liberal, and the increased conservative ideological tenor of the Congress during the past fifteen years. We conclude by discussing possible implications of our findings.

What’s Left and Who’s Right? A Q-method Study of Individual and Contextual Influences on the Meaning of Ideological Labels

Left–right semantics are commonly employed by scholars, the media, and politicians in reference to Latin American politics. Yet, how do citizens understand these terms and what determines the meanings they assign to them? I investigate the significance of left–right labels, as potential political heuristic devices, among and across a selected group of citizens in Mexico and Argentina. Subjective understandings of the left–right semantics were tapped using Q-sort methods. Analyses of these data reveal quite different conceptions across individuals and national contexts. Further, and as hypothesized in the text, the analyses demonstrate that ideological labels (a) reference valence issues, in addition to political actors and policy stances; (b) differ across contexts in ways that correspond to elite packaging; and, (c) vary by individual partisan leanings and political sophistication.

Peace, Order, and Good Government

Values are at heart of Canadian culture in broad sense. And it is their values that deeply define Canadians-liberal values, of course.Pierre Pettigrew, Liberal MP, 1999This great Canadian mosaic, non-nation-state, makes for country that, in my view, reflects many of our values.Pettigrew, Liberal minister of foreign affairs, 2004(1)The early 21st century has seen much of Canadian public embrace what some scholars and policy practitioners are calling the liberalism.2 A recent poll found that, when forced to choose among ideological labels, six in 10 Canadians self-identified as liberal. This was twice number that chose small-c conservative, and six times as many as selected socialist. The growing domestic consensus around values is now significant enough, explains pollster Michael Marzolini, to justify construction of national image. Branding [liberal] Canadian identity as unique and valuable, he concludes, could stimulate patriotism and connection.3The increasingly popular concept of branding will be important to Canada, which has traditionally struggled to define itself both at home and abroad. Thanks to globalization and revolution in information technology, it is now common for countries that lack distinguishing identities to adopt persona of 'brand states,' with geographical and political settings that seem trivial compared to their emotional resonance among an increasingly global audience of consumers. Peter van Ham has argued reasonably that state's image and its international reputation have become essential parts of its strategic equity.4No longer content with label of middle power, self-identified small-1 Canadian voters and government officials have begun to depict themselves and their country as proponents of what was known under Mulroney Conservatives as new internationalism, and is now commonly referred to as liberal approach to world affairs. They claim, often with enthusiasm, that this uniquely Canadian style in external relations has been part of national tradition dating back to time of Nobel Prize-winning Lester Pearson, if not earlier. Concomitant with [Canadian] faith in freedom, equality and tolerance, argues political scientist Erika Simpson, has been a pervasive cultural belief in ability of humans to find compromise solution to all types of problems.5 For approximately 60 years, Simpson seems to suggest, small-1 domestic values have remained liberal, and indeed Liberal, when transferred onto international stage.As much as Canadians might like to believe in tradition in foreign policy, and as much as it might help cement place for Canada on world stage as compassionate or perhaps model citizen, it simply is not true historically. To suggest, as did Lester Pearson, that foreign policy is after all, merely 'domestic policy with its hat on,'6 is overly simplistic. Admittedly, Canada's Liberal party-an organization with commitment to greater individual freedom on domestic level-has dominated federal political landscape since mid-i93os, making it, arguably, the most successful regime of any country in world.7 On international stage, however, Canada has had much different history. The country's socalled internationalist values have hardly been liberal, or even Liberal. Rather, they have generally been reflective of Tory underpinnings of society founded on principles of peace, order, and good government. There is indeed tradition underlying philosophy of Canadian external relations, but it is one derived primarily, although certainly not exclusively, from values of conservatism. Today, as Canada becomes more domestically, its foreign policy threatens to tilt other way.Any complete description of Canadian political culture, argue two political scientists in widely used Canadian text, would have to note pervasive nature of liberalism, commitment to democratic values and processes, salience of federalism, growing recognition of cultural diversity and force of both Canadian and Quebecois nationalism. …

The last refuge: patriotism, politics, and the environment in an age of terror

Updated and revised following the 2004 elections, Last Refuge describes the current state of American politics against the backdrop of mounting ecological and social problems, the corrosive influence of money, the corruption of language, and the misuse of terrorism as a political issue. Setting out an agenda that transcends conventional ideological labels, David Orr contends that partisan wrangling is only a symptom of a deeper dysfunction: The whole political machinery that connects Americans' fundamentally honorable ideals with public policy is broken. The book offers a withering critique of the failings of the Bush administration, supplemented by new essays that look at the national-level dominance of the Republican Party and examine the fallacy that the evangelical right represents a Christian majority. After analyzing the challenges of reforming the current system, Orr offers an empowering vision of a second American Revolution that peaceably achieves sustainability and charts a hopeful course for forward-looking citizens.

Between consent and dissent: democracy and peace in the Israeli mind

Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Indices of Democracy and Nationalism Chapter 3 Democracy-A Matter of Demography? Chapter 4 Ideological Labels and Commitment to Democracy Chapter 5 Religiousity and Political Attitudes Chapter 6 Democratic Commitment in Wartime Chapter 7 What Are you Actually Saying?-Summarizing Interview

Examining the Robustness of Ideological Voting: Evidence from the Confederate House of Representatives

A majority of work on Congressional voting behavior finds that members of Congress establish ideological positions and maintain them throughout the entirety of their careers, regardless of how their career aspirations, political positions, or underlying constituencies change. Based on this evidence, Poole (1998) concludes that members of Congress die in their ideological boots. I examine the robustness of the thesis more closely, using vote-scaling techniques and roll-call voting data from a different American legislative system: the Congress of the Confederate States of America. Initial results run contrary to the ideological-boots thesis, as I uncover low levels of cross-system stability among members who moved from the U.S. House to the Confederate House. Examining further, I argue that high levels of ideological stability follow from a strong party system being in place to structure voting, which has traditionally been the case in the two-party U.S. House but was not the case in the partyless Confederate House. This result aside, I do find a moderate but increasing level of ideological stability among members of the Confederate House in a session-by-session analysis, which is robust to a serious shock (Federal invasion) to the constituency-representative linkage underlying the electoral connection. This latter finding suggests that as long as there are electoral incentives associated with ideological labels, then ideologies will develop regardless of party structure. ecent work in the field of Congressional voting behavior suggests that members of Congress (MCs) die in their ideological boots. That is, according to Poole (1998, 3), based upon the roll-call voting record, once elected to Congress, members adopt an ideological position and maintain that position throughout their careers-once a liberal or a conservative or a moderate, always a liberal or a conservative or a moderate. This finding applies not only to members of the contemporary Congress, but MCs from bygone eras as well, as Poole and Rosenthal (1997) find high levels of individual-level ideological stability across nearly all of United States Congressional history. Moreover, additional evidence suggests that members of Congress remain ideologically consistent even in the face of changing personal or electoral conditions: members' voting records remain essentially the same, regardless of whether they plan to retire (Lott 1987; Van Beek 1991; Lott and Bronars 1993; Poole and Rosenthal 1997), plan to run for a higher office (Hibbing 1986; Poole and Romer 1993), serve in a higher office (Grofman, Griffin, and Berry 1995; Poole and Rosenthal 1997), or have their districts redrawn (Poole and Romer 1993; Poole 1998). This article examines the thesis further to assess whether it is truly a general finding. Rather than examine voting behavior in the U.S. Congress, however, I focus on voting behavior in a heretofore forgotten institution in American history: the Congress of the Confederate States of America. I contend that the Confederate Congress is a suitable forum to explore the robustness of the ideological-boots thesis, because it provides two unique extensions to the study of individual-level ideological stability that cannot be pursued in a study of the U.S. Congress. First, a significant number of individuals who served in the Confederate House had