Partisanship, Ideology, And Politics

An area of keen interest to me has been and will continue to be that of the intersections of partisanship and ideology in the electorate. I've even done some quantitative research on the topic(s) and I'll lean on that - as well as other ideas - in discussing a few related subjects that I think are vital to understand and interpret American politics and our political system. Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll try to cover some of my thoughts on this in the way I organize them conceptually. They are:

1. Ideology As A Continuum
2. Partisanship Is Not Ideology And Vice Versa
3. Ideology As Multi-dimensional
4. Partisanship As Identification

I might add more, but these are some of the major topical areas in the realm of partisanship and ideology, at least as I see them.

No time like the present, so I'll dig right in, motivated by some of the discussion in popular/traditional (my "popular," I don't necessary mean the form that is necessarily "popular," but instead in the scholarly convention of that which is created for consumption by the vast majority of the populace) media of the nature of this country's ideology makeup. I won't pretend to be willing and able to exhaustively cover the topic - that's a matter for PhD-level dissertations and essays. But I will offer up some thoughts that I think are instructive to considerations and discussions of ideology and partisanship.

Specifically, tonight, I'd like to address the conceptual underpinnings of the consideration of ideology. I do so without necessarily defining narrowly my notions of ideology. I'll try to do that in future diaries, especially that of ideology as a multi-dimensional concept.

My focus here is on the alleged continuum of ideology - as in having a center interposed between a left and a right.

First, let's be clear on a few things. One is that when we speak of ideology, we inherently must consider ideological movements. In America, where there is a noted exceptionalism in matters of ideology, we have never had a real capital "l" Left. No matter what Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh screech, there has never really been a real and organized Left. There have been flickers in the 1920 and 1930s as well as separately in the 1960s, but there has never really been a strong socialist or even social democratic movement in this nation. There has, however, been and continues to be a real concerted and coherent Right. In fact, there has been since the 1910s or 1920s, from the proto-fascist right of Lindbergh and Coughlin to the re-birth of a conservative, rightist movement that became the modern conservative movement in the 1950s. They are explicitly rightist, though exhibiting various tendencies of rightist conservatism, and while perhaps not reaching an apex of a fully-fledged "Right," they have existed as a strong ideological movement and one of popular import in American politics.

Another consideration is that, as I will address more in full at a later time, ideology is a multi-axial conception of the relationship of government, society, economics, and culture.

Another consideration is that mass ideology is different from individual ideology. For example, there might 100 people that exhibit come consensus vision for society based upon a broadly-conceived ideology, but those 100 could exhibit great diversity in their individual views according to that general ideological disposition. That is a strong factor in our politics. And combined with the previous notion of ideology as multi-axial, this is perhaps one of the driving factors in coming up with a mass ideology of which to speak in general, though hardly definitive terms with respect to our political system.

Yet another consideration, as many have probably noted, there is a real difference of opinion left-of-center (and I'll address this notion of relative positioning in the real substance of this diary; just go with the term for now) on what is the left-of-center ideological mainstream (within that grouping). It is a matter of language and inhering ideas. Simply put, there are liberals and there are progressives, both exhibiting differing notions of left-of-center ideology, though they are generally grouped together as a monolithic left-of-center center of gravity. This is different from having a multi-axial ideology; progressivism and liberalism are distinct visions though similar in their underlying ideological framework. There is not, as far as I know, an analogue on the right. Both left-of-center and right-of-center exhibit the multi-axial 'problems,' but only left-of-center exhibits this sort of ideological schizophrenia on the mass level.

Finally, without fully delving into definitional discussions of ideology, it should be noted that ideology can come in three flavors in the electorate and in individuals.

First is that of self-identification. Roughly 20-25% of the electorate identifies as liberal. Roughly 30% identify as conservative. The remainder identify as moderate. This set of figures goes back at least a few decades now (as an aside, it is interesting to compare this to elite opinion of the 1950s and early 1960s, where conservatism was largely dead in the public eye on the mass level; liberalism reigned supreme). However, this set of figures does not account for "progressive" as a potential category.

As noted above, there is considerable debate over labels in the left-of-center. I tend to believe that liberalism and progressivism are distinct and different for the most part. Other believe that they are veritably interchangeable and that "liberal" as a word has been so thoroughly tarnished by a popular and mass campaign by the right that "progressive" must now be it's stand-in (and there is a subset that believes that "liberal" must be rehabilitated as such). But early research has shown that with four ideological labels, "progressive" becomes a plurality, sucking up much of "liberal" and a good chunk of "moderate." So self-identification is a matter of study in ideology.

Second, ideology as a matter of self-identification has proven problematic. One issue is that the electorate, simply put, is not particularly sophisticated in applying such labels and they will tend towards popular "approved" terms. As noted, "liberal" has been tarnished and "conservative" vaunted. "Moderate" behaves more like the latter, elevated in stature by the likes of an elite cadre of believers and creators of conventional wisdom.

So, ideology cannot strictly be determined by self-identification in a real analysis of the electorate. I should note that my research on this topic, formally, focused most directly on self-identification on not on what follows here.

Ideology can be summarized by an aggregation of issue positions and an accompanying definition of what constitutes a tendency towards an ideology. Again, ideology is multi-axial, so this can prove problematic. For example, if someone responds affirmatively that healthcare should be a universal right and that the government has a role in guaranteeing it through affirmative program and action, that can be 'coded' as "liberal." If someone responds affirmatively that healthcare is a matter for markets to decide and that government should have no role in the matter, that can be 'coded' as "conservative." Obviously, this is problematic because a) definitions of ideology are then subject to the whims of the researcher b) ideology's multiple axes must be compressed into one single continuum (to be addressed here later). But one can credibly create an individual's - and an electorate's mass - ideological disposition based upon an aggregation of issue positions outside of a self-identification on a question asking one's ideology.

Third, ideology can be considered as a hybrid combination of issue positions and self-identification. This is probably the most robust notion conceptually, but statistically breaks down because of the non-sophistication of the electorate and the confusing of terms by decades of a concerted effort by the right to create a thought regime of asymmetry in ideology. There are scores of individual respondents in public opinion research that identify issue positions that we could reach consensus as being "liberal" but who self-identify, even strongly, as conservative.

So all three conceptions of ideology are important, but none of perfect. And none are inherently better statistically for analysis. My previous research focused on the first, because as a matter of research interest, I think that it is vital - especially in the context of an activist academic thinker and doer - that we understand ideology and its underlying factors in the polity in terms of one thing that really heavily influences political behavior on the long-term.

Now, all that said, let me address notions of relative ideological positions in the context of a pure-and-simple notion of ideology, without the baggage of research questions and problems as noted above.

We as a public are regularly subjected to talk of the nature of this nation's fundamental ideological disposition. Quite often, we are "treated" to two pathologies of a distaste for progressive/liberal/left-of-center/left in that discussion. One is that the conventional wisdom that there are equal components of extremists on two ends of an ideological spectrum. There is, according to this view, an extreme left and (maybe) an extreme right. Were one to achieve a consensus view of 'extreme' versions of left and right thought, I do not believe that one could find a preponderance of an extreme left in this country while one can easily find an extreme right. Further, there are virtually no voices of an extreme left in popular consciousness (e.g. politics, media) while there are certainly voices of the extreme right. But we are subject to a false equivalency of their presence and potency.

This is really a product, in my mind, of what I will discuss further on, but certainly related to the second pathology, itself a product of the real topic at hand in this diary. This second concept is that of a moderate center of public and political opinion. This is the conventional wisdom holding that the American people as an electorate are situated in between two ends of a continuum of ideology. It is the same notion that holds the keys to other items of conventional wisdom (e.g. the vitality of bi-partisanship as a virtue itself, "compromise" as virtuous action with regard to ideology or partisanship). I believe that this false "center-ism" (as I apply a term) or 'centrism' (as popularly conceived, and with which I disagree as an intellectual dishonesty or falsehood) is both toxic and demonstrably wrong. That is a matter for the future though I believe as it should probably follow from a more thorough grounding in the nature of partisanship and ideology and their interactions and underpinnings.

But to the point, mass ideology is generally thought of in conventional wisdom as a continuum or spectrum that runs left to right with a center. Further, this conventional wisdom seems predisposed to believe that this spectrum is anchored and absolute. As someone who wrote his senior thesis in philosophy on epistemology and in particular on absolute and relative truth, I take great issue with this.

First, the spectrum. Again, noting the dearth of real 'left' and "extreme left" thought and the wealth of that of the right and its extremes, this line of the ideological spectrum does not run fully to the left as it does to the right - at least in the minds and popular presence of ideological elites in public affairs. This says nothing of the electorate as such. And the electorate, in a democracy, should be of some importance. There is strong evidence that on particular issues, the American electorate itself is of more a 'left' predisposition on first principles if not values and policy prescriptions (although it tends to be on those too). But elites and the conventional wisdom hold a different set of assumptions and beliefs, and they are direct inputs in the actions of policy-makers and elected officials as proverbial "thought-" and "opinion-leaders."

This is a difficult proposition of the 'ideological process,' as I'll call it, because there is a reinforcing loop between popular and mass opinion and that of its elite leaders. But we try to interpret in mid-stream of the loop, frozen in conceptual time.

There is probably more that I could say about the spectrum, or alleged spectrum. But this is a blog, not a scholarly paper for singular publication at a moment in time - this is an evolving discussion that captures this point in conceptual time and is not necessarily meant to be definitive in the sense of being timeless and adding to a body of research. And certainly, I do not cover all the intellectual bases needed here to reach that level of discourse and vitality. I think I'll probably return to this, especially in the context of ideological opinion, later in this 'series' and at other times.

But what originally motivated me to write something on this topic and to endeavor to a 'series' of discussions of ideology and partisanship is the nature of relativism on the alleged ideological spectrum. Simply put, elite opinion vis a vis conventional wisdom is that there is a relative center between a left and a right, and one that encompasses the broad mass thought of the American electorate. This, I do not believe, is true.

Ideology is individual and mass both. Individuals hold individual opinions and aggregate into a mass. But on the mass scale, there is not inherently an aggregation proper of all opinion in some sort of grand equilibrium or average or median. Even thinking about it as such leaves one wanting for an explanation for the preponderance of center-ism.

Say for example that there is an electorate of 1000 people. Two hundred and fifty are generally liberal and conservative each, there are 100 each that are strongly conservative and liberal. Three hundred are moderate. But where does that leave the center, mathematically? It is hard to say and subject to interpretation. 350 each are essentially liberal or conservative while only 300 are moderate. Or, there are 00 that are in a general middle and 200 strongly ideological. But what are the degrees of the 250 on each end that are generally of one ideological disposition? What about the degrees of the strongly ideological? There are certainly other questions that could be asked about the nature of mass ideology. But we are regularly treated to discussion of ideology as inherently moderate or in the center.

Which brings me to the next point, is moderate in the center? What is moderate anyway? Is it a matter of degrees or a distinct ideological flavoring? Again, many questions can follow on this. Just like many questions can follow from a simplistic treatment of mass ideology.

Now, we must also address the axes of ideology as a matter of relativism. Conceptually, if the center is between two points, are we triangulating geometric points to find a center between all or of a general take on ideology (which I noted is anti-left in elite, conventional wisdom circles)? How are we defining this geometry? What if the spectrum is not linear (as I will address in the future)? How do we handle degrees? How do we handle absolute positions and then posit a relative position? These are the conceptual questions that are not only poorly-addressed, but they are rarely raised up in popular discourse on mass and individual ideology in the electorate. And for that, we have a poverty of political discussion, regardless of the real dynamics of political opinion as per identification and issue positions. Then again, what is the center between two issue positions?

I think that a good voice on public affairs can and should at times ask more questions than he or she answers. And while I certainly have my own opinions on some of these questions and a definitive framework to address them (which is constantly in search of a better articulation, a struggle itself), I think that simply raising up these questions is important as we work toward a political system that best addresses the common good and public interest as well as the democratic notions, in truth, of the electorate (which may not always align with the common good/public interest).

Suffice it to say that conventional wisdom on ideology is certainly impoverished by a lack of rigor in thought and analysis on the conceptual-theoretical level and the empirical level both. Center-ism is just a manifestation of this, and it is not one that holds of to critical thought and research particularly well. But for the time being, until it is thoroughly debunked, we will continue to live with it.