Ideological Self-identification Research Articles

Walka klas na pół etatu. Obrzeża polskiego międzywojennego ruchu komunistycznego

Part-time class struggle. The fringes of the Polish inter-war communist movement This article is to examine some obscure forms of involvement in the Polish inter-war communist movement: the Communist Party of Poland and its subordinate organisations. The author focuses on the fringes of the movement, a borderland between a revolutionary, subversive organisation and the “outside world”. There is a particular emphasis on the perspective of men and women operating in this borderland. The protagonists of the paper are communism “sympathisers” — those who did not belong to the organisation, but identified with its ideas and provided support to it, as well as members of the organisation whose ties to the movement, however, were loose or who gradually moved away from active involvement. In contrast to the dominant depictions focused on public figures, intellectuals, and artists, the author deals with “ordinary” plebeians or white-collar workers. The article provides answers to some important questions about belonging to the communist formation, but also about involvement in the political sphere in general. It reveals tensions between the ideological self-identification of individuals and its recognition by the reference group, as well as the patterns and limits of personal agency in a clandestine political movement. In addition, the author considers the role of both ideological factors as well as “biographical accessibility” (determinants such as health or family conditionings) in individuals’ definition of their role in the political sphere. The source material for the article primarly consists of ego- documents from archival personal files, allowing for a reflection on strategies of favourable self-presentation and mechanisms of party self-criticism.

Alternative legacies of authoritarianism: Pro-dictator bias in ideology

How does an authoritarian past shape voters’ left-right orientation? Recent studies investigate “anti-dictator bias” in political ideology, where citizens in a former right-wing (left-wing) dictatorship may display a leftist (rightist) bias in their ideological self-identification. In this paper, I provide evidence for a “pro-dictator bias” where citizens hold ideological positions close to those of the dictator, depending on their experiences prior to transition. In countries with high economic growth under dictatorship and without violent ruling party ouster, authoritarian successors could continue mobilizing the popular base and invoke positive sentiment on the past in democratic elections. Such positive sentiment can facilitate individual ideological orientation close to the ideological label of the former dictatorship. I test this hypothesis by combining individual- and country-level data covering 1985 to 2018 from 48 countries. I demonstrate that voters in countries with high economic growth during dictatorship and without violent party exit are more likely to have pro-dictator bias in ideology. I further show that voters in former developmental states show pro-dictator bias from the history of economic growth and more peaceful transition. The findings emphasize the role of pre-transition features in shaping alternative legacies on voter attitudes in post-authoritarian societies.

Эволюция империи: от Древнего мира к Новому времени

Imperial formations occupy a key place in the political and religious history of Humankind. The article traces the evolution of this phenomenon, with a future global perspective, from the time of the emergence of macrostates in the Ancient World, through the period of the classical empires of Antiquity to the religious empires of the Middle Ages and the late empires of the New Age, in the space of Asia Minor and the Greater Mediterranean. The focus is on the transformation of the ideological foundations of imperial formations, traced primarily on the basis of titular formulas, which are the most important source on the history of the ideological self-identification of states. The analysis revealed several evolutionary phases of imperial construction, characterized by the following features: 1) “mechanical” consolidation of primary polys-nomic political formations around a particular military-administrative center, with the preservation of mosaicism and polycentrism in the religious sphere; 2) formation of the new generation of all-imperial religious systems (usually associated with the ruler’s cult), designed to complement military and political consolidation by an ideological one; 3) displacement of primary personality-oriented imperial cults by more morally authoritative universal religions with a transcendental ideal (Christianity, Islam); 4) secondary politicization of theocratic empires, leading to the consolidation of religious-state dualism (emperor / patriarch; caliph / sultan); 5) final decline of politicized theocracies and their more or less painful transformation into national states of the modern type, formed in the specific conditions of Western Europe. The phenomenon of instability of monopolar geopolitical structures and, on the contrary, the impressive stability of bipolar configurations, embodied in the evolutionary space of the Greater Mediterranean in the competitive coexistence of Hellenism and the East, Rome and Iran, Byzantium and the Caliphate, the Russian and Ottoman empires, was identified.

Does the Apple Fall Far from the Tree?

The paper presents the results of a survey that assessed the impact of informal and formal agents of the political socialization (PS) process on a sample of students enrolled at the University of Rijeka (N = 635). The correlation between the participants' ideological self-identification (PIS) and the assessed ideological orientation of their parents (PIO) was analyzed. Students believe that no agent of socialization has even moderately influenced the formation of their political views and assess the weakest influence of the formal PS agent – teachers in primary and secondary schools. The participants believe that parents have influenced their political attitudes more than other agents, but assess this influence on average as weak, regardless of whether they place their parents in the same or different positions on the ideological orientation (IO) scale. Left- and right-oriented participants admit a somewhat stronger influence of their parents' informal PS than those who rank themselves in the center. Statistically significant correlations between PIS and the perceived PIO were obtained. A small share of participants does not perceive a similarity between their own and their parents' IO and there is a negligible share of those who place their parents in diametrically opposed positions on the scale. The participants who have a greater interest in politics and those from a more politically stimulating environment are more inclined to move away from the political center and their parents' IO. Concordance between family IOs increases with the perception of better relationships with parents.

Racial Resentment, Electoral Loss, and Satisfaction with Democracy Among Whites in the United States: 2004–2016

Satisfaction with democracy is a critical supporting element of any democratic process, though a robust literature demonstrates that such satisfaction is contingent on numerous personal preferences and situational contexts. Perhaps most disconcerting, satisfaction is highly correlated with electoral (mis)fortune—winner or loser status. We theorize that this connection is moderated by a fundamental group orientation in American politics: racial resentment. Satisfaction with democracy should increase among white electoral losers as racial resentment increases when Republican candidates win and decrease as racial resentment strengthens when Democratic candidates win. In both scenarios, the connection between electoral (mis)fortune and satisfaction are moderated by a perception of whether the political system under the incoming president will be (unfairly) working better for others—black Americans—who are perceived to be less deserving of benefits. We find support for this argument using ANES presidential election data from 2004–2016. These results are robust to examination of only validated votes, panel data support the causal direction our theory posits, and we find that racial resentment uniquely moderates this relationship compared to related potential moderators, like ideological self-identification and racial stereotypes. More than petulance in the face of loss, (dis)satisfaction with democracy is a product of group orientations.

Студент(к)и-політологи України і Молдови: політико-ідеологічні самоідентифікації

The article is devoted to the identification of political and ideological self-identification of students of political science communities of Ukraine (Lviv, Kharkiv, Simferopol) and Moldova (Chisinau) in the period 2012–2013. This work is part of a larger study that captures the state of Ukrainian political science in 2012-2013 and provides a better understanding of the political, social, ethnic, economic, gender and disciplinary views of students on the eve of the Revolution of Dignity. The empirical basis of this article is a survey of bachelors, specialists and masters at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, the V. Vernadsky Tavriya National University and the State University of Moldova. In total, more than 350 people were surveyed.The answers of the respondents allowed revealing several tendencies related to the prevalence of certain ideologies in different student communities, the presence of a gender dimension of political and ideological self-identification of students of Ukraine and Moldova, etc. One of the most symptomatic trends is the prevalence of nationalist ideas, especially among first-year students. As an explanation, it was suggested that the demand for national-democratic and nationalist ideologies among students is a protest reaction of the new generation to (geo)political and other challenges. Generally, despite the expectations, the ideological preferences of the Ukrainian and Moldovan students do not reflect the sympathies of the population of Ukraine and Moldova as a whole or their respective regions.The final part of the article reveals the connection and internal coherence of the ideological orientations of students based on foreign policy issues. As a result, it was concluded that political science students in Ukraine (and Moldova) demonstrate what can be called the logic of a border state. Its essence encapsulates the mode of interaction as the most rational, which helps avoid direct pressure. It envisages cooperation at the level of configurations of states and/or international organizations capable of resisting the pressure of individual actors, no matter how powerful they might be.

The Curious Case of Black Conservatives: Construct Validity and the 7-point Liberal-Conservative Scale

Scholars have long puzzled over the existence of conservative-identifying black Americans who nonetheless identify with and vote for the Democratic Party. This paper resolves this paradox. Leveraging data from the American National Election Study, I demonstrate that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” are unfamiliar to many black Americans, rendering the commonly used 7-point liberal-conservative measure of ideology invalid for this population. Black respondents unfamiliar with these terms misapply them and choose ideological labels that fail to reflect their partisan preferences. Consequently, scholars and political actors make incorrect and imprecise inferences about the contours of black politics in the United States. Moreover, this article raises new concerns about the generalizability of claims that rely on ideological self-identification measures, including popular claims about polarization among the mass public. This work also suggests a need for caution when using concepts that vary in their meaningfulness across social groups.

Líderes políticos y voto: el caso de Pablo Iglesias y Podemos

The economic crisis that started back in 2008 had a special virulence in Spain, as a result of its weight it ended up with a parallel crisis of representativeness. The appearance of new political parties was one of the most notable consequences of the above mentioned crisis. This new parties have been characterized by the presence of leaders, whom played a fundamental role in their later expansion, therefore in this article we will be analyzing the particular case of Pablo Iglesias, leader of the Podemos political party. Measuring the influence of this political leader in the vote decision for this party, in relation to other voting factors such as party affinity or ideological self-identification.

The Electoral Breakthrough of the Radical Right in Spain: Correlates of Electoral Support for VOX in Andalusia (2018)

For a long time, Spain was thought of as an outlier because it did not have a significant radical right movement. However, the sudden popularity of VOX among voters in Andalusia has put an end to so-called “Spanish exceptionalism”. The rise of this radical right party is important for two reasons: its potential direct impact on the political system, and the way in which it will affect other political players. The purpose of this research is to explore the factors that have led voters to cast ballots for VOX during the 2018 regional elections in Andalusia. Regression analysis has been carried out in order to test some of the most widely accepted theories in the literature about the radical right vote. The results show that VOX’s vote is fundamentally dictated by broader socio-political factors related to territorial model, ideological self-identification and perception of political leaders. In this sense, two of the most accepted set of explanations—those which consider that the vote for the radical right is conditioned by economic or identity-related vulnerability—are refuted.

A Matter of Morality: Evidence That Ideological Labels Generate More Polarized Reactions than Other Social Identities

Growing political polarization in the United States has called into question the traditional view that ideological self-identification is a weak social attachment. To test this argument, I propose a new measurement of identity strength: the use of moral language. Results across two samples -- a dataset of over 40,000 tweets and an experiment -- show that ideology is more strongly associated with morality than five other social identities: partisanship, race, religion, sexual orientation, and sports affiliation. Moreover, ideological extremity is predictive of moral judgment. These findings contradict previous theories of political identification by showing that ideological labels are a polarized, relatively strong social identity.

A Matter of Principle? On the Relationship Between Racial Resentment and Ideology

Though most scholars of race and politics agree that old-fashioned racism largely gave way to a new symbolic form of racism over the course of the last half century, there is still disagreement about how to best empirically capture this new form of racism. Racial resentment, perhaps the most popular operationalization of symbolic racism, has been criticized for its overlap with liberal-conservative ideology. Critics argue that racially prejudiced responses to the items that compose the racial resentment scale are observationally equivalent to the responses that conservatives would provide. In this manuscript, I examine the racial resentment scale for differential item functioning (DIF) by level of adherence to ideological principles using the 1992, 2004, and 2016 American National Election Studies. I find that responses to some of the racial resentment items are, indeed, affected by ideology. However, the problem is largely confined to 2016 and more egregious with respect to ideological self-identifications than adherence to ideological principles. Moreover, even after correcting for DIF, the racial resentment scale serves as a strong predictor of attitudes about racial issues.

ESTATISMO, EMANCIPACIÓN Y LA IZQUIERDA: ENTENDER LA PARTICIPACIÓN POLÍTICA NO CONVENCIONAL EN COSTA RICA

Ideology has been traditionally considered to be an explanation of political behavior, both inside and outside academia, which has been nowadays mostly abandoned. This paper sets out to investigate if a relationship between ideology and unconventional political participation exists, for the Costa Rican elections of 2014. It yields results that indicate that while the majority of Costa Ricans do not engage in political participation, there is a minority that does, with an identifiable emancipatory, statist and leftist ideology. A strong contradiction is found in the population between their ideological self-identification and their values and attitudes. The paper then argues in favor of more nuanced measurements of ideology than self-identification questions. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that each form of participation has a different relationship with the ideological elements.Therefore, studying them as if they were one should be avoided.

Politička participacija i stranačke preferencije ratnih veterana u Hrvatskoj

The paper examines distinctiveness of war veterans compared to general population in Croatia according to three important political phenomena: political participation, party preferences and ideological self-identification. Analysis of sociological survey conducted in 2015 shows that there is no difference in the level of political participation measured by voting turnout in 2011 and 2015 parliamentary and 2015 presidential level between Croatian war veterans and the rest of the public. On the other side, war veterans differ from the rest of the electorate, with other variables held constant, in terms of party preferences and ideological self-identification. Compared to non-veterans, war veterans are more inclined to vote for the right and center-right parties and position themselves to the right side of the political spectrum. The paper discusses these differences, as well as its roots and consequences.

Are All ‘Birthers’ Conspiracy Theorists? On the Relationship Between Conspiratorial Thinking and Political Orientations

While research on conspiracy theories and those who believe them has recently undergone a renaissance, there still exists a great deal of uncertainty about the measurement of conspiratorial beliefs and orientations, and the consequences of a conspiratorial mindset for expressly political attitudes and behaviors. We first demonstrate, using data from the 2012 American National Election Study, that beliefs in a variety of specific conspiracy theories are simultaneously, but differentially, the product of both a general tendency toward conspiratorial thinking and left/right political orientations. Next, we employ unique data including a general measure of conspiratorial thinking to explore the predictors of specific conspiracy beliefs. We find that partisan and ideological self-identifications are more important than any other variable in predicting ‘birther’ beliefs, while conspiratorial thinking is most important in predicting conspiracy beliefs about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Ideological congruence and socio-economic inequality

This study examines whether or not political representation in the Netherlands is biased toward the rich and higher educated by comparing the political orientations of members of parliament to those of the electorate. The analyses reveal stark differences in the representation of different socio-economic groups. The political views of elected national representatives are far more similar to those of rich, higher educated citizens than to those with less income and education. Moreover, a longitudinal analysis reveals that inequalities in political representation have actually grown in recent years. We also show that the use of measures of ideological self-identification might to lead to highly misleading results regarding the nature of political representation as opposed to the use of issue items. We conclude that, despite a highly proportional electoral system, the views which are represented in the Dutch lower house of parliament contain major distortions of the views of the broader electorate.

The Increasing Racialization of American Electoral Politics, 1988-2016

In this article, we examine the relationship between racial resentment and a host of political attitudes, predispositions, and behaviors across 28 years and 7 presidential elections. We find, contrary to the suggestions of recent work of the role of race in the Obama era, that the racialization of seemingly nonracial political issues began many years before the debut of Barack Obama and extends beyond his presidency. More specifically, we find, controlling for other factors, that the relationships between racial resentment and partisan and ideological self-identifications, evaluations of the major party presidential candidates, and attitudes about health insurance and governmental services have strengthened each subsequent year beginning in 1988 through 2016. This trend reflects the growing extent to which racial considerations are brought to bear on individual evaluations of and orientations toward the political world.

Preferences on Security Issues and Ideological Competitions: A Case of the Korean National Assembly

This article examines the distinct features of the ideological thinking and their impact on ideological competitions among the members of Korean National Assembly (KNA). In particular, it analyzes the influ ence of preferences on security issues on the formation of ideological self-identification and internal competitions of the KNA. By applying factor analysis, it shows that the issue attitudes among the members of the KNA do not converge into the ideological self-identification. In addition, preferences on security issues can be distinguished from the ideological self-identification among the member of the KNA and have an independent impact on their legislative voting behavior. These results imply that a more valid understanding of the legislative behav ior among the members of the KNA could develop by specifying issue attitudes independently from the ideological self-identification.

ASMENYBĖS AR VERTYBĖS? LIETUVOS PARTIJŲ LYDERIAI RINKĖJŲ AKIMIS IR POLITIKOS PERSONALIZACIJOS RIBOS

Lithuanian public debates share a strong conviction that the relationship between a Lithuanian voter and his/ her political representatives rests on personalisation, often nurtured by voter’s subjective and irrational feelings of love or hate in regard to particular political leaders. Is such kind of pessimism well-grounded and there are no “antidotes” to this worrisome trend of the present political life? The article addresses the problem of personalisation of political life in the post-soviet environment and attempts to challenge the aforementioned pessimism. The presented study aims to explore the relationship between perceptions of well-known Lithuanian political leaders’ personality portraits among the Lithuanian population and voter’s normative orientations on the individual level, holding voter’s normative orientations an important factor, limiting the proliferation of personalisation of politics. Perceptions of personality traits of political leaders on the individual level of analysis are xpected to pass through voter’s normative „lenses“ to produce different mental images of politicians in accordance to individual differences in politically significant value orientations.The study explores how perceptions of political leaders’ personalities in Lithuanian vary according to (a) respondent’s ideological self-identification on Left-Right scale, (a) respondent’s level of adherence to Soviet (anti-Soviet) values, (b) adherence to national conservatism (c), and post-materialist values (d). In order to understand the impact of individual’s ideological dispositions and value orientations on perception of personalities of politicians, the article follows a comprehensive theoretical approach to personality. Five-factor personality model (“Big Five”) stands out in terms of comprehensiveness and feasibility to the aims of the presented study. The Big Five offers not only a taxonomy of personality traits but also the conceptualisation of five personality dimensions. With a strong empirical orientation, it provides the conceptualisation of methodological tools for empirical studies of personality and the basis for a list of semantic differentials to measure the perception of political leader’s personality traits. The empirical analysis rests on the data of an internet panel survey, conducted in Lithuania in two waves – right before (August – September, 2012) and after (November, 2012) the Lithuanian General Elections 2012. The internet survey, administrated by research company Berent (N=1019), is representative in terms of the total population of internet users in Lithuania.Results of the study reveal a potential of individual’s normative orientations to predict his/ her perception of political leaders’ personalities on a number of personality traits and personality dimensions. Even though personality traits are objective and stable elements of individual’s psychological constitution, a serious disagreement regarding the personality portraits of analysed political leaders is revealed in the Lithuanian society, and the perceptions diverge according to individual’s political views and normative attitudes. Voter’s left-right self-identification and (anti)soviet attitudes predict the perception of three personality dimensions of Big Five – Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to experience – for analysed leaders, and national conservatism – perceptions of the abovementioned first two dimensions. The results of the study ask for further analysis of an impact that voter’s normative attitudes may bear on the perception of political leaders’ “moral traits” and emperamental features. The ideological identity of an individual may have a stronger impact on the perception of „moral traits“ of a politician than on perception of his/her temperamental constitution. A further elaboration of this idea would allow to understand mechanisms of political personalization better and to bring this discussion beyond the discourse of the end of ideology.

Політико-ідеологічні самоідентифікації українського студентства: динаміка та актуальний стан

The article dwells upon the analysis of political and ideological self-identifications of the Ukrainian students as the subject of politics; the interdependence of these processes and formation of future professionals’ interest in politics; relevant civil position; certain political attitudes and actions. Article is based on the research results conducted among the Ukrainian students by staff of Sociology department of the V.N.Karazin Kharkiv National University in 2001-2002 and 2008-2009. The analysis of political and ideological self-identifications dynamics of the students suggests that the project of building an independent national state based on democratic principles, actualized in the minds of young people the national-democratic ideological values; at the same time the increasing number of supporters of the left direction can testify about the growth of social discontent and, accordingly, the protest potential of students.

Knowing Left from Right: Ideological Identification in Brazil, 2002-2006

Ideology, typically defined on a left-right spectrum, should provide a means of communication between elites and masses. After years of leftist party rule, have Brazilian voters internalized ideological divisions? Longitudinal surveys conducted from 2002 to 2006 reveal high nonresponse and instability in ideological self-identification. We find that the capacity to think ideologically is in part a function of political and social context. This capacity has real political consequences. A Heckman selection model reveals that those who refuse to take an ideological position or who exhibit high instability in self-identification tend to be latent rightists and to choose rightist presidential candidates. Moreover, they interpret the ideological spectrum differently from those who are more consistent in ideological self-placement. We thus make two contributions, showing how contextual factors influence ideological thinking and how low levels of ideological thinking affect the measurement of Brazilian public opinion.