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DAIEDUE DAIEDUE DAJEDUE 5/08 K:/Prolecc&Pres/CIRC/Date0ue.indd THE CAUSES OF IDEOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION By Kristian Dunn A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Political Science 2009 ABSTRACT THE CAUSES OF IDEOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION By Kristian Dunn This project is a comparative investigation of the causes of ideological identifi- cation which resolves a number of controversies that have developed in the political science literature. Using the European Social Survey and the European Values Sur- vey, I test. hypotheses derived from a number of reformulated theories. This research confirms a number of aspects of a unified theory of ideology: the relationship I)(‘- tween education and ideological identification is dependent on both the core values of an individual’s society and the psychological openness of the individual; issue attitudes largely predict Left-Right identification and not vice versa; as a society‘s level of self—expression values increases, New Politics issues have an increasing im- pact. on Left-Right identification; and for individual-level Left-Right identification, the predictive power of class—based, economic issue attitudes against New Politics issue attitudes varies based on social class identification and both religiosity and con- fidence in government, though economic issue attitudes tend to dominate in most (78505. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables .................................. List of Figures .................................. Introduction 1.1 Ideology and the Left-Right Continuum ................. 1.1.1 Left-Right Identification and Values ............... 1.1.2 Political Ideology ......................... 1.2 Ideological Sophistication ......................... 1.2.1 Constraint ............................. 1.3 Dimensionality .............................. 1.4 Organization of the Dissertation ..................... 1.5 Appendix I-A: Mixed Model Output .................. 1.6 Appendix l-B: Selection Model Output ................. 1.7 Appendix I-C: Heteroskedastic Model Output ............. The Determinants of Left-Right Identification 2.1 Determinants of Left-Right Identification ................ 2.1.1 Ideological Identification and Education ............ 2.1.2 Interaction Effects: Core Values. Education. and Personality . 2.1.3 Control Variables ......................... 2.2 Data and Measurement .......................... 2.3 Hypothesis, Predictions, and Analyses ................. 2.4 Conclusion ................................. 2.5 Appendix 2-A: ESS questions used in construction of dataset . . . . . 2.6 Appendix 2—B: Variable Summary .................... Left-Right Identification and Issue Attitudes 3.1 Left-Right Identification and Issue Attitudes . . . . ......... 3.1.1 The Left—Rigl'it continuum as a heuristic (‘Ievice ........ 3.1.2 The Left-Right continuum as a summation device ....... vii 1 4 7 12 16 17 22 27 30 31 32 33 34 34 37 38 43 46 54 56 60 64 3.1.3 Hybrid and alternative conceptions of the Left-Right continuum 65 3.2 Sophistication as a conditional effect .................. 3.3 Hypotheses, data, and method ...................... 3. 4 Analyses .................................. 3.5 Discussion ................................. iii 66 68 69 74 3.6 Appendix 3-A: Questions used in scale construction .......... 76 3.7 Appendix 3-B: Instruments used in 2SLS Analyses ........... 78 Modernization and the Evolution of the Left-Right Continuum 81 4.1 The Breakdown of Traditional Political Cleavages ........... 82 4.2 Modernization and Issue Evolution ................... 83 4.3 The Social Nature of Political Evolution ................ 86 4.4 Data and Analysis . . . . . ........................ 87 4.5 Conclusion ................................. 91 Class and Issue Conflict in Left—Right Identification 94 5.1 Issue Conflict ............................... 94 5.1.1 Self-expression Values and Postmaterialist Priorities ...... 95 5.1.2 Religiosity ............................. 96 5.1.3 Confidence in Government ..................... 96 5.2 Data and Measurement .......................... 98 5.3 Analyses .................................. 99 5.4 Discussion ................................. 108 5.5 Appendix 5—A ............................... 111 Conclusion 1 1 2 6.1 Left-Right Identification and Vote Choice ................ 114 6.2 The Causes of Left-Right Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 6.3 Sophistication and Constraint ...................... 123 6.4 Left-Right Identification and Authoritarianism Revisited ....... 124 6.5 The Causes of Political Ideology ..................... 126 6.6 Final Thoughts .............................. 128 Bibliography ................................ 130 iv LIST OF TABLES 2.1 Linear Mixed Model of the Determinants of Left-Right Identification . . . 48 3.1 Two-Stage Least-Squares Analyses of Ideology and Issue Attitudes by Country .................................................... 72 4.1 The impact of values on the correlation between issue attitudes and Left-Right Identification ........................................ 88 5.1 Number of Indicators and Alphas of Scales ..................... 98 5.2 Paiwvise Correlations of Left-Right Identification and Issue Attitudes . . 100 6.1 Linear Mixed Model of the Mediating Effects of Left-Right Identification on Vote Choice .............................................. 115 6.2 Linear Mixed Models of Left-Right Identification .................. 119 6.3 Left-Right Identification, Education, and Authoritarianism ........... 125 LIST OF FIGURES 1.1 Mean preference for equality over freedom by Left-Right identification controlling for various demographic, psychological, and country-level variables ................................................... 1.2 Mean preference for authoritarian over libertarian child-rearing beliefs controlling for various demographic, psychological, and country-level variables ................................................... 1.3 Mean level of ideological agreement among Left-Right identification, vote choice, economic issue attitudes, and New Politics issue attitudes by country .................................................. 1.4 Marginal Effect of Mean Issue Position on Liberal-Conservative Identi -fication as the Mean Level of Issue Interest Changes in the United States ..................................................... 2.1 Marginal Effect of Education on Left-Right Identification as Openness and Effective Parties Change ................................... 2.2 Marginal Effect of Education on Left-Right Identification as Openness and Effective Parties Change (West) ............................. 2.3 Marginal Effect of Education on Left-Right Identification as Openness and Effective Parties Change (East) .............................. 4.1 New Politics issue correlation and self-expression values .......... 4.2 New Politics issue correlation and postmaterialism ................ 5.1 Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right Identification as self- expression values changes ..................................... 5.2 Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right Identification as post- materialism changes ........................................... 5.3 Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right Identification as religiosity changes in the working class ............................ 5.4 Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right Identification as religiosity changes in the middle class ............................. vi 11 19 21 50 51 52 90 91 101 102 103 104 5.5 Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right Identification as - religiosity changes in the upper class .............................. 105 5.6 Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right Identification as con- fidence in government changes in the working class .................. 106 5.7 Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right Identification as con- fidence in government changes in the middle class ................... 107 5.8 Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right Identification as con- fidence in government changes in the upper class .................... 108 6.1 Proposed causal interactions for the production of an individual's ideology ..................................................... 128 vii Chapter 1 Introduction Canadian Provincial New Democratic Leader Howard Hampton was quoted in The Toronto Sun as saying, “Anyone who would describe a party that has to have big money from Bay Street in order to run their campaigns as a left—wing party is obviously out of touch” (Blizzard, 2007). University of Toronto political science professor Nelson Wiseman was quoted in the same article saying. “In Canada, unlike a lot of countries, our Liberal Party is ideologically schizophrenic. There are periods when it appears right wing. There are periods when it appears left wing”. BBC W’orldwide Monitoring quoted Russian Civil Force leader Mikhail Barshchevskiy as saying, “The most left-wing party at. present is the SPS [Union of Right. Forces]. Even the Communists are more right-wing today than the SPS... We are the only remaining right-wing party” (Barshchevskiy, 2007). The French paper Le. Monde has claimed that France is “the most left-wing country in the developed world" while the Australian Sydney Morning Herald proposes that the French Socialist Party is “the last substantial left-wing party in the West” (Button, 2007). Academics, the media, and politicians all refer to “left-wing" and “right-wing” as if these terms have meaning to their audiences. What are these terms referring to? Is there some underlying content or meaning behind them? What causes an individual to identify with one. term over the other? Even more specifically. why do individuals place themselves at the point they do on a Left-Right spectrum when asked by a survey researcher to do so? The purpose of this dissertation is to determine the causes of an individuals Left-Right identification. While this is by no means the first attempt at this en- deavor. in the past analyses have been segmented and many have been done in the absence of any overriding theoretical framework. This first. chapter will set up a theoretical context in which to analyze Left-Right identification in order that. I may more precisely demonstrate what it is I am investigating. Subsequent chapters will expand on aspects of this context to provide reasoned theory and predictions as to why we should expect any given variable to be related to Left-Right identification. A number of previously developed theories - such as strain theory, modernization theory, issue evolution, the core values thesis - are demonstrated to be components of a larger framework which explain why individuals identify with a position on the Left-Right continuum. In addition to laying out a suitable and wide ranging theoretical setting, I utilize multiple sources of data to address those hypotheses that arise in the theory. While the predominant data sources are the European Values Surveys (EVS) and the Euro- pean Social Surveys (ESS), I also make use of the 2004 American National Election Study and the 1999—2000 World Values Survey wherever the EVS and the ESS fail to provide the necessary data. Further, rather than using pooled data from multiple countries in the analyses, I attempt to account for the probable non-independence of within-country observations by utilizing linear mixed models with the country set. as the random effect. Where this is not possible - due to hypotheses which require more complicated models - I cluster the observations on countries and obtain robust. variance estimates. .\Iost importantly, however, when possible and necessary, I expand the analyses to include data on not only demographic and psychological variables, but also to include macro—level variables - such as the time a country has been deemed “free” by Freedom House and the effective number of legislative parties in a country determined via reference to the Database of Political Institutions data. The culmination of the data sources, methods, and consideration of multiple levels of data allows the testing of hypotheses that until this point have remained only suggestions. One simply cannot separate use of the Left—Right continuum from a discussion of ideology. Discussing the measure without discussing what is being measured is ncglectful at. best. One might equate this with the debate around IQ. tests in psycl'iology. An IQ. test is meant to measure intelligence. However, intelligence is then defined in terms of an individual‘s LQ. This has led to confusion regarding the concept and measurement of intelligence. Separating the Left-Right continuum from the concept of ideology leaves us in a similar bind; we have a useful predictor of individual political behavior, but we do not know exactly what it is that is predicting that behavior. It seems counterproductive to say that Left-Right identification is a measure of where someone places themselves on the Left—Right continuum. In that case one is forced to ask what the Left-Right continuum means. Only by associating the Left—flight continuum with political ideology. and by precisely defining political ideol(:)gy, can we understand what it is that we are using to predict political attitudes or behaviors. As such, any study of Left—Right. identification must therefore be a study of individual political ideology. The problem this leaves us is in the fact that “Ideology” has long been a con- tested term. A number of concepts now hold the title “ideology,” including an individual‘s issue attitudes, referred to as “operational ideology,” and an individ— ual’s self—placement on a Liberal—Conservative (or Left—Right.) continuum, referred to as "symbolic ideology” (Stimson, 2004). While these qualifiers help to distinguish disparate measures of ideology, they are not as useful in clarifying the concept itself. Further, renaming issue attitudes “operational ideology” actually serves to confuse rather than to clarify. Instead of having a set definition of ideology that leads to the proper use of the term, one may seek to define the term based on the shared mean- ing different uses of that term may have. In the case of "operational ideology,” this may lead to the requirement that any use of the term “ideology” involve reference to an individual’s issue attitudes. This would be a grave error and it is likely this pattern of seeking to define the term “ideology" by reference to its confused, usage that has led to the more substantial problem of the conflation of ideology with its consequences. To summarize, then, in this dissertation it is my intent to determine the causes of an individual‘s Left-Right identification in order that we may better understand why an individual possesses the political ideology she does. To do so. I will first broadly trace the history of the term “ideology” in order to present a nuanced definition of ideology. This definition will allow the reader to more '(u'curately grasi') what it. is that I am studying when I refer to the Left-Right continuum. 1.1 Ideology and the Left-Right Continuum For over two~hundred years ideology1 has been a topic of contention. Almost im— mediately upon the founding of the term by Destutt de Tracy (Kennedy, 1978), Napoleon Bonaparte turned the concept on its head and the term ideologue into a derogatory label (Eagleton, 1991; Thompson, 1990). Since then the battle has continued with ideology and ideologue both referencing positive, neutral, and neg— ative definitions. In addition to the theoretical confusion, it has become common practice in the empirical literature to conceptually equate ideology with the Left- 1The interests of conceptual clarity require me to further specify that when using the term ideology, I am referring to political ideology only. It is apparent that. much of the confusion around the concept of ideology is due to many theorists and philosophers attempting to combine all forms of ideology - ethical, political, scientific, etc. - into a single unified concept. It appears to me (a possible result of my own scientific ideology) that this is counterproductive. Therefore, from this point forward I use the term “ideology” to refer particularly to political ideology. Right continuum. and while we can use an individual’s self—reported location on the Left—Right continuum as a proxy for her ideology, it is necessary to note that there is indeed a distinction between the two. Below, I argue that political ideology is a nomiative belief regarding the proper relationship between the government and the governed. However, before delving into a discussion of how I came to this definition of political ideology, it is helpful to sort. out what exactly the Left-Right continuum is. The Left—Right Continu111112, by my formulation, is a representation of a contin- uous series of political ideologies, with a specific location on the continuum acting as a heuristic device to simplify the political world. It has been suggested that all individuals are limited in their cognitive capacity (Simon, 1955) and must therefore rely on decision—making heuristics (Tversky & Kahncman, 1986). As Dember states: Excessive complexity is aversive. . .VVhat response do you have when you are stuck in circumstances that are beyond your ability to comprehend and with which you lack the resources to cope? The solution, it seems to me, lies not in literally changing the circumstances, which seems im— possible, but in symbolically transforming them, such that the incom- prehensible can be understood and the unmanageable can be handled. To turn chaos into order, one needs some kind of simplifying concep- tual system. It is my contention that ideology provides the requisite 9 ”While I prefer to use the term “continuum,’ certain authors which I quote use the term “dimension.” This, I believe, boils down to whether one conceives of the Left-Right political divide as one dimension among many, in which case the term “dimension” is more appropriate, or whether one conceives of the Left-Right political divide as the single political divide. While political reality is unavoidably more com- plex than the latter statement, continuum still appears to be a more accurate term than dimension. This is due to the consolidating nature of the Left-Right contin- uum. Even though new dimensions are occasionally introduced, they are eventually subsumed into the Left-Right continuum. Using the term dimension, at least in my way of thinking, implies a more permanent division. The formation of a new dimension is only a prelude to the evolution of the Left-Right continuum. It seems more appropriate to use terminology that does not imply a multiplicity of permanent political conflict. I elaborate on this argument below. CJ‘I system;. . . people suffering from the from the kinds of political, social. economic, and personal cognitive overload that I alluded to earlier can take great. solace in ready-made ideological systems that help render an otherwise intolerably confusing world comprehensible, if not bearable. It is through ideology that excessive complexity can be reduced to manage- able simplicity. (1991, pp. 159—160) To take this view one step further, identifying with a location on the Left-Right con- tinuum implies a political ideology and is thereby a heuristic for labeling a cluster of issue implications that logically accompanies that implied ideology. The Left-Right continuum therefore acts, more or less simultaneously, as a numerical representation of a spectrum of ideologies and as a categorical heuristic for the policy implications of the same.3 It is to be noted, however, that as politics is a public phenomenon, the Left-Right continuum must also be regarded as a public phenomenon (Inglehart & Klingemann, 1976). Conover and Feldman suggest that “Ideological self-identifications. . . may serve an important function for the public by providing a symbolic framework which simplifies societal conflicts” (1981, p. 643). Left-Right identification is a public and symbolic representation of a specific ideology; as Voloshinov argues: 3The terms Left and Right represent the poles of political conflict. The origin of the terms Left and Right in Europe derives from the left-right spatial framework of the French Parliament in the late 18th century. This spatial reference came to also represent a political divide that spread through much of the rest of Europe (Gooch, 1960; Laponce, 1981). However, the terms themselves could have been any- thing that would have implied opposites as the adoption of the liberal/ conservative, rather than the Left-Right, distinction in the US. demonstrates. Even though the labels may differ between Europe and the US, the content of the Left-Right and Liberal-Conservative continuum is quite similar (Klingemann, 1979b, p. 221). How— ever, U.S. respondents are likely to see extreme liberal or conservative positions as moderate positions on the Left-Right dimension (Klingemann, 1979b, p. 231) imply- ing that the Liberal-Conservative distinction is a moderate segment of the Left-Right continuum. Given the lack of any well-established extremist parties in the US. to promote the more extreme positions on the Left—Right continuum, this is a. logical conclusion. Signs4 can arise only on interindividual territory. . .signs do not arise between any two members of the species Homo sapiens. It is essential that the two individuals be organized socially, that they compose a group (a social unit); only then can the medium of signs take shape between them. (1986, p. 12) The Left-Right dimension, as with politics in general, is in the public domain and therefore must be defined by public reference. A central distinction between ideology and the Left-Right continuum, then, stems from the necessarily social nature of the Left-Right continnmn. Even though ideology is constrained by cultural factors (see below). it is first and foremost a. personal belief. The Left-Right continuum, on the other hand, is a socially constructed and defined tool. The Left-Right continuum is defined, and redefined. by elites and is used as an instrument of political communication between themselves and the mass public (Fuchs 8: Klingemann, 1990; Thomassen, 1999). As the elite5 are arguably more organized than the rest of the citizenry, and given that it is their debates, or dictates, which directly influence or direct policy, it is logical that. the elite set the content of political dialog. 1.1.1 Left-Right Identification and Values Three constructs are associated with three distinct values that are commonly con- founded in Left-Right terminology: laissez-faire conservatism, associated with hier- archy versus equality; authoritarianism, associated with constraint versus freedom; and status-qno conservatism, associated with stability versus change (Stenner, 2005). Both the Left-Right distinction and ideology itself revolve around a single value 4A sign is something that “represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself” (Voloshinov, 1986, p. 9). 51 conceptualize the elite as a small group of individuals who control a. dispropor— tionate share of soc1al resources, such as wealth and political access (Mills, 1956). that has been at the center of political debate for millennia, namely equality. Since the inception of the Left-Right continuum, the left-wing has been associated with “egalitarianism, by which we mean a tendency to praise that which makes people more equal rather than that which makes people less equal. At a more practical level, this would mean encouraging policies which aim to make those who are unequal more equal” (Bobbio, 1996, p. 71). A simple demonstration of the relevance of equality to the Left-Right continuum can be garnered from the 1999 European Values Survey. Figure 1.1 presents the mean preference for equality over freedom for each self-identified position on the Left-Right continuum for individuals in twenty-eight European countries.6 As one travels from Right to Left, concern for equality increases substantially. Opposing a preference for equality with a preference for order has led to similar findings (Inglehart 8: Klii‘igemann, 1976).7 This value distinction between Left and Right is apparent. in politics as far back as the work of Plato and Aristotle in their discussions of the political systems of the time (e.g., Aristotle & Simpson, 1997; Plato 85: Bloom, 1991; see also, Raphael, 2001, p. 5) and continues through to the present day (Noel & 'l‘erien. 2008). One must be careful, however, to avoid confounding the Left-Right continuum with other values or psychological characteristics. For example, while many associate the Right with status-quo conservatism, i.e., resistance to change (Campbell, Con- verse, Miller, & Stokes, 1960; Klingemann, 1979b; McClosky, 1958), this trait does not in and of itself define the Right. And while some believe that those who identify 6This figure is generated using a linear mixed model with country set as a. random effect. The dependent variable is Left-Right self-identification. The model controls for the following variables: age, authoritarianism, education, gender, income, polit- ical interest, religiosity, trust in government, trust in people, and the length of time a country has been deemed “free” by Freedom House. See Appendix l-A for the model output. 7The value of equality does not necessarily have to be opposed by a supposedly contrary value such as freedom or order. The Left—Right continuum merely measures a decreasing preference for equality as one proceeds from left to right rather than an increasing concern with some other value. f Lefi 2 3 4 - 5 6 7 8 9 Right Figure 1.1: Mean preference for equality over freedom by Left-Right identification controlling for various demographic, psychological, and country-level variables. as right—wing are more resistant to change than those who identify as left-wing, there are also those on the Left who show remarkably similar tendencies (Greenberg & Jonas, 2003). One only has to draw upon the image of the USSR of the mid to late 20th century to find ample examples of the resistance to change and the unyielding disposition that lay on the left side of the Left-Right continuum. While this may suggest a quadratic relationship, in fact, analyses of resistance to change using the EVSQQ data reveal that this disposition is completely unrelated to the Left—Right continuum (analyses not shown). Many authors argue that a libertarian-authoritarian dimension exists indepen- dent of the Left-Right dimension (e.g., Flanagan & Lee, 2003; Hooghe, Marks, & Wilson, 2002; Middendorp, 1989). This is revealed by a brief examination of the authoritarianism literature. Much of the research on authoritarianism has demon- strated a solid connection between right-wing identification and authoritarianism (e.g., Altemeyer, 1996). However, authoritarianism has more recently been found to be related to identifiers on the Left also (e.g., Van Hiel. Duriez, 85 Kossowska, 2006). The research of both Altemeyer and Van Hiel et al., though, relies on attitudinal measures of authoritarianism. Stenner (2005) provides an insightful argument and ample evidence that attitudinal measures fail to accurately gage authoritarianisn1 separately from these behaviors and attitudes it is meant to predict. She suggests a measure of authoritarian predisposition (Feldman & Stenner, 1997; Stenner, 2005) that is entirely distinct from such. Using this measure, I generate a. graph similar to that provided in Figure 1.1.8 While. Figure 1.2 clearly does not demonstrate a linear relationship between an- thoritarian predisposition and Left-Right. identification, there is certainly an increase in authoritarian predisposition as one travels from left to right across the graph. More detailed analyses (not shown here) reveal that this graph demonstrates a slight cubic relationship between authoritarian predispositions and Left-Right identifica- tion - though for the most part. a linear plot is sufficient. Further, separating the Western European countries from the rest and creating separate graphs for each region demonstrates a much more powerful relationship for the West than the test (where the relationship between authoritarian predisposition and Left-Right identi- fication is non-significant).9 At least in the West, then, the Libertarian—Authoritarian divide parallels a con- cern for equality. As one proceeds toward the terminal point of the authoritarian 8A5 with Figure 1.1, Figure 1.2 uses the 1999-2000 European Values Survey as a source of data. This figure is generated using a linear mixed model with country set as a random effect. The dependent variable is Left—Right. self—identification. The model controls for the following variables: age, education, equality preference, gender, income, political interest, religiosity, trust in government, trust in people, and the length of time a country has been deemed “free” by Freedom House. See Appendix 1—A for the model output. ( . . JUsing data from the 1981 European Values Survey demonstrates a. strong rela— tionship for both the West and the rest. 10 _L Lefl .2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Right Figure 1.2: Mean preference for authoritarian over libertarian child-rearing beliefs controlling for various demographic, psychological, and country-level variables. side of the divide, one must become more concerned with hierarchy over equality. Fromm provides a useful explanation as to why this is so: The essence of the authoritarian character has been described as the simultaneous presence of sadistic and masochistic drives. Sadism was understood as aiming at unrestricted power over another person more or less mixed with destructiveness; masochism as aiming at dissolving one- self in an overwhelmingly strong power and participating in its strength and glory. Both the sadistic and the masochistic trends are caused by the inability of the isolated individual to stand alone and his need for a symbiotic relationship that overcomes this aloneness. (1969, p. 220) While one may disagree with the Freudian references, this quote nevertheless illus- trates the need an authoritarian individual has for someone (or something) both 11 above him yield to and someone below him to dominate; a clear cry for hierarchy and against equality. Left—Right identification. then. deals specifically with matters of equality. Status- quo conservatism demonstrates no relationship at all to Left-Right identification when examining a variety of countries whose political climates fall across a large swath of the ideological spectrum; when one is averse to change, the status quo holds a large appeal regardless of one‘s Left-Right identification. Authoritarianism demonstrates a similarly contingent relationship to Left-Right identification; while in the W ‘h‘l. at1thoritarianism is clearly related to Left-Right. identification. this is clearly not by necessity as the absence of a relationship between the two in the rest of Europe demonstrates. So, while status-quo conservativism and authoritarianism may align with Left-Right identification in certain political contexts - such as in the United States - these three constructs are, in actuality, distinct. 1 . 1 . 2 Political Ideology As previously stated, I define political ideology as a normative belief regarding the proper relationship between the government and the governed. If one traces the reasoning of most policy statements back to their source, one would come to an implicit or explicit statement regarding the relationship between the government and the governed. This definition, which intentionally contradicts the currently popular notion that ideology is a belief system, is familiar in previous literature. Lane, for example, proposes that ideology is multifaceted and is currently understood to express a number of differing definitions. The first definition Lane proposes involves the questions: “Who will be the rulers? How will the rulers be selected? By what princitfles will they govern?” (1962. p. 14). These questions specifically deal with the individual’s “views on the more general relationship of a man to his government” (1962, p. 1.5). 12 Geertz similarly implies this definition of ideology: "The reason why the French revolution was, at least up to its time, the greatest incubator of extremist ideologies. ‘progressive‘ and ‘reactionary’ alike, in human history was. ..because the central organizing principle of political life, the divine right of kings, was destroyed” (1964, p. 64). The French revolution opened the door to debate regarding the proper role of government in society. The relationship between the government and the governed was no longer a given - the belief in the divine right of Kings, the predominant ideology for centuries, was dying if not dead - and thereby a slew of new ideologies sprang into existence, or at least were brought forth from what were the shadows of heresy into the light of popular political debate. Defining ideology as a belief in the proper relationship between the got-rernment and the governed, then, is not a new idea. However, it is one which serves to clarify most succinctly a concept that has become muddled with a variety of other related concepts and thereby stretched to the point of near uselessness. If we are to reflect on the classification of extremist governments, as defined by reference to the Left-Right continuum, as the most totalitarian in practice, it be- comes readily apparent how more modern writers so readily bought into the Marxist idea - formulated in The German Ideology (Marx, 1855) - that ideology is an un- yielding false consciousness. Confounding the method used by governments with the values of individuals (Bobbie, 1996) has led to an image of ideology as a perceptual bias preventing one from seeing the truth of any particular matter and entrapping one in a world of self-reinforcing delusion. However, as Geertz points out, “invoking the. extreme pathologies of ideological thought - Nazism, Bolshevism, or whatever - as its paradigmatic forms is reminiscent of the tradition in which the Inquisition, the personal depravity of Renaissance popes, the savagery of Reformation wars, or the primitiveness of Bible-belt f1intlarnentalism is offered as an art‘tlietype of religious belief and behavior" (1964, p. 51). To define ideology as such is less than useful and 13 incorrectly associates ideology with method rather than values. Also defining ideology in a. negative light, Apter states that ideology is "more than doctrine. It links particular actions and mundane practices with a wider set of meanings and, by doing so, lends a more honorable and dignified complexion to social conduct” (1964, p. 16) - a description also derived from The German Ideology (Marx & McLellan, 2000). Apter implies that ideology is a mask used to put a wholesome spin on potentially nefarious motives; ideology is social justification for acts that may or may not be personally and / or publically acceptable if the true motives for their implementation were known. \Nhile ideology may indeed be used for such purposes — there are countless political figures who cloak their self—interested actions in the guise of state responsibility - such use does not. nullify the definition I have provided. Geertz’s statement above again applies; one cannot define a concept by simply referencing its pathological application. One may more accurately view these definitions of ideology as a definition of (potential) function (what an ideology does) rather than one of essence (what an ide(_)logy is). For example, Seliger states that ideologies are “sets of ideas by which men posit. explain and justify ends and means of organized social action, and specif- ically political action, irrespective of whether such action aims to preserve. amend, uproot or rebuild a given social order" (1976, p. 14). The first. component. of this definition (i.e. “sets of ideas") defines what it‘leologies are to Seliger. The second ccunponent (i.e. everything else) defines the function of ideologies. It is logical that the definition of essence must serve as the. fund-runental definition. The term ideology was founded by Destutt. dc Tracy (Kennedy. 1978) to mean the scientific study of human ideas. However. as with the use of many other words with an ‘ology’ postfix (e.g., geology, methodology, physiology). the term quickly became associated with its object rather than the approacl‘i. Eagleton sums this occurrence up nicely: 14 There is a peculiar feature about words which end in ‘ology’: ‘-ology’ means the science or study of some phenomenon; but by a curious process of inversion ‘ology’ words often end up meaning the phenomenon studied rather than the systematic knowledge of it. ..Such an inversion befell the word ideology not long after its birth. ‘Ideology’ originally meant the scimrtific study of human ideas; but. fairly soon, the object took over from the approach, and the word rapidly came to mean systems of ideas tl‘iemselves. (1991, p. 63) Ideology, then, has become associated with its object and it is no longer useful to refer back to ideology as the systematic study of ideas. Thereby, the essential definition of ideology must address the ideas themselves rather than the function of those ideas. The central drawback of many of the. definitions mentioned above is that they address the function - thereby focusing on the pathological application - without addressing what it is that is functioning. Whereas some definitions clearly state that. it is ideas that are functioning, they never elucidate what those ideas are specifically. ‘Ideas‘ as a category is so broad as to be nearly useless for the purposes of scientific analysis. we must narrow the definition of ideology to a specific type of idea. That is precisely what I have done in defining political ideology as a normative belief regarding the proper relationship between the government and the governed. Political ideology would seem to literally be a set of political ideas. However, only the most fundamental of ideas are important to this concept. Ideas formed from primary ideas are a function of, but not essential to, those original ideas. Most fumlamental to ideas regarding the political are those regarding power relations, as politics is generally understood to be social relationships involving power. Ideol— ogy, then, is that idea central to the political; in other words, the normative belief regarding the relationship between the government and the governed. 1.2 Ideological Sophistication Defining ideology as a normative belief regarding the relationship between the gov- ernment and the governed leads to the presumption that most, if not all, people are ideological. After all, if a person so much as utters something along the lines of “isn’t that the government’s job?” or “the government has no right to do thatl,” he implicitly states a belief regarding the relationship between a governn‘ier‘it and the governed. Though this belief may be implicit, it still exists and thereby requires us to regard these individuals as ideological. Certain individuals, such as the more po— litically sophisticated, may have thought the implications of this belief through more than the less sophisticated, but this simply means that some are more sophisticated than others. Only those who have no Opinion whatsoever on What the government. should or should not be doing are truly non-ideological, and it is likely that such individuals simply do not exist. To put it simply, everyone possesses an ideology and everyone is at least minimally ideological. In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci (1992) argues that the practical activity of all men and women involves an implicit philosophy of the world. Applying this argu- ment to the political implies that individuals possess at least an implicit. political ideology. Althusser’s (1971) formulation of ideology as not necessarily contingent on ideas provides a useful explication of Gramsci’s argument; ideology may be un- conscious and affective and thereby need not be explicit to influence attitudes or behavior. Saying that everyone possesses an ideology is not the same as saying everyone is equally ideological in the same manner that saying everyone who believes in God is not equally religious. As the term ideological has been utilized thus far, the degree to which a person is ideological measures the degree to which an individual utilizes their specific political ideology to structure their political attitudes and behavior 16 and is therefore a. specific measure of political sophistication.10 1.2. 1 Constraint For many, Converse's “The Nature of Belief Systems in hilass Publics” (1964) is one of the most important pieces of empirical research in the ideology literature. While this may indeed be the case, the fallout of this essay has been to further confuse the study of ideology. While Converse himself chose to refer to belief systems rather than ideology in order to clarify his topic of focus, many took his finding that people in general were less than adept at holding logically or temporally consistent systems of attitudes as an indication that the lack of constraint among an individual’s issue positions indicated a lack of ideology on the part of the public. This conclusion led many to claim that ideology was thereby irrelevant to politics (e.g., McGuire, 1986). Converse‘s use of the terminology "belief system“ to label the concept he defines as “a configuration of ideas and attitudes in which the elements are bound together by some form of constraint or functional interdependence” (1964, p. 207),11 is quite appropriate as he is not solely referring to ideology. Converse's definition of belief 10It may also be argued that as a large proportion of individuals choose not to place themselves on a Left-Right continuum, then these individuals are likely non- ideological. However, if we follow the belief that it is the less politically involved that are likely to fall into this category, this can be demonstrated to be false. Looking at data from the three waves of the European Social Survey, 18,362 of the 131,988 respondents chose not to place themselves on the Left-Right continuum. Running a Heckman selection model (Heckman, 1976) on this data (utilizing education, in- come, and political interest as predictors of selection and clustering on country by wave), reveals that we cannot reject the null hypothesis that rho-—-0. This demon- strates that a selection model is not necessary. In other words, in the equation specified, those who do not. identify with a position on the Left—Right continuum do not systematically differ from those who do. It is therefore no more likely that these individuals are non—ideological than are those who choose to place themselves on the Left-Right continuum. See Appendix l-B for the output from this model. 11Converse (1964), developed two notions of constraint: static constraint is de- fined as “the success we would have in predicting, given initial knowledge that an individual holds a specific attitude, that he hold certain further ideas and attitudes” (p. 207). Dynamic constraint is defined as “the probability that. a change in the perceived status of one idea-element would psychologically require, from the point of view of the actor, some compensating change(s) in the status of idea-elements elsewhere in the. configuration” (p. 208). 17 systems includes both an individual‘s ideology and his position on the Left-Right continuum, complete with the politically relevant and associated policy positions. VV'hile. ideally, one’s ideology should be central to one's belief system,12 assuming that merely because people in general fail to possess a wide ranging belief system they are also non-ideological is fallacious. Figure 1.3 shows the average level of agreement among Left-Right identification, vote choice. economic issue attitudes, and New Politics issue attitudes by country.13 The graphic for each pair demonstrates the four quartiles and the mean value of the mean level of agreement within the represented countries. For example, the graphic for "Left-Right Identification & Vote Choice" shows that. the first quartile falls at approximately 33% consistent, the second quartile falls at 52% consistent, the mean falls at 63% consistent, the third quartile falls at 71% consistent, and the fourth quartile at 90% consistent. So the mean country in this data has a population in which approximately 63% of individuals have both their Left-Right identification and their vote choice fall on the same side of the Left-Right continuum. W hile this is a rather blunt measurement tool, it serves to demonstrate that ideological consistency is less than perfect and can vary considerably from country to country. Constraint is an effect of ideological sophistication, but is not ideology per se. Tl’1erefore, a lack of constraint does not necessarily mean a lack of ideology. As .Iost notes, “Although ordinary people by no means pass the strictest tests imaginable for ideological sophistication, most of them do think, feel, and behave in ideologically meaningful and interpretable terms” (2006, p. 667). Furthermore, a number of 12Centrality refers to how important the role of a certain “idea-element” is relative to others in the belief system. “That is, when new information changes the status of one idea-element in a belief system, by postulate some other change must occur as well" (Converse, 1964, p. 208). 1‘5133ach variable is a 0/1 measure of whether an individual identifies with the Left. or Right. This is derived from scales constructed with data from the 1999—2000 European and World Values Surveys. Vote Choice is quantified using the Left-Right party values from the Comparative Manifesto Project. Country choice was limited to European and other Western democracies for which party data from the Comparative R'Ianifesto Project was available. Note that the circles represent outliers in the data. 18 Economic Issues 8. New Politics Issues 0 F—m—I Left-Right Identification 8: Economic Issues 0 I—[fl—I o Left-Right Identification 8. New Politics Issues 0 I-{D—d Vote Choice 8. Economic Issues [—— ——-| Vote Choice 8. Left-Right Identification |—— ___1 Vote Choice 8: New Politics Issues |-— ———I IIIITTFIIIIII I 30 4O 50 60 70 80 90 Percent consistent Figure 1.3: Mean level of ideological agreement among Left-Right identification, vote, choice, economic issue attitudes, and New Politics issue attitudes by country. prominent researchers propose that perhaps not every issue that is relevant to the Left—Right continuum need be relevant to every individual and thereby should not necessarily be constrained by every other issue that is relevant. The set of issues relevant to an individual’s Left—Right identification can be con- ceptualized as an incomplete reflection of a. collective set of all politically relevant. issues (Fuchs & Klingemann, 1990). As such, an individual‘s Left-Right identifica- tion acts as a summary of the specific issues that interest. that individual (Inglehart, 1984; Inglehart & Klingemann, 1976) and is thereby relevant to only those issues that. individual finds important. Dalton reinforces this view in describing Left-Right identification as “a sort of ‘super issue,’ a statement of positions on the issues that are currently most important to each voter" (2005, p. 207). Along parallel lines, Converse (1964) argues that only 19 among that portion of the public interested in a specific issue - those whom he refers to as an issue public - will any political consequences of an issue attitude be noticeable; an argument. that finds empirical support in the work of Krosnick (1990). Left—Right identification. then. serves as a summary measure of. or a categorical heuristic for, those issue attitudes an individual considers important. For any given individual, constraint should only exist among those issues that are important to that individual. We cannot expect an individual who cares little for and may know very little about an issue to express an attitude toward that. issue which is ideologically consistent with his other issue attitudes; as Converse (1964) notes, many attitudes reported on surveys may be manufactured on the spot (i.e., doorstep opinions or non-attitudes) and have little, if any, relevance to that individuals political attitudes (see also Converse, 1970). Looking at Figure 1.4, we can see that in the American context as an individual’s average level of issue interest increases, the ability to predict their Liberal-Conservative identification increases considerably as is demonstrated by the narrowing confidence interval around the regression line.14 This indicates that issue interest does indeed have a powerful impact on how closely those issue positions align with one’s Libetel-Conservative (Left-Right) identification. It must be noted, however, that this is not a mere manifestation of political interest. While those higher in political interest should hypothetically possess more interest in a greater number of issues and therefore have more issues which are ideologically constrained, in this case at least, this is not so. The correlation between political interest and mean issue interest is 0.28, hardly convincing evidence that political interest and issue interest go hand in hand.15 In fact, a heteroskedastic 14This interaction plot is derived from data from the 2004 American National Elections Studies. The values portrayed in this plot are based on substantively meaningful marginal effects and standard errors (Brambor, Clark, & Golder, 2006). 15T his correlation is derived from data from the 2004 American National Elections Studies. 20 Dependent Variable: Liberal-Conservative Self-Placement ._—--'— v“. _.—_P A H’- q— _,_._I- \- d-F' - _.__o— u—c- ..P-P Marglnal Effect of Mean Issue Position Mean Issue Interest Marginal Effect of Mean Issue Position ----- 95% Confidence Interval Figure 1.4: Marginal Effect of Mean Issue Position on Liberal-Conservative Identi- fication as the Mean Level of Issue. Interest Changes in the United States. model of data from the 1999-2000 European and World Values Surveys demonstrates that political interest actually serves to decrease the ability of vote choice and both economic and New Politics issue attitudes, along with other demographic variables, to 1:)redict Left-Right identification;16 in other words, political interest decreases the constraint. between Left-Right. identification, vote choice, and issue attitudes. However, an increasing education level does serve to increase that constraint. 16This model is based on data from the 1999-2000 European and World Values Surveys. Vote Choice is quantified using the Left-Right party values from the Com- parative Manifesto Project. Country choice was limited to European and other \Nestern democracies for which party data from the Comparative Manifesto Project was available. See Appendix l-C for the model output. 21 1 .3 Dimensionality There has been a great deal of discussion regarding the dimensionality of the Left- Right continuum, especially with the increasing relevance of a new set of issue atti- tudes that deal with issues apart from those traditionally associated with the Left- Right continuum. W hile analyses of these issues lead some researchers to suggest. that the Left-Right continuum has fractured into new and old dimensions which may be either perpendicular or parallel to each other, others argue that these currently divergent dimensions are slowly merging into a unified continuum. Research from chapter four of this dissertation supports the latter position. As a result of a postindustrial revolution that pushed for greater social and political democratization, New Politics issues — alternative lifestyles, environmen- tal protection, nuclear energy, sexual equality, and social equality - were placed on the political agenda. These issues, initially ignored by established parties, were first championed by a wave of New Left environmental and Left-libertarian par- ties (Richardson & Rootes, 1995). Reacting to the threat these parties and issues posed to traditional values, conservative and authoritarian forces led a cormterattack that opposed the liberalization of social norms, resulting in a counterwave of New Right parties (Ignazi, 2003). As a result, a new dimension of political conflict. was introduced into the political arena.17 Eagleton, paraphrasing Bourdieu (1977), provides a politically neutral. schema that underlies transition in the realm of political conflict: \Nhat Bourdieu calls doxa belongs to the kind of stable, tradition-bound social order in which power is fully naturalized and uncmestionable, so that. no social arrangement different from the present. could even be imag- ined. . .VVhat matters in such societies is what ‘gocs without saying’, 17While in some cases new dimensions of political conflict were created, in others this backlash led to the revitalization of historic religious or social conflict. 22 which is determined by tradition; and tradition is always ‘silent’, not least about itself as tradition. Any challenge to such doxa is then het- erodoxy, against which the given order must assert its claims in a new orthodoxy. Such orthodoxy differs from doxa in that the guardians of tradition, of what goes without saying, are now compelled to speak in their own defence, and thus implicitly to present themselves as simply one possible position, among others. (1991., p. 157) This description leads to a more balanced view of the generation of new dimensions of political ("()Ilfll(?l... It is not necessarily the Left that opens new avenues of political conflict, nor is it necessarily the Right. that is reactionary. Tradition is not always the venue of the Right and may be. defended by the Left in some societies (e.g., the former communist bloc) as much as by the Right in others. This phenomenon, however, does not necessarily lead to the establishment of a permanent multidimensional political space. Inglehart (1984) points out that while the New Politics issues dimension has yet to be fully subsumed into the Left-Right dimension, it is more a matter of when than if. The full integration of the clerical— anticlerical dimension into the Left-Right dimension in Europe (Inglehart, 1984) as well as the integration of the North-South conflict in United States (Poole & Rosen- thal, 2007) serves to demonstrate this pattern. The Left-Right dimension is routinely transformed along with the political—cultural context in which it is embedded. Inglehart and Welzel (2005) explain this transformation via reference to their incarnation of modernization theory. In brief, the increasing impact of New Poli- tics issues on Left-Right identification results from a postindustrial revolution that. pushes for greater social and political democratization. As a society’s level of so— cioeconomic development increases, major changes in the value priorities of that. society occur. In the postindustrialization phase of a society’s dtwelopment, the society shifts from survival values to self—expression values. This phase, leads to the. 23 increasing desire for emancipation from authority which results in the. politicization of New Politics issues. This consequently results in a shift in the issues that are relevant to the major political cleavage, i.e. the Left-Right continuum. While it seems clear that the Left-Right continuum is evolving, there is no explicit theory as to how this evolution occurs. The theory of issue evolution (Carmines & Stimson, 1989) provides a useful framework with which to explain this phenomenon. While the theory of issue evolution seeks to explain the origins of policy conflict among the public, this theory also serves to explain the evolution of the Left-Right continuum. Issue evolution follows a general process from elite division on an issue to the alignment, or realignment, of an issue public. To begin with, the elite, the pro— fessional politicians, must divide on a policy issue. This division must eventually manifest as a difference between parties rather than between politicians within a party. This difference must then be perceived by a concerned public. The relevant issue public will then, in turn, align, or realign, with the appropriate party based on this new issue cleavage. This causal sequence has found support for a number of issues in the US. (Adams, 1997; Carmines & Stimson, 1986; Lindaman & Haider— Markel, 2002) and has found incidental support in seven European countries in the research of Iverson, who concludes that party elites “often appear to be ahead of public opinion and actively promote the politicization of new issues” (1994, p. 184). Issue evolution implies that the evolution of the Left-Right continuum is a result. of partisan politics. When certain issue positions become associated with parties of a. particular ideology, then those issues become linked with the. ideology represented by that party. However, this does not imply a willy-hilly association of issues with parties as suggested by Stimson (2004, pp. 68-69). Parties adopt policy stances whose reasoning aligns with their reasoning on other issue stances previously as- sociated with their ideological orientation. Positions on new issues are therefore expected to align with the general implications of the ideology of that specific party. If this were not the case, one would expect the issue positions associated with left- or right-wing parties to vary from country to country. For most politically relevant issues that cross numerous political borders, this is certainly not the case; values dictate which issue attitudes are appropriate to an ideology. Contrary to the thesis of the evolution of the Left-Right continuum. certain au- thors propose that while new dimensions may come to prominence, these dimensions are parallel to the Left-Right dimension but not coterminous with it (e.g., plural- izal ion theory). Kitschelt and Hellemans (1990), for example, find that for ecology parties in Belgium, the Left-Right dimension has become a multidimensional space with ecology parties representing a second Left which overlaps the traditional Left. Knutsen (1995) extends the work of Kitschelt and Hellemans to include all Belgian parties and parties from seven other Western European countries and comes to the san'ie conclusion. They conclude that this provides strong support for pluralization theory. However, this is what one would expect before the full integration of merging dimensions. These findings are simply a result of non-fully integrated dimensions and is how one would have expected the clerical-anticlerical dimension to look in relation to the Left-Right continuum before the two became fully integrated into the unidimensional structure we see today. Another line of research proposes that dimensionality is dependent on an indi- viduals level of political sophistication. Stimson (1975) finds that those of higher 18 use fewer and broader dimensions than do those with lower cog- cognitive ability nitive ability. This explains the findings of a number of researchers who present. evidence that constraint is conditional on level of sophistication; the more educated and more politically attentive are more likely to have some abstract, overarching structure to their political beliefs (Campbell et al., 1960; Converse, 1964; Converse 18Stimson operationalizes this concept as a linear combination of education and political interest. 8: Pierce, 1986; Klingemann, 1979a). Further, the issue positions of elites are consid— erably more constrained than those of the public (Converse, 1964; Thomassen, 1999), even when the public is stratified according to their level of political participation (Jennings, 1992). Again, however, this finding is as a result of the evolution of the Left-Right con- tinuum. One cannot reasonably expect the entirety of the public to simultaneously become aware of changes in the political landscape. It is logical to expect that it is the most. informed, interested, and involved who become aware of these changes first. 'l‘herefore, it is the most sophisticated who would be the most up to date, so to speak, on which issues are politically relevant and go with which ideology. Accumulated evidence indicates that the Left-Right continuum is changing with the times much as it always has. As new issues or issue dimensions become relevant to politics, they will slowly become integrated into the Left-Right continuum in a logical and coherent fashion. Evidence for this is found in both issue evolution research and in research indicating that issues or issue dimensions once perpendicular to the Left—Right continuum are now a component of it. Research demonstrating that. issues or issue dimensions once perpendicular to the Left-Right continuum are now parallel to but not yet integrated into it does not preclude integration; a shift from a perpendicular to a parallel orientation is logically prior to integration. Evidence indicating the differing dimensionality of differing levels of political sophistication indicates the logical procession toward unidimensionality at differing rates for the various strata of sophistication levels among the public. Evolution of the Left-Right continuum takes place slowly - even more so for the less sophisticated - but it does take place. 26. 1.4 Organization of the Dissertation In this introduction, I have argued that an individual's Left—Right identification is a symbolic — though far from perfect - representation of that individual’s political ideology. If we are to use measures of attitudinal and behavioral constraint as an indicator that this assumption is indeed correct, analyses indicate that it is likely more so for those of higher education levels. This being said, and for the sake of accuracy in terminology, in the empirical chapters of this dissertation I will only refer to Left-Right identification. The reader should keep in mind, however. and this will be reiterated in the concluding chapter, that these analyses are intended to shed light on the causes of an individual’s political ideology. Chapter '2 utilizes all three waves of the European Social Survey to set the ground- work for the causes of an individual‘s Left-Right identification. As most of the com— mon variables are generally undisputed as to their causal relationship to Left-Right identification. I briefly summarize the proposed relationship of each. Theory and re- search on the relationship between education and Left-Right identification, though, suggests that a more detailed examination of the theoretical basis of this relationship is necessary. A detailed examination of the relationship between education and Left— Iilight identification suggests that the core values thesis, which proposes educational institutions socialize those within their influence to the dominant values within their society, is currently the most valid explanation of the available evidence. However, considering the research on persuasion and personality, I add to this thesis that an individual must be open to this influence; otherwise he may reject these values in favor of those he otherwise held — assuming a different to begin with. An interaction plot derived from a linear mixed model of the data provides evidence in support of this modified core values thesis. The proposed relationships between Left- Right identification and the remainder of the tested variables all confirm previous findings and current. expectations. 27 Along with the demographic, psychological, and macro—level causes of Left—Right identification, one must also take into account the relationship between issue atti- tudes and Left-Right identification. Chapter 3 summarizes the debate over whether issue attitudes cause Left-Right identification or vice versa. Investigation into this question using two—stage least squares analyses finds that for individuals in three of the four European countries observed, issue attitudes (both economic and New Politics issues) predict Left-Right identification in those with high levels of political interest but not vice versa. For those with lower levels of political interest, there is no significant relationship between issue attitudes and Left-Right identification in either direction. Having confirmed the relationship between issue attitudes and Left-Right iden— tification - at least for those with higher levels of political interest - I move to a consideration of the relative impact of New Politics issues, as opposed to economic issues, on Left-Right identification. First in this exploration is an aggregate level analysis of Left—Right identification and social values. Previous theory and evidence suggests that the Left-Right continuum is evolving as time passes, absorbing new issues into its heuristic capability. Modernization theory suggests that concern for New Politics issues should increase along with an increase in self—expression values. The issue evolution literature provides a framework which explains that this process is a result of elite driven partisan politics. Chapter 4 presents evidence that Left.- Right identification is increasingly determined by concern with New Politics issues as a result of an increase in societal levels of self—expression values. \Vith the knowledge that at the aggregate level Left-Right identification is be— coming increasingly concerned with New Politics issues, I move the analysis to the individual level to investigate whether individual level values are as predictive of individual level Left-Right identification. Further, I investigate a number of com— peting arguments as to why an individual’s Left-Right identification may be more ‘28 likely to rely on New Politics issues than economic issues. Chapter 5, then, seeks to predict which issues set (traditional economic class- based issues or New Politics issues) individuals use to determine their Left-Right it'lcntilication when those issue sets are ideologically conflicted. Differing predictions for the working and middle classes are derived from previous literature, with self- expression values, confidence in government. and religiosity acting as conditional variables. Analysis of seven industrialized democratic countries reveals that eco- nomic issues weigh more heavily in determining individuz‘ils‘ Left-Right identifica- tion in nearly all circumstances. For those with the utmost confidence in governn‘icnt and those with the highest levels of religiosity, however, economic and New Politics issue attitudes appear to lend approximately equal weight to Left-Right. identifica— tion. \Vhat can be said fairly certainly though, is that for those in the working class who place in the top half of the. confidence in government. scale. those in the middle class who score lowest on the religiosity measure, and those in the middle and upper classes with no confidence in their government, Left-Right identification has absolutely nothing to do with their attitudes on New Politics issues. Concluding this dissertation. chapter 6 reviews the findings in a more general dis- cussion of Left-Right identification and considers the value of this identification in predicting vote choice. This final analysis finds that much of the. ability of other vari- ables to predict vote choice is funneled through Left-Right. identification. Left-Right identification is clearly a powerful construct and possesses considerable relevance to modern politics, much as it always has. 29 1.5 Appendix l—A: Mixed Model Output Linear Mixed Model of Left-Right Identification 1999 European Values Survey, 28 countries Left-Right Identification Coefficient Age -0.028*** Authoritarian predisposition 0.054*** Education -0.005 Equality preference -0.063*** Gender -0.013*** Income 0.075*** Political interest -0.014 Religiosity 0.325*** Trust in government 0.088*** Trust in people -0.020*** Years ”free” —0.010 Constant 0392*”< N 22,316 Countries 28 Note: *** p g 0.001 30 1.6 Appendix 1-B: Selection Model Output Heckman Selection Model of L-R Identification 2002-2006 European Social Survey, 65 country-level units Left-Right Identification coefficient Age 0.002 Education -0.003 Gender -0. 187* * * Income 0.041** Minority -0.708*** Agreeableness —0.523*** Conscientiousness 0.108*** Extroversion 0.095*** Openness -0.280*** Personal Safety 0.002 Religiosity 0.187*** Trust in Government 0.076*** Trust in People 0020* Selection Education 0.048*** Income 0102* * * Political Interest 0.312*** Constant 6.225*** Total # of Observations 90,978 Censored Observations 10,199 Uncensored Observations 80,799 Clusters (by country, by year) 65 Note: *** p 3 0.001, ** p _<_ 0.01, * p S 0.05 31 1.7 Appendix l-C: Heteroskedastic Model Out- put Heteroskedastic Model of L—R Identification 1999-2000 World Values Survey, 31 countries Left-Right Identification Vote Choice 4.211*** Economic Issue Attitudes 1.515*** New Politics Issue Attitudes 0.437*** Age -0.393* Education 0.002 Gender 0.031 Income 0.279*** Religiosity 1483* * * Variance Education —0.204*** Left-Right Intensity 2.668*** Political Interest 0.339*** Religiosity -0.300 Constant 1066* * Observations 18,377 Clusters (by country) 31 Note: *** p g 0.001, ** p 5 0.01, * p g 0.05 32 Chapter 2 The Determinants of Left-Right Identification Conover and Feldman (1981) provide evidence that Left-Right self-identificat ion may be, for many people in a number of countries, purely symbolic; that is, for a large number of people, Left-Right identification has little. if any, cormection to issue positions or vote choice. So. even though Left-Right identification is highly stable over time (Krosnick, 1991) and people certainly “think. feel, and behave in ideologically meaningful and interpretable terms” (Just, 2006, p. 662), it does not necessarily follow that Left-Right identification implies specific policy or vote preferences. As with identity in general. Left—Right identification is likely to be a function of a number of personal and social influences (Howard, 2000). This chapter, putting aside the potentially mediating affect of issue attitudes (see Chapter 3), directly examines the causal link between demographic and psy- chological individual-level attributes and societal-level characteristics and Left—Right identification. Specifically, this chapter examines how the interaction between indi— vidual psychology and exposure to societal values affects Left-Right. identificat ion. 33 2.1 Determinants of Left-Right Identification While a number of factors that contribute to an individual's Left-Right identifica- tion will be investigated, the primary focus of this chapter is on the relationship between education and Left-Right identification. This focus is due to two primary considerations. First, unlike other demographic and psychological characteristics, the educatioi‘ial system is under the control of the society in which it is embedded and is thereby alterable.1 Second, there have been inconsistencies in the research regarding the effect of education on ideological identification. Given the malleability of institutions, the implication is that the ideological composition of society can be potentially influenced to some degree. This makes understanding the relationship between the educational system and the ideological inclinations of a public vital 2 when a society is contemplating institutional design. 2.1.1 Ideological Identification and Education In general, research connecting ideological identification and education shows that greater levels of education lead to a more left-leaning ideological identification. For instance, W'eakliem (2002), in a forty-country study of the effect of education on political opinion, determines that increasing levels of education results in a shift toward left-wing attitudes with greater levels of national development. - although there is some tendency toward a shift to the right on certain economic issues. Norris 1While it is certainly debatable whether or not psychological characteristics are independent of environment an individual inhabits, from a normative perspective, one can more readily accept the societal manipulation of the education system than the societal manipulation of individual psychological characteristics. 2Research over the last 60 years has primarily used two different measures to quantify political ideology. Whereas some simply take advantage of Left-Right or liberal-co)iservative self-identification measures, some researchers instead use issue attitudes as a surrogate for political ideology. While this chapter does not focus on issue attitudes, it is reasonable to presume that those individual attributes associated with one measure of political ideology - Left-Right identification in this case - are also associated with the other. The connection between Left-Right identification and issue attitudes will be examined explicitly in chapters 3 through 5. 34 finds that in regards to the Left-Right location of an individual‘s vote choice, the "impact of education generates patterns that differ across societies” (2004, p. 113). Two general lines of theoretical reasoning have developed to explain why educa- tion influences ideological identification: the developmental thesis and socialization thesis. The developmental thesis proposes that education contributes to the de- velopment of a liberal ideology by “expanding the student’s frame of reference and stimulating cognitive and personality growth” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Moore, 1995, p. 127). Finding empirical support for this reasoning, Kingston et a1. (2003) find cognitive ability and education to be reciprocally related and demonstrate that those with higher levels of education and a higher socioeconomic status are more liberal on civil liberties and gender equality issues due to greater cognitive ability. Davis and Robinson (1991) develop a perspective which they refer to as the Enlightenment Thesis. These authors propose that a greater level of knowledge and intellectual sophistication leads to reduced commitment to traditional authority and to an increased tolerance of diversity. This view aligns with those theories mentioned above insofar as these attitudes reflect an aversion to certain aspects of authoritarianism. If, as is proposed in chapter 1, authoritarian predispositions are part and parcel of the Left-Right continuum (at least in Western Europe). then the Enlightenment thesis indirectly argues that education pulls one away from the authoritarian nature of the Right. Socialization theories, however. also explain the findings of Davis and Robinson (1991). Of considerable relevance is the fact that these authors analyze individuals in Austria, West Germany, Great Britain, and the United States; all societies that, at least in the abstract, value personal independence and tolerance of diversity. Weakliem’s core values thesis3 holds that “education increases commitment to the 3The core values theory is an example of a socialization theory. Those who subscribe to socialization models hold that “education affects political attitudes, not through cognitive or personality development, but directly through the transmission of attitudes to students via didactic and social learning processes such as modeling 35 core. values and institutions of society. This does not mean that educated people will simply hold a more favorable view of the. status quo. Rather, educated people will take general values more seriously when forming opinions about particular issues” (2002, p. 143‘). The findings of Davis and Robinson (l991), given their country selection, are in perfect accord with the core values thesis; education in countries which value personal independence and tolerance of diversity socializes one to accept these values. The core values theory receives additional support. from both Phelan et al. (1995) and Sheepers et al. (2002). I’lielan ct. al. (1995) find that education is related to tolerance of homeless people but also to less support for economic aid to the homeless. They conclude that education instills in students a sense of the cultural values found in that. society. Sheepers et al. (2002) determine that the effects of socializing agents. such as education and religion, on moral values depend on national circumstances such as aggregate levels of religiosity, religious heterogeneity, and length of time a. country has been democratic. Research examining value priorities in the American public links the core values thesis and ideological identification. This research finds that in the US. an individ- ual‘s value priorities are related to their liberal—conservative identification (Jacoby. 2002). This implies that education would induce an individual's ideological identi— fication to shift either to the left or right. based on the core values of that society. This implication is supported by Weil’s conclusion that the “evidence indicates that education has an effect on ideological liberalism in long-term libcral democracies with h(—:t.crogeue()us populations. . . Thus, one may conclude, the effect of education on values, when it occurs, must be interpreted as a form of socialization” (1985, p. 471). The developmental model, then, predicts that education will always induce left- and reinforcement” (Phelan et al., 1995, p. 128). 36 wing it'lentification or attitudes. The socialization model, on the other hand, can explain the adoption of both left—wing and right-wing ideologies and can also ex— plain the adoption of a symbolic label (such as left—wing or right-wing. or liberal or conservative) in the absence of any policy support. While there is evidence to support both the developmental model and the socialization model, the majority of the evidence appears to favor the socialization model; and more specifically, the core values thesis. 2.1.2 Interaction Effects: Core Values, Education, and Per- sonality The core values thesis implies an interaction between the core values of society and an individual’s level of education. However, it is likely that education is only capable of instilling societal values if the individual is open to those values. For those. who are closed to such messages, education may actually instill or reinforce contrary values. Research examining resistance to persuasion finds that those who perceive them— selves to have successfully coImter-argued a pQI'SLIdSlUll attempt. from a source be- lieved to possess high-levels of expertise increase their certainty toward the role rant attitude (Tormala & Petty, 2004). Further, those who successfully resist a persua- sion attempt and who view this resistance in a positive light (i.e. those who (ironsider persuasion resistance as a good thing in and of itself - perhaps perceived as a sign of intelligence) show a greater increase in certainty than do those who view resistance to be a sign of close-mindedness (Rydell, Hugenberg. 8.: McConnell, 2006). Thereby, those right—wing (left-Wing) students who are unreceptive to and/or successfully counter—argue the left-leaning (right—leaning) messages of educational institutions in more left-leaning (right—leaning) countries have their original attitudes regarding their values reinforced (Rucker & Petty, 2004) and thereby become more attached to and more certain of their right-wing (left—wing) identification. 37 We must therefore not only account for the interaction between education and societal values, but must also account for an individual’s degree of receptivity to the societal messages transmitted by educational institutions. The personality trait openness to experience, from the Big Five personality inventory, is a helpful indicator of an individual‘s receptivity to novel information (McCrae 8.: Costa, 1999). Those who score higher on the openness to experience trait are more inquisitive and open to new ideas. This dictates a tl'iree-way interaction involving societal values, duration of education, and openness to experience. Essentially, the argument is as follows: societies embody an organized and co— herent set of values. This value structure is transmitted through educational in- stitutions. Those who are receptive to such messages, shift their value structure toward that. of the society. Those who reject those messages, are pushed further from societal values. This shift in values consequently alters individuals” Left-Right identification as such shifts to correspond to their new value structure. 2. 1.3 Control Variables A number of demographic, psychological, and macrolevel variables have been linked to ideological identification. In order to make the analysis as comprehensive as pos- sible, and to ensure that any relationship between the primary explanatory variables are not confounded with known covariates, I also include a number of other variables in the following analyses. I briefly summarize the relationship these variables are proposed to have with measures of ideological identification. Demographic Factors Age: The relationship between age and political ideology may not. be as straight.— fOI‘Wt-Ll'd as common perception would presume. Conventional wisdom suggests that with age comes conservatism. Glenn (1974), however, finds that while age cohorts do not keep pace with the liberalization of society as a whole, they nevertheless do become more liberal over time. Looking at. specific issues yields mixed evidence as to the effect of age on political ideology. Examining sexual attitudes, Treas (2002) finds that as American birth cohorts advance in age they become more liberal toward some issues (homosexuality) and more conservative toward others (teenage sex). All things considered, it. seems the assumption that the older one gets the more conservative one becomes is not, well founded. Gender: A volume of evidence has been found to support assertions that women are more liberal than are men (e.g., Pratto, Stallworth, & Sidanius, 1997). This is attributed to the view that women are more nurturing than are men. This finding extemls to more nuanced research programs also. Koch (2000) finds that. among American political candidates, women are more liberal than men. Further, citizens tend to assume that women candidates are more liberal than men. Howell and Day (2000) find that. men and women differ as to how and why they prefer the policy orientations they do. Men, for example, become more conservative with higher levels of religiosity as opposed to females, while females become more liberal with higher levels of education than do men. Income: One would predict, according to theories of self-interest, that those who are economically well-off will be more inclined to favor right-wing policies and those who are not will be more likely to favor left-wing policies (e.g., Doherty, Gerber, & Green, 2006; Sears, Lau, Tyler, & Allen, 1980). This logic is derived from theories of self-interest and the traditional understanding of the Left-Right continuum. The Left-Right continuum is primarily a heuristic for sun‘imarizing economic policy is- sues. Left-wing economic policies favor redistribution; therefore, these with lmver incomes will benefit while those with higher incomes will suffer. Minority Status: Left—wing policies, as those which promote equality over oppos- 39 ing values, tend to favor minority groups. This is clear when considering affirmative action and immigration policies in a number of democracies around the world. A number of studies link tolerance for minority groups and left-wing (liberal) identifi- cation (e.g.. McIntosh, Iver, Abele, 8:, Nelle, 1995; Weldon, 2006). Not surprisingly, evidence indicates that identifying as a minority group leads one to support minor- ity rights. Verkuyten and Yildiz (2006), using an experimental design to investigate the effects of minority status on support for minority rights, demonstrate that when a minority in a country, Turks clearly favor minority rights more than when they are the majority. This indicates that minority groups will be more supportive of left-wing policies and parties as such are more supportive of minority groups and minority rights than are right-wing policies. Therefore, those who identify them— selves as belonging to a minority group will be more likely to identify with the Left. than with the Right. Psychological Factors Personal Safety: For decades, research has found a clear connection between per- ceived threat and more right-wing policy positions (e.g., Eckhardt, 1969; Paxton & Mughan, 2006; Sniderman, Hagendoorn, & Prior, 2004). Jost et al. (2007) conclude that uncertainty and threat management independently contribute to conservative identification (see also Weber Sc Federico, 2007) and conservative leaders gain more support under conditions of heightened threat (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Those who perceive a threat to themselves or their community are more likely to support. right—wing policies while those who feel secure in their community are more likely to support left-wing policies. Personality: A number of researchers have found that personality traits strongly correlate with an individual‘s political ideology (e.g., Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, &: Sanford, 1950; Altemeyer, 1996; Angelo &: Dyson. 1968; Froman, 1961; 40 Jost et al., 2003; Krieger, 1968; l\1cClosky, 1958: Palma 8c McClosky, 1970). Re- cently, researchers have focused on and found relationships between political ide- (‘ilogy and more specific measures of personality. mainly the Big Five - agreeable- ness, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism, and openness (Jost, 2006; Ozer 2&7 Benet-h’lartinez, 2006; Van Hiel, Mervielde, & De Fruyt, 2004). Examining Left-Right identification and vote choice, Caprara and (itolleagues (Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Zimbardo, 1999; Caprara, Scl‘iwartz, Capanna, Vecchione, & Barbaranelli, 2006; Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004) find that voters prefer candidates whose personalities and ideological inclinations are similar to their own. Further, left-wing voters score higher in friendliness (agreeableness) and openness and lower in energy (extroversion) and conscientiousness than do right-wing voters (see. also Schoen 8.: Schumann, 2007). The findings from this line of research "attest to the role that personality plays as a unifying conceptual construct in the realm of politi- cal discourse. Personality does so by conveying the unity, coherence, continuity, and exercise of personal control vital in political discourse” (Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004, p. 584). Religtostty: Religiosity has been positively associated with right-wing ideologies for some time (e.g., McClosky & Chong, 1985; though see Norris & Ingleliart, 2004 for evidence of a decline in this pattern). McClosky proposes that "[c](_)nservative doctrine might. . . be formally derived from some set of postulates or from anotl'ier system of beliefs or cognitions" (1958, p. 39). Evidence of this proposal is found by Schwartz and Huismans (1995) and Karpov (2002). Schwartz and Huismans (1995) find that religiosity is positively associated with values that favor social order and guard against uncertainty, while Karpov (2002) demonstrates that while having little direct effect. religious commitment and participation do lead to stronger theocratie orientations and thereby, more politically intolerant social norms. However, these traits are more accurately reflected in authoritarian predispositions. Religiosity, 41 then. would appear to be related to right-wing identification only insofar as author- itarianism is part-and-parcel of the Left-Right continuum. Trust in Coeemment: A string of recent studies suggest that right-wing identi- fiers may possess more trust in government than do left-wing identifiers. As noted above, threat management appears to lead toward conservative identification and a cmiservative vote choice. As conservatism is an outcome of threat. management, one would presume that conservatives trust in their leaders to resolve, or more capably handle, threatening situations, whether temporary or continual. Supporting this, Devos et al. (2002) find that right-wing party supporters are indeed n’iorc trusting of institutions (governmental and otherwise) as a whole than are left—wing party supporters. Trust in People: Conservative identifiers tend to believe that the world is a dangerous place (Duckitt & Zanna, 2001; Jost et al., 2007; Weber & Federico, 2007). As such. one would presume that trust of others, especially outgroup members, is not a. common finding among conservatives. Frey and Powell (2005) provide evidence that those with higher levels of inter- personal trust will be more willing to engage in resource distribution / redistribution while those with lower levels of interpersonal trust will prefer self-protective allo- cation principles. Given that these principles go hand in hand with left-wing and right—wing ideologies, respectively, one would expect higher levels of interpersonal trust to be. associated with left-wing identification. IVIacro-Level Factors Income Dis )(Lrit' : Bradle et al. 2003 11 r )othesize that the “greater the difference I g Y El s lwtween median and mean income, the greater the level of redistributive spending preferred by the. median voter.” In a society where the mean income level is above the median, the median voter should support more redistributive policies and thereby, 42 leftist (economic) policies are more likely to receive support. Years Free: The longer a country’s political form remains constant, the more likely the values imbedded in that form are to spread through the populous and the more likely the values from the previous system are to be suppressed or forgotten. It is therefore necessary to control for the duration that each country has been under the control of a democratic regime. 2.2 Data and Measurement The data used in this research were gathered from various sources. The bulk, how— ever, was gathered from the European Social Survey (ESS). This survey contains the most relevant questions over the largest number of countries given the relationships I wish to explore. The ESS contains three rounds of data covering thirty-one coun— tries; the first round was conducted from 2001 to 2002 and contains 22 countries, the second round was conducted from 2003 to 2004 and contains 26 countries, the third round was conducted from 2005 to 2006 and contains 22 countries. 12 of these countries were it'lentical across all three rounds. The total number of country-level observations is 70; however, due to missing data, not all countries are included in each model shown below.4 The following variables from the ESS are used in this research: an individual’s Left-Right identification, age, duration of education. gender, household income level, minority status, perception of personal safety, and vote choice. Further, the following scales were also constructed using questions from the ESS and will be discussed in more detail below: personality (agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, openness), religiosity, trust in government, and trust in people. A more elaborate discussion of the construction of these scales is included below. 4Separate analyses Show that this fact does not change the substantive conclu- sions of the overall analysis. 43 In order to empirically model the interaction between a society’s core values, education, and personality, a proxy for a country’s core values is necessary. Current research regarding the ideological outcomes of the effective number of legislative parties in a country suggests that this measure will serve this purpose. A growing body of research reveals a link between electoral institutions and a number of left- wing oriented political outcomes, including wealth redistribution (Alesina. & Glaeser, 2004), environmental protection (F redriksson & Millimet, 2004), larger welfare states (Persson 8; Tabellini, 2003), increased minority representation (Bowler, Donovan, & Brockington, 2003), and greater levels of social tolerance (Dunn, Orellana, & Singh. Forthcoming, 2009). Further, Lijphart (1999) demonstrates that those countries with lower effective thresholds to party representation - which tend toward a greater number of effective parties - produce more egalitarian outcomes in general. In coun- tries with a greater number of legislative parties - a result of the electoral system in use (Duverger. 1954; Lijphart, 1994) - left-wing values receive greater support from the government. Given this research, societal (core) values appear more left-wing in countries with a greater number of effective parties. I therefore utilize the effective number of parties as a proxy for the core values of a society. An increase in the number of parties represented in a country’s legislature is presumed to be closely related to more left—wing core values in that country. The dependent variable in this study, Left-Right identification. is each individ- ual’s self-reported location on the Left-Right continuum ranging from 0 (Left) to 10 (Right), inclusive. Personality: Using a battery of 21 questions from the ESS, I construct. four personality scales determined by a prima facie evaluation of the. indicators and a ('ronfirmatory factor analysis using an oblique (promax) rotation. Using the Big Five as a reference point, these scales measure agreeableness, conscientiousiiess, extroversion. and openness to experience (.\*’IcCrae 8: Costa, 1909). The fifth trait 44 (of the Big Five). neuroticism, did not. have any obvious indicators within the survey and therefore, an appropriate scale could not be constructed. 0 Agreeableness: Scoring high on this trait reflects a tendency to be compas- sionate and cooperative. This trait is measured by a scale created from seven (picstions from the ESS (Cronbachs alpha = 0.73). 0 Conscientiousness: Those scoring high on this trait are self-discifflined, dutiful and achievement oriented. This trait is measured by a scale created from four questions from the ESS (Cronbach‘s alpha = 0.72). o Ertroversion: Individuals scoring high on this trait are more outgoing, socia- ble, and energetic. This trait. is measured by a scale created from four questions from the ESS (Cronbach’s alpha 2 0.75). o Openness to Experience: Those who score high on this trait are curious, ec- centric. and independent. This trait is measured by a. scale created from six questions from the ESS (Cronbach‘s alpha 2 0.74). Religmsity: To account. for the impact of religious values on ide(.)logy, I create a religiosity scale from three separate prima facie indicators of religious commitn‘ient taken from the ESS (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.81).5 A higher numerical talue on this scale is an indicator of a higher level of religiosity. Trust in Government: This variable is a measure of an individuals level of trust in government. I construct a scale from six prima facie indicators of trust. in government taken from the ESS (Cronbach’s alpha 2 0.86). A higher numerical value on this scale is an indicator of a higher level of trust. in govermnent. 5Though two of the three items used to construct the religiosity scale are behav- ioral, I still choose to classify this as a psychological variable due to the significant correlations that have previously been found between these behaviors and religious- ness (Zinnbauer et al., 1997). Trust in. People: This variable is a measure of an individual’s level of trust in other people. I construct a scale from three prima facie indicators of trust in people taken from the ESS (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.77). Those who score higher on this scale possess a higher level of trust in other people. The country-level measure of income disparity was derived from the ESS house- hold income question. Income disparity is a measure of the difference between the median and mean income in each country; specifically. I subtract the aggregate mean income from the aggregate median income. If Bradley’s (2003) hypothesis holds. an increase in this measure should be related to more right-wing orientations. In addition to the ESS, I have also made use of the world Bank’s Database of Political Institutions (Beck, Clarke, Groff, Keefer, & Walsh, 2001) to determine a country‘s effective number of legislative. parties (Laakso & 'I‘aagcpera, 1979) and the Freedom House Ratings to determine the duration a country has been free. 2.3 Hypothesis, Predictions, and Analyses Hypothesis 1: The modified core values thesis suggests that an interati‘tion between the core values of a society, the duration an individual is in the educational system. and how psychologically open an individual is will directly affect an individuals ideological identification. Prediction 1: Individuals who are more psychologically Open should identify as more left—wing if they have had a longer educational tenure in a country with a larger effective number of parties. Prediction 2: Individuals who are less psychologically open should identify as more. right-wing if they have had a longer educational tenure in a country with a larger effective number of parties. As this chapter seeks to determine not only the demographic and psychologi- cal effects on political ideology. but also effects from country—level variables, and in 46 order to retain as much information as possible in the analyses, I utilize a linear mixed model to analyze the data. A mixed model approach offers two key benefits to this study. First, because such models decompose the relationship between vari— ables into separate level-1 (individual-level) and level-2 (country—level) components, such models reduce the loss of information encountered with strictly aggregate-level analyses. Second, linear mixed models account for the misestimation of stemdard errors that could result from the interdependence of individual responses within the same country (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). A rand 5.2 effective parties (+1 s.d.) c ' 6.6 effective parties (+2 s.d.) .2 . ’-. 8 3- 3 .'c J 1: -. '- LU ~11)“, ".;'_..‘ .0- “\L'_I‘.; .‘.'_ E, O gtog-I‘D.Quit-5::11!‘i%;::ttlttint-I w f'FT.\.'~J-o. .5 i...‘-.NKL.:\"- .E m , . ‘41:“ a: C," T4: is ‘- 2 o '.',- L9— ".' '. | | I l I I 1 2 3 4 5 6 Openness Figure 2.1: Marginal Effect. of Edufation on Left-Right Identification as Openness and Effective Parties Change. an increasing impact on Left—Right identification as the effective number of parties variable increases. However. the direction of this effect is dependent on how psycho- logically open an individual is. For those who score higher on the openness measure, education is positively related to left-wing identification. For those who score lower on the openness measure, education is positively related to right—wing identification. This graph convincingly rules out the developmental model and lends credence to the modified core values thesis. At each level of the effective parties variable, increasing education results in those who score higher on the trait of psychological openness identifying as more left-wing. However. also at each level of the effective parties variable, increasing education results in those with lower scores on the trait. of psychological openness identifying as more right—wing. Therefore, increasing educa- tion does not necessarily lead to left—wing identification. Rather, it is conditional on an individuals openness to experience. Education increases left-wing identification for those psychologically open to experience and increases right—wing identification for those psychologically closed to experience. As the developmental model pre- dicts education to unconditionally increase left-wing identification, this model can be effectively dismissed. Dependent Variable: Leit«nght Identification " indicates significance at the 0.05 level F’ i a — 2.5 effective parties (-1s.d.) —--- 3.8 effective parties (mean) '1‘ 5.1 effective parties (+1 s.d.) g 6.4 effectiveparties (+2 s.d.) ‘37 g- O - , ~ ~. 3 a... '. ‘! D “'\'_'n .01... UJ “\L-4-.. ...... 3 ‘~2\‘y "' 0 asioochIKQ‘- 3 “‘52.. t '.-\--:'\t. L” -.o.. l‘.\:,L-,II a to 8'.- ". M‘“.~'J-.. E O— .. ‘0 NHL" c» - - f «'6 -_ , 2 ., l l I l l | 1 2 3 4 5 6 Openness Figure 1.32: Marginal Effect of Education on Left-Right. Identification as Openness and Effective Parties Change (West). In contrast to the developmental model, the modified core values thesis receives support from these results. The core values of a country. represented by the effec-\ tive number of parties in a countrys legislature, clearly affects the degree to which education influences Left-Right. identification; the more left-wing the core values of a country, the more powerful the effect of education on Left-Right identification. All else equal, as educational institutions channel increasingly left—wing values, the more left-wing the psychologically open become and the more right-wing the 1’)sy- Dependent Variable: Left-Right Identification ' indicates significance at the 0.05 level —-— 2.8 effective parties (-1 s.d.) - — - - 4.5 effective parties (mean) 6.2 effective parties (+1 s.d.) 7.9 effective parties (+2 s.d.) .05 I I .- I H I. -'a ‘H..'I t ‘- "e. Marginal Effect of Education 0 I I l I l I 1 2 3 4 5 6 Openness Figure 2.3: Marginal Effect of Education on Left—Right Identification as Openness and Effective Parties Change (East). chologically closed become. These results demonstrate the utility of the modified core values thesis. Above, I noted that the influence of this interaction on Left-Right identification is, as least in some measure, a result of the degree to which authoritarian values are wraplwd up in Left-Right identification. Chapter 1 demonstrated that this is true for Western Europe, but not for Eastern Europe. As such, I rerun the analyses separately for those countries that have been classified as free for less than 24 years (18 cases) and those that have been classified as free for 24 years or more (47 cases). This division largely divides the Western and Central European countries from those of Eastern Europe. As is apparent from Figures 2.2 and 2.3, there is clearly a difference when dividing these two groups. While the graph of the Western and Central European countries closely resembles that of the sample as a whole (a pattern that is likely to do with their greater representation in the data), the graph of the Eastern European countries returns a much more muted version of Figure 2.1.10 As can be seen from Figure 2.3, there is no longer any significant relationship between education and more right-wing identification. And while there is some differentiation in the impact of education on Left-Right identification between countries with a varying number of effective parties. that difference is fairly small. This is likely a result of the instability of the party systems in many Eastern European countries (e.g., Bakke & Sitter, 2005; 'l‘avits, 2005); in Eastern Europe the proposition that the diversity of the party system will function as a proxy for the Left-Right leaning of a country’s core values is unlikely to hold. The remainder of the demographic variables accounted for in the models - age, gender, income level, and minority identification - are all significant and in the expected direction; age and income level are positively associated with right-wing 11 whereas identifying as a female or as a minority is associated with identification left—wing identification. While not impressively substantial, the personality variables prove to be signif— icant indicators of Left-Right identification and robust to alterations in the model. Agreeableness and openness are both associated with left-wing identification while conscientiousness and extroversion are associated with right-wing identification. These findings lend support to those of Caprara and colleagues. Contrary to expectations, personal safety has no significant effect on an individ- uals Left-Right identification. Religiosity, on the other hand, is significantly and 10Given. the limited number of country—level units for Eastern Europe, I remain cautious in how accurate these analyses truly are separated from the sample as a. whole. 1llt is important to note here that I am not asserting that the older one becomes. the more likely one is to identify as right-wing; the data do not support that con- clusion. What is to be concluded is that older cohorts are more likely to identify as right-wing. positively related to right-wing identification. Though the impact of religiosity is not very large — indicating only a 1.99 point shift in Left-Right identification over the entire. range of the religiosity variable — it is fairly robust to model alteration. And finally, though the coefficient is rather small. trust in government. is signifi- cantly associated with right-wing identification while trust in people is unrelated to Left-Right identification. 2.4 Conclusion For well over a half—century researchers have been investigating the connection be- tween various demographic and psychological variables and an individual’s ideolog- ical identification. Two of the more prominent lines of research have focused on education and personality. Education has repeatedly been linked to left-wing ideo— logical identification, yet more recent research has revealed a link between education and right-wing voting leading one to question the relationship between education and the ideological leaning of political attitudes. Personality, through the specifi- cation of certain personality traits, has also been repeatedly linked to Left-Right. identification with certain traits aligning fairly consistently. though not always so, with left- or right-wing identification. This chapter reexamines the connections between various constructs and Left- Right identification and finds many of the expected links between various demo- graphic, psychological and country—level variables and Left-Right identification. The most interesting finding involves the interaction between education, openness, and the. effective number of parties. This interaction term was devised given theoretical expectations arising from the core values thesis. As a specialized form of socializa- tion theory, this thesis posits that education will socialize an individual to the core values of that society. As an addendum to this thesis, I propose that only those. individuals who are psychologically open to such values will be influenced by such; thus the interaction between education, openness, and the effective number of par- ties (a proxy for the Left-Right leaning of a society’s core values). The. results of the above analyses demonstrate that the modified core values thesis provides a. power- ful explanation for the cross-country differences found in the relationship between education and Left-Right identification. The findings reported in this chapter go a long way toward dismissing the devel- opmental thesis — the argument that increasing education unconditionally results in more left-wing identification can be effectively rejected as this has been shown to be false - and supporting the modified core values thesis. Both personality and context matter for ideological identification. Individuals and institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Personality and context interact to influence our political attitudes. C}! CH 2.5 Appendix 2-A: ESS questions used in con- struction of dataset Left-[fight Identification: In politics people sometimes talk of ”left” and ”right”. Using this card, where would you place yourself on this scale, where 0 means the left, and 10 means the right? Demographics Age: And in what year were you born? Education: How many years of full-time education have you (_'(_)Im)let..e(l'? Gender: CODE SEX, respondent Income: Using this card, if you add up the income from all sources, which letter describes your l‘iousehold‘s total net income? If you don‘t know the exact figure, please give an estimate. Use the part of the card that you know best: weekly, monthly or annual income. Illinocity: Do you belong to a minority ethnic group in [country]? Psychological Personality: Now I will briefly describe some people. Please listen to each de- scription and tell me how much each person is or is not like. you. 0 Agreeableness ~— Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to her / him. She / he. likes to do things in her/ his own original way. -— She/ he thinks it is important that every person in the world should be treated equally. She / he believes everyone should have equal opportunities in life. — It is important to her/ him to listen to people who are different from her/ him. Even when she/ he disagrees with them, she/ he still wants to understand them. —- It is important to her/him to make her/his own decisions about what she/ he does. She / he likes to be free and not depend on others. — It’s very important to her/ him to she/ help the people around her/ him. She/ he wants to care for their wellbeing. — It is important to her/ him to be loyal to her/his friends. 8110/ he wants to devote herself/ himself to people close to her/ him. — She / he strongly believes that people should care for nature. Looking after the environment is important to her/ him. 0 Conscientiousness ~ It is important to her/ him to be rich. She/ he wants to have a lot of money and expensive things. — It is important to her/ him to show her / his abilities. She / he wants people to admire what she/ he does. — Being very successful is important to her/ him. She / he hopes people will recognise her / his achievements. — It is important to her/him to get respect from others. She/ he wants people to do what she / he says. 0 Extroversion — She / he likes surprises and is always looking for new things to do. She / he thinks it is important to do lots of different things in life. — Having a good time is important to her/him. She/he likes to ”spoil” herself / himself. — She / he looks for adventures and likes to take risks. She / he wants to have an exciting life. 57 — She/ he seeks every chance she/ he can to have fun. It is important to her/ him to do things that give her/ him pleasure. o Openness -- It is important to her/ him to live in secure surroundings. She/ he avoids anything that might endanger her / his safety. — Slie/ he believes that people should do what they’re told. She/ he thinks people should follow rules at all times, even when no—one is watching. — It is important to her/ him to be humble and modest. She / he tries not to draw attention to herself/ himself. — It is important to her/him that the government ensures her/ his safety against all threats. She/ he wants the state to be strong so it can defend its citizens. — It is important to her/ him always to behave properly. She/ he wants to avoid doing anything people would say is wrong. — Tradition is important to her/him. She/ he tries to follow the customs handed down by her/ his religion or her/ his family. Personal Safety: How safe do you - or would you - feel walking alone in this area after dark? Reltgz'ostty: Regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how reli- gious would you say you are? Religtostty: Apart from special occasions such as weddings and funerals, about how often do you attend religious services nowadays? Reltgtosz'ty: Apart from when you are at religious services, how often, if at all. do you pray? Trust in Government: Using this card, please tell me on a score of ()-10 how 58 much you personally trust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust an institution at all. and 10 means you have complete trust. (country) ‘s parliament? the legal system? the police? politiciaus‘.’ o the European Parliament? the United Nations? Trust in PeOple: Using this card, generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people? Please tell me on a score of 0 to 10, where 0 means you can’t be too careful and 10 means that most people can be trusted. Trust in People: Using this card, do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance, or would they try to be fair? Trust in People: Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or that they are mostly looking out for themselves? 2.6 Appendix 2-B: Variable Summary Variable Summary Variables Macro Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max Left-Right Identification 70 113626 5.091 2.192 0 10 Demographics Age 70 131197 46.501 18.427 4 109 Education 70 130189 11.816 4 .088 0 56 Gender 70 131755 0.536 0.499 0 1 Income 67 98802 6.023 2.651 1 12 Minority 70 129465 0.045 0.207 0 1 Psychological Agreeableness 68 123604 4.751 0.656 1 6 Conscientious 68 123521 3.561 1.001 1 6 Ext reversion 68 123450 3.746 1.059 1 6 Openness 68 123571 2.674 0.847 1 6 Personal Safety 70 130410 0.753 0.431 0 1 Religiosity 70 131807 3.683 2.048 0 10 Trust in Government 70 131132 4.913 1.954 0 10 Trust in People 70 131778 5.106 2.007 0 10 Country-level Effective Parties 70 131988 3.987 1.453 2.18 8.86 Income Deviation 67 126951 0.002 0.415 —0.735 1.143 Years Free 70 131988 24.525 9.478 0 32 Interaction Term Edu*Open*Parties 68 122095 131.355 85.466 0 886 60 Chapter 3 Left-Right Identification and Issue Attitudes Empirically and theoretically, individuals’ issue positions have been linked to their Left-Right. identification. Dalton (1985). for example, finds that although party elites are slightly further to the left on foreign aid issues and Left-Right identification than are their supporters, the opinions of these two groups are remarkably similar on economic, environmental, security and social issues. Within the political realm, the corresporidence of issue attitudes and Left-Right identification between party elites and their supporters provides evidence of a connection between the two concerns. \v-V' hat this evidence does not indicate however, is whether issue attitudes cause an individual‘s Left—Right. identification or whether Left-Right. identifiration causes an individual's issue attitudes. The purpose of this chapter is to resolve this deficiency. The causal direction of the relationship between issue attitudes and Left-Right identification (if there is one) is of considerable importance to the political world. Questions of democratic functionality are most relevant here, especially as concerns matters of accountability. At issue is the idea of “throwing the bums out.” If. in our democratic system, we are to punish parties or candidates that fail to live up to our expectations, there must. be a viable alternative. In many countries. it is by no 61 means a certainty that there is such an alternative. In primarily two-party systems such as the United States and England, an individual who prefers left-wing policies may be unwilling to throw out the more left-wing party as the only viable alternative is the party of the right. In multiparty systems, on the other hand, there may be viable alternatives to a party voted for previously as the likelihood of sharing policy preferences with more than one party increases with the number of effective parties 1 This argument, however, implies that we are not mindless partisans in a country. and that our issue attitudes are politically relevant; rather than merely voting our affective. party attaclunent, we vote for the party which most, accurately reflects the ideological leaning of our issue attitudes. Issue attitudes should reflect. a (reasoned or affective) preference for one policy over another. While this is a normative statement, on its face it seems a valid one. If an individual‘s issue attitudes were derived from an affective or symbolic attz'u‘lunent to an ideological label that was adopted solely due to the family one was raised by, then that individual would appear to be formulating policy positions based on nothing more than which face of a coin landed upright after a coin toss at birth. While it is entirely possible that these issue attitudes turn out to be preferential given one’s life circumstances (as when a working class individual prefers a left-wing economic policy due to his attachment to the left—wing label associated with such a policy), it is also possible that such attitudes may be self—destructive. This is not to say, however, that derivation of issue attitudes from an affective or symbolic attachment to an ideological label is necessarily negative. As was stated 1In Partisan Families (Zuckerman, Dasovic, & Fitzgerald, 2007), Zuckerman and colleagues find evidence of bounded partisanship. This concept refers to the idea that while people do not always vote for their preferred party, they almost never vote for the opposition; people either vote for their preferred party or abstain from voting. The analyses in this book investigate supporters of the two dominant parties in Britain and Germany and evidence of transferring one’s vote to an alternative party, even a minority party of ideologically similar predisposition, is found to be incredibly rare. So, even in a multiparty system, such as Germany, voters seem unwilling to “throw the bums out” in favor of an alternative party. above, this attaclnnent may lead to the “correct” policy preferences given one‘s life circumstances. Further, this attachment may also result from the (conscicms or unconscious) identification of fundamental values with that. label, thereby leading to the appropriate policy preferences without even having to familiarize oneself with the relevant issue. Either way the directionality runs, there is something positive to be said - assuming the ideological correspondence of policy preferences and Left—Right identification in the party and in the individual. 3.1 Left-Right Identification and Issue Attitudes Left-Right identification may be used in four differing ways. 1) It. may be used as a heuristic device to allow an individual to choose a policy position with minimal cognitive effort. 2) It may be used as a. summation device to allow an individual to retroactively sum up their issue attitudes across a range of issues with little effort. ()r it may be used in 3) both these fashions or 4) in neither of them. Two well established research traditions - traditions which are appear to be at odds in a substantial portion of political research - form the first two of these uses and argue against each other as to whether Left-Right identification causes an individual’s issue positions or vice versa. Even research that does not. directly address issues of causality oftentimes makes clear assumptions as to which concept. causes which. 3.1.1 The Left—Right continuum as a heuristic device As a heuristic‘2 device, Left-Right identification necessarily precedes issue attitudes. An individual already aware of his own ideological identity knows which issue at— titude to adopt based on the ideological label attached to that. issue attitude; one. 2Heuristic is defined as a mental shortcut used to conserve cognitive resources. 63 simply adopts the issue attitude with the same label as himself. In this manner, an individual’s identity dictates one’s issue attitudes. Conceptualizing Left-Right identification as a heuristic device is the logical deriva- tion of socialization theories. Socialization theories argue that Left-Right (or Liberal- Conservative in the American case) identification is a psychological attaclnnent (Conover 8: FQldIIl'dIl, 1981) formed early in life and highly resistant to change (Campbell. Converse, Miller, &. Stokes, 1960). This attachment is formed previ- ous to an individual’s issue attitudes. Once this attachment is formed, it serves to provide individuals with a quick and easy way to determine which policy position they prefer; policies which possess the same label to which the individual is attached, or with which the individual identifies. are the policies he should prefer. 3.1.2 The Left-Right continuum as a summation device As a summary device, Left-Right identification is indifferent to causal sequence. As a heuristic device, Left-flight identification (whet her of the. individual or a set. of issue attitudes) is still useful to quickly and efficiently summarize one‘s issue attitudes. However, as an ex post facto summary device. Left-Right identification is logically subsequent to the development if issue attitudes. I refer to this ex post facto use. of a summary device as a summation device as this terminology implies something that is subsequent to something else rather than the sequentially neutral term, summary. Conceptualizing Left-Right identification as a summation device follows the lead of rational choice theories. Rational choice theories regarding Left-Right. identifi— cation argue that an individual's Left—Right. identification acts as a summation of the specific issues which that individual finds important (Inglehart, 1984; Inglehart. & Klingemann, 1976). Similarly, Dalton describes Left-Right identification as “a. sort of ‘super issue,’ a statement of positions on the issues that are currently most important to each voter” (2005, p. 207). For rational chrfice theories, an individuals 64 position on the Left-Right continuum is a categorical device used to summarize, ex post facto. relevant issue positions. 3.1.3 Hybrid and alternative conceptions of the Left-Right continuum Left-Right identification. then. may be used either prior to issue attitude formation as a heuristic device or subsequent to issue attitude formation as a sunu‘nation device. As was noted in Chapter 1, however, there are now at least two separate categories of issues: traditional, economic, class-based issues and the more recently politically relevant New Politics issues — issues regarding alternative lifestyles, enviromnental protection, nuclear energy, and sexual and social equality. Further, I have argued that the New Politics issue dimension has not yet been fully integratm'l into the Left-Right. continuum. More specifically, I have argued that. the New Politics issue attitudes of the less politically interested are more likely to be ideologically distinct from an individual's Left-Right identification than are his economic. issue attitudes due to the longer temporal association of these latter issues with the Left—Right continuum. As such, it is possible that an individual may develop economic issue attitudes as fits his economic situation in life, consequently adopt the appropriate Left-Right identification, and then heuristically adopts the ideologically correspond- ing New Politics issue attitudes. Of course it is also entirely possible, given the discussion in Chapter 1 regarding issue interest, that an individual first. takes in- terest. in New Politics issue attitudes, consequently adopts the matching Left-Right identification. and then heuristically adopts the ideologically corresponding economic, issue attitudes.3 As these two possibilities suggest, Left-Right. identification may act ‘3It is also possible that an individual develops issue attitudes regarding those. issues in which he is interested, regardless of the issue dimension, consequently adopts the appropriate Left-Right identification. and then heuristically adopts the ideologically corresponding issue attitudes for those issues for which he is not all that interested in but is aware of. This possibility seems rather intuitive. However. 65 as both a heuristic and a summation device. Finally. and as some previous research would suggest, Left-Right identification may act neither as a heuristic device nor a summation device. Evidence in Chapter 1. for example, indicates that. Left-Right. identification and issue attitudes do not. always coincide. Beginning with Converse (1964), evidence has accumulated which demonstrates that the more politically sophisticated are more likely to align their Left-Right identification with their issue attitudes than are the. less interested. 3.2 Sophistication as a conditional effect Research in the areas of political sophistication and issue constraint provides strong indications of the possible causal relationships between issue attitudes and Left— Right identification. Discussing party identification and issue attitudes. Lavine and Gschwend speculate that: both conceptions of party identification may be true, but. for different voters. The ’data—drivcn‘ [or rational choice] model of party identifi- cation might be more applicable to sophisticated voters, who are in a better position to manage the stream of political events and maintain updated running tallies of party performance. By contrast, the heuris- tic or ’theory-driven’ classical conceptualization [or socialization model] may provide a better fit to nori-sophisticaterl voters. (2006, p. 160) Applying this argument to Left—Right identification yields similar predictions: ratio- nal choice models would appear to be more applicable to the politically sophisticated while socialization models may be more applicable to the less sophisticated.4 the necessary data to analyze such a relationship is only available in the American National Election Studies and unfortunately there does not appear to be enough issue attitudes with corresponding interest measures to reliably investigate this possibility. . 4“While this description may be more appropriately applied to party identification in the United States, it is perhaps just as, if not more so, applicable to Left-Right. 66 Research by Sniderman and colleagues (Sniderman, Hagen, Tetlock, & Brady, 1986), though, indicates that for the more educated, Liberal-Conservative identi- fication causes issue attitudes among the more educated while it is affect which causes issue positions among the less educated. This research seemingly contradicts the theoretical stance that rational choice theories should apply to the more sophis- ticated. The issue positions in this research, however, are limited to issues regarding racial inequality in the United States. Though this research reveals an important crmsideration in the relationship between issue attitudes and Liberal-Conservative identification (i.e., the role emotions may play in attitude formation), the speci- ficity of both the issues examined and the political context. do not allow for broad generalizations across issues or countries. As there are two separate sets of relationships to consider - the relationship between an individual’s Left-Right identification and her traditional economic issue attitudes and an individual’s Left-Right identification and her New Politics issue attitudes - there is the possibility of both causal directions, as was noted above. Evidence from Chapter 1, indicating the pairwise inconsistency between eco- nomic issue attitudes, New Politics issues attitudes, and Left—Right identification, implies that. while one issue set may be related to Left-Right identification the other set may not be. This pattern, however, may only be relevant to those who rank lower identification in the European context. This is an allusion of the combined research of Blanger et a1. (2006), Inglehart and Klingemann (1976), and Krosnick (1991). Blanger et al. conclude that the volatility ”of the French party system make[s] it difficult for the electorate to develop a genuine long-term attachment to any particular party. In contrast, left—right ideology has always been a reliable guide to French voters for making sense of politics in their country, hence its superiority over party as a voting anchor” (2006, p. 513). Inglehart and Klingemann propose that. an individual whom identifies with a particular party and is aware of the perception of that. party’s ideological location, may also come to identify himself with that ideological location regardless of his actual issue positions (i.e. ideology by proxy via party) (1976, p. 244). Krosnick finds that Liberal-Conservative identification is just as consistent and stable over time as is party identification (1991). Taken together, these findings imply that in volatile party systems Left-Right identification may be the central political categorization, whereas in less volatile systems, the Left- Right continuum is still a central political categorization, even if it is not the only one. 67 on educational attainment or political interest. Stimson (1975), for example, finds that individuals who rank higher in educational attainment and political interest use fewer and broader dimensions to structure their political attitudes than do those who score lower in these traits. Stimson’s research corresponds to evidence demon- strating attitudinal constraint to be conditional on an individual’s level of political sophistication; the more educated and more politically interested are more likely to have some abstract, overarching structure to their political beliefs (Campbell et. al., 1.060; C(mverse, 1964, 2000; Converse 85 Pierce, 1986; Jennings, 1992; Klingemann, 1979). 3.3 Hypotheses, data, and method I expect the relationship between issue attitudes and Left—Right identification to be dependent 011 both an individual’s level of political interest5 and whether the issues examined are economic issues or New Politics issues. As discussed above, those with higher levels of political interest should be interested in a broader range of issues and possess the motivation to align their Left-Right it‘lentification and issue attitudes. Further, previous research indicates the applicability of rational choice models to the relationship between issue attitudes and Left-Right identification for those higher in political interest. Therefore, as economic and New Politics issue attitudes will likely be ideologically aligned and rational choice theory predicts Left'.-Riglit. identification to be a result of issue attitudes, I expect that for those with higher levels of political interest, issue attitudes will predict Left-Right identification rather than vice versa. For those lower in political interest, evidence indicates that it is unlikely that there is any relationship at all between either economic issue attitudes or New Poli- 5While the literature cited above only occasionally mentions political interest, alongside of education and political sophistication, I use the concept of political interest due to both its direct relationship to sophistication (Luskin, 1990) and due to its availability on cross-national survey instruments. 68 tics issue attitudes and Left—Right identification. Therefore, I expect that. for those with. lower levels of political interest, Left-Right identification will be unrelotul to issue attitudes, whether economic or New Politics. In the following analyses, I use data from the 1999 European Values Survey (EVS). However, due to the demanding nature of the methodology used (see below) and the necessity that questions regarding Left-Right identification, economic issue attitudes, New Politics issue attitudes, and politi ‘al interest are included in the survey, I am able to take advantage of data from only four countries: Austria, Belgium, Finland, and the Netherlands. As the foundation of this chapter is based on the idea that we are currently unaware of the causal relationship between issue attitudes and Left-Right. identifi- cation, each of these variables is theoretically endogenous with the other. As such. each variable is both dependent and independent and each equation will contain an endogenous variable on the right side of the equation. To minimize the problems associated with this occurrence (i.e., biased OLS estimators), I utilize two-stage least squares regression analysis to estimate the equations. Two—stage least squares regression allows one to produce estimators which effectively exogenize the endoge- nous variables and thereby remove any bias produced by normal OLS estimators (W'ooldridge, 2006). 3.4 Analyses Three variables in these analyses are. summated rating scales:6 political interest 7 E' (3 items), economic issue attitudes (5 items), and New Politics issue attitudes (o bSee Appendix 3—A for details on the questions used to construct each scale. ’ While the economic issue attitudes scale for Austria, Finland, and the Nether— lands are composed of the same 5 items, the economic issue attitudes scale for Belgium possesses only 4 of these five items. 69 items).8 Factor analyses - by country - for each set of items reveals the presence of a single latent variable on which all items load appropriately. A factor analysis of all ten issue attitude items reveals that there are indeed two separate issue groups within the ten items that correspond with the separate concepts of both economic and New Politics issue attitudes. I use the political interest scale to divide each country into high interest and low interest groups. While I attempted to divide each country into quartiles, due to the distribution of individuals on the political interest scale, division into exact quartiles was never accomplished. The high and low interest groups ranged from 24% to 30% of the sample in each country. Analyses were conducted separately for the high and low interest groups. Two-stage least squares regression analyses require a set of instruments that allow for the identification of each equation.9 The problem with instrumental variables approaches is deriving instruments that are both exogenous to the equation and predictive of one of the endogenous variables but not the other. Given the close relationship of issue attitudes and Left-Right identification, this is a tricky endeavor. To further complicate matters, the instruments are likely to differ between the low and high interest individuals; and this was indeed the case. The instruments used are mostly demographic in nature and are thereby theoretically and methodologically appropriate. However, a few of the instruments chosen are based on personal values. ‘ 81 was unable to find appropriate instruments for the Austrian Low Interest New Politics equations. Therefore, Table 3.1 does not report the results of these equations for Austria. 9It is this necessity that eliminated most countries from the following analyses. Instruments for either economic issue attitudes, New Politics issue attitudes, or Left.— Right identification were not able to be found “for most countries included in the 1999 EV S. An Instrumental Variable is defined in Wooldridge (2006) as follows: ” In an equation with an endogenous explanatory variable, an instrumental variable is a variable that does not appear in the equation, is uncorrelated with the error in the equation, and is (partially) correlated with the endogenous explanatory variable” (pg.840). In other words, instruments are variables, theoretically relevant to the model, which serve to exogenize the endogenous variables. It. is my belief that values precede both Left-Right identification and issue attitudes and are thereby exogenous to the relevant equations. Further, in those situations where it was possible to interchange values-based instruments with demographic ones, the results yielded identical conclusions. All instruments were tested using the Sargan statistic and had a Chi-square (with 1 degree of freedom) p—value greater than 0.1. (usually substantially so). Table 3.1 reports the results of the two—stage least squares analyses for each group in each country.10 First, with the exception of Finland, each country demonstrates a. remarkably similar pattern regarding the direction and empirical existence of the relationship between Left-Right identification and issue attitudes. It appears that. for the high interest group, both economic and. New Politics issue attitudes contribute to Left-Right. identification, while Left-Right identification does not contribute to either economic or New Politics issue attitudes. For those of little political interest, issue attitudes and Left-Right identification are unrelated. Finland is the exception for those of high interest with the findings partial and reversed: Left-Right identification contributes to economic issue attitudes and is unrelated to New Politics issue attitudes. “or those who possess little political interest in Finland, the findings are identical to the other countries: there is no relationship between either set of issue attitudes and Left-Right identification. Economic issue attitudes have a larger impact on Left-Right identification than do New Politics issue attitudes. 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While more modern conceptions of this relationship provide causal attributions conditional on some form of political sophistication — i.e. that rational choice theories apply to the more politically sophisticated while socialization theories apply to those less so - the analyses conducted in this chapter indicate that even this more conciliatory theoretical position may not be correct. These findings suggest that among those of greater political interest, rational choice theories may indeed be the more accurate as both economic issue attitudes and New Politics issue attitudes mntrilmte to an individual‘s Left-Right identification. Perhaps if the result for Finland had been consistent with Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, I would be content to leave the discussion at that. However, the findings for Finland suggest that this conclusion cannot be universally extended. Socialization theories seem to explain the findings in Finland and suggest that eco— nomic issue attitudes may be relevant to Left-Right idmrtification among the more sophisticated whereas New Politics issue attitudes are not. It is certainly not the case, though, that socialization theories explain relation— ships among political attitudes for the least interested. In fact, neither socialization nor rational choice theories apply to the least interested as there is apparently no relationship between the Left-Right identification and issue attitudes of the less in— terested. This likely does not come as a surprise to those who find the evidence of Converse (1964) and those who follow in his footsteps to be convincing. The find- ings in this chapter add yet another piece of evidence to the proposition that the Left-Right identification and political attitudes of the less interested are quite un- constrained. The findings of Sniderman and his colleagues (Sniderrnan et al., 1986) mentioned above suggest that perhaps it is affect which dictates the issue attitudes 74' of the less sophisticated. While this supposition cannot be tested here with data from the EVS. it is certainly an alternative worthy of investigation. The Left-Right. continuum should effectively surrunarize an individuals issue po- sitions. This is quite possibly the case for the politically interested; these individuals demonstrate a high degree of constraint between their Left-Right identification and issue attitudes with the causal arrow pointing from the former to the latter (except in Finland). The less interested, however. have a much more difficult time of it. There may be some constraint among their issue attitudes, but this constraint does not appear to include their Left-Right identifiratir)n. 3.6 Appendix 3-A: Questions used in scale con- struction Political Interest: 0 For each of the following aspects, indicate how important it is in your life: politics. 0 How interested would you say you are in politics? 0 How often do you follow politics in the news on television or on the radio or in the daily papers? Eti'onorrtics Issue Attitudes: o How would you place your views on this scale? 1 means you agree completely with the statement on the left (Private ownership of business should be in- creased). 10 means you agree completely with the statement on the right (Government. ownership of business and industry should be increased). 0 How would you place your views on this scale? 1 means you agree completely with the statement on the left (People should take more responsibility to pro- vide for themselves). 10 means you agree completely with the statement on the right (The government should take more responsibility). 0 How would you place your views on this scale? 1 means you agree completely with the statement on the left (People who are unemployed should have to take any job available or lose their unemployment benefits). 10 means you agree completely with the statement on the right (People who are unemployed should have the right to refuse a job they do not want). o How would you place your views on this scale? 1 means you agree completely with the statement. on the left (Competition is good. It stimulates people to 76 work hard and develop new ideas); 10 means you agree completely with the statement on the right (Competition is harmful. It brings out the worst in people). How would you place your views on this scale? 1 means you agree completely with the statement on the left (State gives freedom to firms); 10 means you agree completely with the statement on the right (State control firms). New Politics Issue Attitudes: Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified. or something in between: Homosexuality. Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between: Abortion. Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between: Divorce. Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified. or something in between: Euthanasia- ending the life of the incurably sick. Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between: Suicide. 77 3.7 Appendix 3-B: Instruments used in ZSLS Anal- yses Instruments used for ZSLS, by country and group Austria Issues Left-Right Identification. III — Econ Equality, Sex Children, Rservices HI - NP Education, RelPerson Equality, Group3 LI - Econ Education, SurvSelf Rservices, TradRat LI - NP NA NA Belgium Issues Left-Right Identification HI - Econ Equality, NatPride Godlmp, Education HI - NP Age, Education Equality, Parents LI - Econ Education, NatPride GodImp, TownSize LI - NP Age, Education Equality, TownSize Finland Issues Left-Right Identification HI - Econ Sex, Employed GodImp, IncEqual HI - NP Age, Education Equality, Income LI - Econ RelImp, Emplyed Group3, IncEqual LI - NP Children, TownSize IncEqual, Groupl Netherlands Issues Left-Right Identification HI - Econ Sex, Earner Group3, Rservices HI - NP Employed, Groupl Equality, Relation LI - Econ Equality, ServSelf IncEqual, RelDenom LI - NP Age, Education IncEqual, Student. Note: (instrument 1, instrument ‘2) Age: Responded self-reported age at time of survey. Children: Have you had any children? IF YES, how many? Earner: Are you the chief wage earner in your household? Education: Education Recoded 1 lower, 2 middle, 3 upper. Employed: Are. you employed now or not? Full time, Part time, Self employed 78 Equality: Both freedom and equality are important, but if you were to choose one or the other, which of these two statements comes closest to your own opinion? A. personal freedom more important, or B. equality more important. Godlmp: How important is God in your life? Please use this scale to indicate- 10 means very important and 1 means not at all important. Groupl: To which of these geographical groups would you say you belong first Of all? Group3: To which of these geographical groups would you say you belong least. IncEqual: How would you place your views on this scale? 1 means you agree completely with the statement on the left (Incomes should be made more equal); 10 means you agree completely with the statement on the right (W'e need larger income differences as incentives). Income: Here is a scale of incomes and we would like to know in what group your household is. counting all wages, salaries, pensions and other incomes that come in. Just give the letter of the group your household falls into, after taxes and other deductions. NatPride: How proud are you to be (NATIONALITY)? Parents: Do you live with your parents? Relation: W hether you are married or not, do you live in a stable relationship with a partner? RelDenom: Do you belong to a religious denomination? RServices: Apart from weddings, funerals and christenings, about how often do you attend religious services these days? RPerson: Independently of whether you go to church or not, would you say you are 1 A religious person, 2 Not a religious person, 3 A convinced atheist. Sex: Respondents sex Student: Are you employed now or not? Student 79 SurvSelf: Survival / Self-expression values TownSize: Size of town TradRat: Traditional / Secular rational values 80 Chapter 4 Modernization and the Evolution of the Left-Right Continuum Societies evolve. This simple fact forces social scientists to continually watch for changes in the political world. When societies change, so does the political land- scape of those societies. It should be apparent to anyone who follows politics in any developed nation that new issues are continually added to the political agenda. These issues pose a threat to any status quo between group membership and ide— ological affiliation. New issues provide an opportunity for the formation of new ideological cleavages. The addition of a symbolically powerful issue to a society’s political agenda can radically change the balance of political power in a society; new issues may fracture a political party into two distinct parties with narrower ideological ranges diminishing political unity and power or may attract large blocks of undecided voters to a single party thereby shifting or consolidating that party‘s political power. Changes such as this impact the political world through alteratim'is in how individuals identify themselves politically. Currently, New Politics issues have center stage in this tale of political evolution. This chapter, then, examines the impact of New Politics issues on Left-Right identification relative to economic issues. 81 4.1 The Breakdown of Traditional Political Cleav- ages Contrary to Lipset and Rokkan (1967), political cleavages are anything but frozen. With the decline of partisanship and religious commitment, social class and reli- gion have weakened as the two major cleavages in Western societies. In the United States, Liberal-Conservative identification is now cross-cutting the New Deal cleav- age (Levine, Carmines, 8:. Huckfeldt, 1997) and in most established democracies there are no longer any major parties that can claim to be predominantly socially or religiously homogeneous - only minor parties now attract homogeneous support- ers (Karvonen 85 Kuhnle, 2001). Former political cleavages that served to clearly divide specific social groups in the not-too-distant past are now cross-cutting those groups resulting in ideological cleavages that currently appear to be more vague and indistinct. Houtman (2001), in a class analysis of voting patterns in the Netherlands, reveals that members of the working class no longer vote based simply on their economic position in the social order; their educational status now plays a part in determining their vote choice. Ranking toward the bottom of the economic ladder in society, members of the working class tend to possess left-wing attitudes toward economic issues as it is in their self-interest to do so. Given their similarly low ranking on educational attainment, members of the working class tend toward conservative at- titudes on New Politics issues — i.e. alternative lifestyles, environmental protection, nuclear energy, and sexual and social equality. Left-wing vote choice for the working class remains positively associated with left-wing attitudes on economic issues but is now also found to be negatively correlated with conservative New Politics issue atti- tudes. The middle class is found to have the opposite socioeconomic characteristics and political attitudes of the working class. More importantly, Houtman concludes 82 that parties on both the left and right are chosen as often for their position on New Politics issues as they are for their position on Economic issues. Economic issues, then. are no longer the only determinant of vote choice for either the working or the middle class; New Politics issues also play a part and dictate a vote for a party of differing ideology. This pattern demonstrates a clear shift from the findings of ear- lier researchers and theorists where economic, class—based issues were the primary determinant of whether one would vote for a party of the Left or a party of the Right. 4.2 Modernization and Issue Evolution The current incarnation of modernization theory (Inglehart & \Nelzel, 2005) argues that the economic, class-based issues that have been traditionally associated with the Left—Right continuum are no longer as powerful for predicting vote choice due to the increasing relevance of postmaterialist (i.e., New Politics) issues (Inglehart, 1984). The increasing impact of postmaterial issues in determining vote choice results from a postindustrial revolution that pushes for greater social and political democratization. As a society’s level of socioeconomic development increases, major changes in the value priorities of that society occur. This occurs in two phases: iiu‘lustrialization and postindi1strialization. In the industrialization phase of development, societies shift from traditional values to secular-rational values. This results in the secularization of authority; authority becomes less mystical and more rational. The second phase of development leads to a shift from survival values to self—expression values. This phase leads to the increasing desire for emancipation from authority rather than a shift in the type, or justification, of authority.1 It is this postindustrial revolution which places New Politics issues firmly on the political agenda. 1It is important to note that these phases of development are not strictly sequen- tial and overlap to differing extents in different societies. 83 New Politics issues, initially ignored by established parties, were first champi- oned by a wave of New Left environmental and left-libertarian parties (Richardson. &. Rootes, 1995). Reacting to the threat these parties posed to traditional values, conservative forces organized to oppose the liberalization of social norms resulting in a counterwave of New Right parties (Ignazi, 2003). As New Politics issues be- came more central to political discourse, New Left and New Right parties began to threaten the hegemony of the established parties. This forced the established parties to stake out positions on New Politics issues, thereby leading to the greater legitimatization and politicization of these issues. Over time, then, political parties, both large and small, have begun to pay increasing attention to New Politics issues and less attention to the more traditional economic issues (Clark, 2001). While modernization theory is supported by evidence that the Left-Right contin- uum is evolving along with the political landscape and explains why this is occurring (Dalton, 2008; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005), the theory of issue evolution provides a useful framework with which to explain how this phenomenon proceeds. While the theory of issue evolution specifically seeks to explain the origins of policy conflict. among the public, this theory also serves to explain the evolution of the Left-Right continuum. Issue evolution follows a general process from elite division on an issue to the 2 To begin with, the elite, the pro- alignment, or realignment, of an issue public. fessional politicians, must divide on a policy issue. This division must eventually manifest as a difference between parties rather than between politicians within a party. This difference must then be perceived by a concerned public or segment. of the public, an issue public. The relevant issue public will then, in turn, align with the appropriate party based on this new issue cleavage. This causal sequence 2C0nverse (1964) argues that only among that portion of the public interested in a specific issue - those whom he refers to as an issue public - will any political consequences of an issue attitude be noticeable. This supposition is empirically supported by Krosnick (1990). 84 has found support for a number of issues in the US. (Adams, 1997; Carmines & Stimson, 1986; Lindaman & Haider-Markel, 2002) and has found incidental support in seven European countries (Iversen, 1994). Issue evolution strongly implies that the evolution of the Left-Right continuum is a result of partisan politics. W’hen certain issue positions become associated with parties of a particular ideology, then those issues become linked with the ideology represented by that party. However, this does not imply a non-ideological associa- tion of issues with parties as suggested by Stimson (2004, pp. 68-69). Parties adopt policy stances whose reasoning aligns with their reasoning on other issue stances that were previously associated with their ideological inclinations. Positions on new issues will thereby align with the general imrdications of the ideology of that specific [:mrty. If this were not the case, one would expect the issue positions associated with left- or right-wing parties to vary from country to country. For most politically relevant. issues that cross numerous political borders, this is certainly not the case. It. is this 0“eneral ideological continuity within political parties that leads to the phe— nomena explicated by Houtman (2001); for while political parties may demonstrate ideological continuity, individuals do not always do so (see Chapter 1) and may therefore vote for parties of differing ideological persuasions based on wl'iether their vote choice stems primarily from economic or New Politics issues. Before considering how individuals who are ideologically conflicted between their economic and New Politics issue attitudes identify themselves, it is useful to deter- mine the relative impact these two issue groups have on societal levels of Left-Right identification; after all, if New Politics issues do not actually have an impact on the Left-Right continuum, it makes little sense to inquire as to who uses what issue group if they are ideologically conflicted. 85 4.3 The Social Nature of Political Evolution Trends in the evolution of the Left-Right continuum must be analyzed at the group or societal level for two reasons: the social nature of the Left-Right continuum and the reactionary nature demonstrated by some non-postmaterialists. While Left-Right. identification is indeed an individual level occurrence, the Left-Right continuum. is a. societal-lewel construct, not an individual-level one; as politics is a public phe- nomenon, the Left-Right continuum must also be regarded as a public phenomenon (Inglehart 8: Klingemann, 1976). As a public device, the Left—Right continuum is formed as a. result of a communal understanding of a society’s political space. The Left-Right continuum is thereby derived from a combined individual-level under- standing of what it means to fall at any given location on the Left-Right continuum. Any analysis of the Left-Right continuum, therefore, must be performed on an ag— gregate level. As has been stated previously, the Left-Right continuum is evolving due to the n‘iodernization of societies. These trends are leading to an increase in the proportion of people who prioritize secular-rationalistic and self-expressionistic values (Inglehart & Wélzel, 2005). These individuals express postmaterial political priorities and are referred to as postmaterialists (Inglehart, 1988). Postmaterialists are those who, through psychological progression toward the apex of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (l\élaslow, 1970), have become concerned with issues that go beyond those of exis- tential security. However, as the reactionary nature of conservatives suggests, it is more than just those who prioritize self-expression values who become focused on postmaterial issues. It is the reactionary who expresses concern with postmaterial issues who is not necessarily a postmaterialist in his own right; i.e., he may not per-- sonally prioritize self-expression values over survival values but he is nevertheless. as a result of these issues being placed on the political agenda by the postmaterial— ists, now concerned with postmaterialist. issues. Being a postmaterialist and being 86 concernml with postmaterial issues, then, is not a one-to-one relationship. In fact, the relationship may be completely hidden at the individual-level if nearly as many non-postmaterialists are concerned with postmaterial issues as are postmaterialists. In chapter 10 of Modcm‘izat'ion, Cultural Change, and Democracy, Inglehart and \Vclzel (2005) make a strong argument for analyzing trends related to individual values and cultural change on the aggregate level. The authors give numerous ex— amples of why this is the case, and why the absence of such a relationship at the individual level is not an indication of invalid findings. The following is a rather apt example: The fact that a societal-level linkage is not reflected at the individ- ual level does not invalidate the societal-level linkage. For example, the individual—level linkage between tolerance of homosexuality and life- satisfaction is completely insignificant in most national samples of the Values Surveys. But at. the 50(':ietal—level. we find a highly significant relationship. . .Thus, tolerance does not impact on life satisfactitm as a. personal characteristic but as a characteristic of one‘s society: people a re not. more satisfied with their lives because they themselves are tolerant. but because they live in a society in which the general social climate is more tolerant. (Inglehart & W’elzel, 2005, p. 235) 4.4 Data and Analysis I use two separate, yet integrated. analyses using waves 2, 3, and 4 of the Euro- pean/W'orld Values Survey to investigate the relative. impact of New Politics on the. Left-Right continuum. In the first step of this analysis I regress both economic and New Politics issues on Left—Right identification for each individual country in each individual vave of the EurOpean Values Survev. This reveals the relative impact. cl 87 New Politics issues have on Left-Right identification as opposed to economic issues. There are no controls included at this step of the analysis. Table 4.1: The impact of values on the correlation between issue attitudes and Left-Right Identification Trad/Rational Sure/Self-Eatpressz'on Postmaterzialism Economics 0670*M 0500* 0.026 New Politics -0.268 0.693]L 0449* Trust People 0.387 0836* 0.254 Age -0.030** -0.001 -0.019* Gender 0.767 1.264 0.888 Political Interest 0.081 0.111 0.103 Religiosity —0.548*** -0.052 -0.013 Satisfied w/ Life -0.087* O.255*** 0.024 Survey Year 0.058 -0.009 -0.047T Time Free 0.002 0017* 0.014** Trust in Gov. —0.592*** 0.283 -0.085 (i‘onstant 5.090*** -2.03 2.415*** Observations 69 69 75 R-Squared 0.91 0.88 0.71 Note: *** g 0.001, ** g 0.01, * g 0.05, ts 0.1 In the second step of the analysis, the betas from the first-step regressions are in- serted into an aggregate-level OLS regression which includes a number of aggregated and country—level control variables. This step involves three separate regression equa- tions that predict postmaterial priorities, traditional vs. secular—rational values, and survival vs. self-expression values (see Table 4.1). The economics and New Politics variables in Table 4.1 are the correlations between economic issues and Left-Right identification and New Politics issues and Left-Right identification, respectively; i.e. the betas from the first-step regressions. These results reveal precisely what one would expect given the arguments set forth in Inglehart’s modernization thesis. First, as a society becomes more secular- ratirmal, there is an increase in the strength of the correlation lmtwccn economic issues and Left—Right identification. Given the low level of (-leveloprnent of countries which. lean toward the Traditional end of this scale and their focus on economic. 88 development, it is not surprising that economic issues play an increasingly strong role in Left-Right identification as a society moves from Traditional values to more Sec-1.11ar-rational values. The results for the Self-expression values equation also align with expectations. As a society becomes increasingly Self-expressionistic, both economic issues and New Politics issues play an increasingly powerful role in Left-Right identification. As those societies whose value priorities are more Self—expressionistic are increas- ing likely to have an involved and politically knowledgeable public (Inglehart & W’elzel, 2005), it stands to reason that both their economic and New Politics issue positions would be increasingly correlated with their Left-Right identification (Con— verse, 1964). Further, an increase in a society’s Self-expression values leads to a relative. increase in the impact of New Politics issues as opposed to economic issues. The larger coefficient attached to the New Politics issues correlation demonstrates that as a. society’s level of Self-expression values increases, Left—Right identification in that society becomes increasingly related to New Politics issues. Figure 4.1 plots the relationship between a society’s level of Self-expression values and the correlation betwetm New Politics issues and Left-Right identification (controlling for all other variables). Finally, the relationship between postmaterialist issue priorities and the correla- tion lmtween New Politics issues and Left-Right. identification reveals exactly what one would expect. The postmaterialism thesis specifically argues that societies which score higher on this scale will be more concerned with postmaterial, or New Politics, issues. Therefore, the results of this analysis are exactly what we would expect: an increase in a society’s level of postmaterialism corresponds with an increase in the correlation between an individual’s New Politics issues and their Left-Right identi- fication; in other words. New Politics issues more powerfully affect the Left-Right identification of inhabitants of more postmaterialist societies. Figure 4.2 plots the o c .9 (B '5 “’- - t o 0 U) o 3 (n 2 o — (I) .2 :0 a .3. .0 _ z -' . T l l I I l 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 Setf-Expression values Figure 4.1: New Politics issue correlation and self-expression values. relationship between a society’s level of postmaterial issue priorities and the corre- lation between New Politics issues and Left-Right identification (controlling for all other variables). Perhaps just as important as the increase in the relative impact of New Politics issues on Left-Right identification, there is no significant decrease in the absolute impact of economic issues. So, while New Politics issues are becoming increasing relevant as societies become more postmaterialist, economic issues are not thereby becoming politically obsolete; economic issue positions are still relevant to Left-Right identification. This is even more apparent in that economic issues are continuing to have an increasing absolute impact on Left-Right identification as societies become more Self-expressionistic. 90 .2 New Politics issues correlation 1 o —l . o o o o ‘F ‘ ° 0 T T l T l 1 .4 1 .6 1.8 2 2.2 Postmaterialism Figure 4.2: New Politics issue correlation and postmaterialism. 4.5 Conclusion Societies are changing. Especially in developed countries, rapidly changing value priorities are yielding a more secularized and self-expressionistic public. Along with this transformation comes a change in the political agenda to the effect that New Politics issues are becoming increasingly important in political discourse. As the Left-Right continuum functions to largely summarize a society’s political discourse, this change in a society’s political agenda has led to the evolution of the Left-Right. continuum. Rather than primarily serving to summarize a collection of class-based, economic issues, the Left-Right continuum now also serves to summarize positions on New Politics issues. This chapter hypothesizes that as a society’s value priorities became more self- expressionistic, and thereby more postmaterialistic, the Left—Right continuum of 91 that society will become more inclusive of New Politics issues. Analysis of twenty- nine European and North American countries at two or three points in time over a decade reveals that this is indeed the case. As a. country‘s level of socioeconomic development increases in the industrializa- tion phase of human development, the value priorities of the society shift from a more. Traditional view of authority to a more Secular-rational view. Along with this shift in value priorities is a. corresponding increase in the relevance of economic issues for the Left-Right continuum; as societies become more secular-rational, individual Left-Right identification becomes more reliant on economic issue attitudes. As a country’s level of socioeconomic development increases in the postindustri— alization phase of human development, the value priorities of the society shift from those which ensure the survival of the community to those which emphasize the freedom and autonomy of the individual. Along with this shift in value priorities is a corresponding increase in the relevance of both economic and New Politics issues for the Left-Right continuum; as societies become more self-expressionistic, individ- ual Left—Right identification becomes reliant on not only economic issue attitudes, but also New Politics issue attitudes. Further, New Politics issues gain in relative standing to economic issues. Finally, and as one would expect, as a society increasingly prioritizes postmaterial goals over material goals, the importance of New Politics issues to the Left-Right continuum increases relative to economic issue, though economic issues maintain roughly the same absolute impact. It is interesting, and quite important, to note that at no point in this analysis does the impact of economic issues on Left-Right identification decrease in absolute terms. While the impact of economic issues on Left-Right identification is decreasing relative to that of New Politics issues, their absolute impact is either likewise increasing with the shift from Survival to Self-Expressionistic values or remaining stationary as societal goals shift from materialist to postmaterialist. 93 Chapter 5 Class and Issue Conflict in Left-Right Identification Chapter 3 finds that for those interested in politics, issue attitudes generally cause Left—Right identification rather than vice versa. and Chapter 4 notes that as societies shift from Survival to Self-expression values or from materialist to postmaterialist goals, New Politics issues have an increasingly powerful impact on Left-Right iden— tificat ion relative to economic issue attitudes. However. Houtman (2001) points out that both the working class and the middle class tend to possess ideologically incon- sistent sets of issue attitudes. These three relationships, combined with the tendency for political parties to possess ideologically consistent sets of issue attitudes, raise the question: which set of issue attitudes do ideologically conflicted individuals use to determine their Left-Right. identification, and why? 5. 1 Issue Conflict If both the working and the middle classes possess ideologically conflicted economic and New Politics issue attitudes, then one must wonder how individuals in these conflicted classes come. to identify with a position on the Left-Right continuum; if 94 ‘4 they base their identification on one issue set, then they would identify with the Right, if with the other issue set, then they would identify with the Left. There are a number of theoretical reasons as to who will prioritize which set of issue attitudes, either economic or New Politics, in determining their Left—Right identificatirm when the two issue sets are ideologically conflicted. Certain perspec— tives attribute weighting one issue set over the other to be a result of psychological (:‘l'iaracteristics such as value priorities while others specify that while psychologi- cal dispositions matter. they do so differently dependent on an individuals social environment, as determined by social class. Below I discuss three theories which suggest an answer to the question of how individual’s who have ideologically con- flicted issue attitudes weight their issue attitudes when determining their Left-Right identification. 5.1.1 Self-expression Values and Postmaterialist Priorities As noted in the previous chapter, aggregate—level analyses indicate that countries that display higher mean levels of self-expression values and postmaterialist prior- ities also demonstrate a greater impact of New Politics issue attitudes relative to economic issue attitudes on Left-Right identification. One may assume, then, that an individual’s level of self-expression values or his concern with postmaterialist issue. priorities will predict whether or not. his Left-Right identification will be determined more by New Politics or economic issue attitudes. However, as also noted in Chap- ter 4, measures of self—expression values and postmaterialist priorities are. supposedly relevant only as aggregate—level phenomena. As such, the ability of individrial-level measures of self—expression values and postmaterialist priorities to predict whether an individual will prioritize New Politics or economic issue attitudes in determining his Left-Right identification is questionable. With these most immediately obvious determinants of which issue set will more accurately predict an individual’s Left-Right identification in a conflicted social-class theoretically out of the picture, we must instead move on to other, more theoretically promising, ideas. Fortunately, two constructs suggest themselves for consideration: an individual’s religiosity and /or his confidence in government. 5.1 .2 Religiosity Individual religiosity has often been found to affect Left-Right identification (e.g., Norris & Inglehart, 2004). While this may be due to religious influence on both economic and New Politics issues, Layman (1999) suggests that, at least in the U .S., it. is right-wing attitudes on New Politics issues that have led many religiously oriented individuals to identify with the right—wing party (i.e. the Republicans). At the same time, however, many Americans are rather ambivalent toward New Politics issues and find economic issue attitudes more relevant (Hunter. 1994; Layman, 1999). The implication of these arguments is that while the religious are prone to use New l’olitics issues to determine their Left-Right identification. the less religious are. more. likely to rely on their economic issue attitudes. 5.1.3 Confidence in Government Strain theory, on the other hand. suggests that it. may in fact be confidence in govr—arnment which leads individuals to base their identifi ration on one issue set. rather than the other. Strain theory argues that due to the ”chronic malintegration of society,“ psychological strain is generated within the individual. This psychological strain manifests as a sense of insecurity. One way for individuals to cope with this sense of insecurity is through a process termed catharsis (Sutton, Harris, Kaysen, & Tobin, 1956, pp. 307—308). Catharsis provides a psychological release for the seemingly schizophrenic nature of those who believe that the system under which they live is not capable, or willing, 96 to assist in the resolution of their problems - they may even believe the system contributes to these problems - and yet remain committed to that system. While many who believe the system has forsaken them will simply drop out of the political system altogether (Bandura, 1997; Pinkleton & Austin, 2001), those who, for one reason or another, choose to remain involved require an outlet for their psychological frustration. This leads to the creation of one or more scapegoats, someone to blame for their unsatisfactory position in the social hierarchy. By transferring unacceptable personal thoughts and feelings about the system to another group, the emotional tension they feel is refocused toward the target group. This need manifests itself as right—wing attitudes on certain New Politics issues, most likely those which deal with the social and political equality of outgroups. The generation of right-wing New Politics attitudes in this sense is an attempt by the individual to reduce the insecurity resulting from social strain. C‘athartic necessity opens socially strained individuals to the vilificatitm of out.— groups and thereby to adopt right-wing attitudes on New Politics issues. The general lack of education possessed by many in the working class leaves individuals within this group especially vulnerable to the cathartic transference of hostility from the appropriate target of such hostility, the government or the system, to a more psy- chologically comfortable target (or targets). Due. to this psychological process, those in the working class who have little confidence in government should focus primarily on New Politics issues rather than those issues that the government has shown over and again that it will not, or cannot, resolve - i.e., class-based, economic issues. Those who still have. faith in the government should remain focused on economic issues over New Politics issues as they still believe the government may come through for them. The proceeding discussion leads to two hypotheses and, consequently, two pre— dictions: Hypothesis 1: An individual‘s level of religiosity will affect whether he uses 97 his New Politics issue attitudes rather than his economic issue attitudes to determine his Left-Right identification. Hypothesis :2: An individual member of the working class‘s level of confidence in government will affect whether he uses his New Politics issue attitudes rather than his economic issue attitudes to determine his Left—Right identification. Based on these hypotheses and the previously mentioned literature. I predict that those high in religiosity and those in the working class who possess little trust in. government will weight New Politics issue attitudes more heavily than they will economic issue attitudes when detenhining their Left-Right identification. 5.2 Data and Measurement The individual-level data used in the following analyses is obtained from questions asked in the \Vorld Values Survey (WVS) while the macro—level data is obtained from the Database of Political Institutions (Beck. Clarke, Groff, Keefer. & \Valsh, 2001). Uiifortunately, only seven countries from the \Vorld Values Survey are es— tablished democracies that traditionally use the Left-Right continuum to categorize their political world:1 Australia (19953-97), New Zealand (19925-97), Norway (1995- 97), Switzerland (1995-97), Canada (1999-2000), Spain (1999-2000), and the United States (1999-2000). Table 5.1: Number of Indicators and Alphas of Scales # of indicators alpha Confidence in gov. 4 0.83 Religiosity 5 0.74 Economic issues 4 0.43 New Politics issues 6 0.82 Political interest ' 2 0.75 The dependent variable for these analyses is the standard measure of Left—Right 1Curiously, the European Values Survey does not ask subjects to identify with a class label and is therefore unusable for the analyses in this chapter. 98 self—placement included in many cross-national surveys and ranges from 1 (Left) to 10 (Right). inclusive. Two of the three primary conditional variables, confidence in government and religiosity, as well as economic issue attitudes and New Politics issue attitudes, are scales constructed from face-valid indicators of their respective constructs. The third conditional variable. social class, is a self-identification of which class the subject belongs to. Those who identify with the upper and upper middle classes were coded as upper class, those who identify with the lower middle class were coded as the middle class, and those who identify as working class or lower class were coded as working class. Additionally, one further s tale, political interest. was also constructed in identical fashion and is used as a control variable. The number of indicators and the corresponding Cronbach’s alpha scores for each scale are. listed in Table 5.1.2 In addition to the above scales, I also include measures of age (a continuous measure of an individual’s reported age), education (measured as low, middle, or high). gender (0 for male. 1 for female), and the effective number of legislative parties in a country (Laakso & Taagepera, 1979) as control variables in the model. 5.3 Analyses The foundation of this chapter is in the assumption that. the economic and New Politics issue attitudes of certain individuals are ideologically inconsistent. For the. countries used in this analysis, this is most certainly the case. Table 5.2 presents the pairwise correlations between Left-Right identification, economic issue attitudes, and New Politics issue attitudes. That the highest correlation on the table is a 0.31 clearly indicates a less than perfect. correspondence. 2Although the economic issues items form a considerably weaker scale than the New Politics issue items, their face-validity and the results of a factor analysis, which demonstrate all variables load satisfactorily on a single factor. leads me to accept the scale as valid and to retain it for the following analyses. 99 Table 5.2: Pairwise Correlations of Left-Right I(l(—fllllfi(“étl1011 and Issue Attitudes All Classes Left-Right Identification New Politics Attitudes New Politics Attitudes 0.1871* Economic Attitudes 0.2904* 0.0260* l’l'b’l‘hfing Class Left-Right Identification New Politics Attitudes New Politics Attitudes 0.1858* Economic Attitudes 0.2541* 0.0452* Middle Class Left-Right Identification New Politics Attitudes New Politics Attitudes 0.2288* Economic Attitudes 0.2758* 0.0600* Upper Class Left-Right Identification New Politics Attitudes New Politics Attitudes 0.1738* Economic Attitudes 0.3118* 0.0054 Note: * indicates correlation significant at the 0.05 level. The correlations of economic issue attitudes and New Politics issue attitudes re- veal a number of interesting patterns. The first. and most obvious is the different degrees of relatedness between Left-Right identification and the two issue clusters. Though economic issue attitudes are more highly correlated with Left—Right identi- fication than are New Politics issue attitudes in all classes, the correlaticms between either cluster and Left-Right identification are weak (r < 0.30 in five of the six by—class comparisons). Further, the correlations between economic issue attitudes and New Politics issue attitudes never score above 0.06 and are only statistically significant for the working and middle classes. This is certainly in line with Hout- man’s (2001) determination that the economic: and New Politics issue attitudes of the working and middle classes are ideologically conflicted. Moving on to an analysis of the relative impact of economic and New Politics issue attitudes on Left-Right identification, I first take up an analysis of the self-expression values and postmaterialism priorities scales. For each conditional variable, I run a separate linear mixed model for each class for each issue cluster. This yields twelve 1 00 'ii separate models. Each model includes all control variables mentioned above, the confidence in government and religiosity scales. and the. other issue attitude scale. Rather than simply listing the outputs for each model, I create an interaction plot for each model to visually represent the marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left- Right. identification dependent on either an individual‘s score. on the self-expression values scale or on the postmaterialism scale. upendent Variable: Left-Right Identification U) to .. l _ m g 8 m g .92 :3 v— — ' "f 8 E 1‘s g m. — — 0. CL ti E o N .. - N «.0. 5 s "67 0 o g :6 . 9 q- / (U ‘ .—. - _ r. 2 N _ - N. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Self-Expression Values Serf-Expression Values l Marg'mal Effect 0! Economic Issues Marginal Effect 0! New POMK'S Issues l— 95% Corfudence Interval __ _ 95% Confidence Interval Figure 5.1: Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right i(‘lentification as self- expression values changes. As the general patterns revealed for each class are nearly identical, I rerun the models for all classes combined and present the figures for these models. Figures 5.1 and 5.2 show the interaction plots for all classes combined. As is apparent, as individuals move from survival values to self—expression values and as they move from materialist priorities to postmaterialist priorities, both their ecmiomic and their New Politics issue attitudes have an increasing impact on their Left-Right 101 identification. However, at no point. across the two graphs does the impact. of New Politics issue attitudes ever outstrip that of economic issue attitudes. N’Ieasnres of self-expression values and postmaterialist priorities, then, are unable to account for when individuals will prioritize New Politics issue attitudes over economic issue attitudes when determining their Left-Right identification. Dependant Variable: Lott-Right Identification q- / “q // w “’2/ § §D_ #wfl’TIJ-fl I’d-##- ~QE .2 /’/ .33 c: // CL 004.. /” -“!; U / LU m ~0- / Z O // u- U // O Q) ‘_ // ,«v’ FE E — a,” /.-'-'# —- t .. fgfi/ 12". LU E r“ ..x’ s E." / '5, E // cu / 2 '-_| I I I I l— 'i 0 1 2 0 1 2 Postrnatenaltsm Postmateriallsm Marginal Eflectof Economic Issues ——--—— Margmal Effect ofNewPotrtics Issues -- __ __ 95% Confidenceflervd _ _ ,_ 96% Confidence Interval Figure 5.2: Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right identification as post.— materialism changes. To determine the marginal effect of both economic and New Politics issues on Left—Right identification over the range of both the religiosity variable and the con- fidence in government variable, I again run a separate linear mixed model for each class for each issue cluster. Once more, this yields twelve separate models. Each model controls for the other issue scale and the other conditional variable. T here- fore. all models include the same list. of variables with the sole difference for each model being the interaction effect. As with the models outlined above, rather than 102 providing an output table for each model, I create an interaction plot to represent the marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right identification dependent on either an individual‘s level of religiosity or confidence in government. Dependent Variable: Lefl-RIght Identification Marginal Effects of Economic Issues 3 l Marginal Effect of New Politics Issues O O 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 ReligiosfrIy Religioslty Marginal Effect of Economic Issues Marginal Effect of New Politics Issues _.___ 95%Corfuencelmerval ___95%Confidencelnterval J Figure 5.3: Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right identification as reli- giosity changes in the working class. Figures 5.3 through 5.5 illustrate the relationship between economic and New Politics issue attitudes and Left-Right identification across the range of the religiosity variable for each class. As one might expect, economic issue attitudes and Left— Right identification are positively related across the range of religiosity values and for all classes. However, for each class, as religiosity increases, the marginal effect. of economic issue attitudes on Left-Right identification declines substantially. The right-hand panels of figures 5.3 through 5.5, though, demonstrate differing patterns in the relationship between New Politics issue attitudes and Left-Right identification across classes. First of all, there appears to be no significant (ilifference 103 in the marginal effects of New Politics issues on Left-Right identification across the entire range of religiosity values for either the upper or working classes. More in line with expectations is the trend seen for the middle class. Here. there is a significant. if not. a terribly substantial, increase in the marginal effect of New Politics issue attitudes on Left-Right identification as religiosity increases. Dependent Variable: Lott-Right Identification (.0- _w m min- -08 g in 3 22 .2st- -V.;g E '6 g 0.. 0“".- —°°.g LU z “5 “5 UN- - "’ Qv“ N8 31: II: “J Lu 2?.- we 2‘ e a: :50 02 -.1 1 O 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 Religiosfly Religiosity —-—-— Marginal Effect of Econom'c Issues Marginal Effect of New Politics Issues _-__ 95%Confidencehtervd _____95%Confidencelnterval Figure 5.4: Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right identification as reli- giosity changes in the middle class. Comparing the left- and right-hand panels of figures 5-3 through 5-6 reveals that across most values of the religiosity variable, economic issue attitudes have a greater impact: on Left-Right identification than do New Politics issue attitudes. However. for those with the highest levels of religiosity, there appears to be little difference in the impact of either issue cluster on Left-Right. identification. In Figures 5.6 through 5.8, once more, the first pattern to emerge is that eco— nomic issue attitudes have a significant positive impact on Left—Right identification. 104 Further, in all classes, there is a decline in the impact economic issue attitudes have on Left—Right identification as an individual’s confidence in government increases. Dependent Variable: Left-Right Identification a)- _D U) U) s“ "‘§ £2 .22 .2 «i- _Q 8 E s ém- -nc‘i s 5 .5 Z a ”' "" ‘6 a: U E Q- -"?tiq:J _ LIJ g“.- “‘93 a “*~~ 9 2 __________ ~“‘ «I .._ -—. 2 O f,”— O 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 Religiosity Religiosity Margind EffectofEconomic Issues Marginal EffectofNewPoIitics Issues 95% Confidence flerval __ __ _ 95% Confidence Nerval Figure 5.5: Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right identification as reli- giosity changes in the upper class. For self-identified members of the upper and working classes, however, the differ- ence in the impact of economic issue attitudes on Left-Right identification dependent. on an individual’s degree of confidence in his government is minimal. W hile the pat.- tern is the same across all classes, for both the upper and working classes there is not even a 0.] unit drop in the effect. The middle class, though, is a different matter. The impact of economic issues for the middle class takes a relatively large drop of approximately 0.3 units to end up at a beta of less than 0.15 for an individual scoring highest in confidence in government - down from approximately 0.45. The similarities between the classes dissipate when considering New Politics is- sues. For this issues set, there remains the positive association with Left—Right identification; however, the direction of the trend lines now varies from class to class. The middle and upper classes demonstrate an increase in the impact of New Politics issues on Left-Right identification as confidence in government increases; though this increase is fairly small in absolute terms, in relative terms, the impact nearly triples. Further, the impact of New Politics issues on Left-Right identifica- tion is not significantly different from zero for those who have the minimum possible confidence in government in these two classes; for the middle and upper classes, New Politics issues do not. have any effect at all on Left-Right identification for those with no confidence in government. Dependent Varlable: Left-Right Identification ‘1‘— _V \ \ \H Ire-v" w Vi \‘w.___p-F"J g 0') "’.- , . —"’.§ .91? E rfiflr’_q“\‘ .5 o N- \\.\ _No- a ‘x 5 I0— \\ Z o h— o E a ,1: ii: " ‘ 193 E LIJ g g as o 0% 5 2 'h-I I I I I r I I— ' O 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 Confidence in Goverment Confidence in Government Margind Effect of Economic Issues Marginal Effect of New Politics Issues ____ 95%Cafidenceflervai __-95%Corfidencelnterval Figure 5.6: Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right identification as confi- dence in government changes in the working class. The working class demonstrates the opposite trend from the middle and upper classes: there is a decrease in the impact of New Politics issues on Left-Right. iden- 106 tification as confidence in government increases. Completely adhering to a reverse relationship to that of the middle and upper classes, the impact of New Politics issue attitudes on Left—Right identification for the working class statistically and substantively reaches zero for those who score highest in confidence in government. Dependent Variable: Left-Right Identification (0.. _(D If) g to- -ID. 3 U) 3 .22 u 8 ‘- ‘1- -'¢.;...3 g e .5 2 U ‘5 e ~- ”-9 ._._i s 2 .._ -._-a '6; . 'E 5 9 cc 2 o 02 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 Confidence in Govemment Confidence In Government Margiid Efi‘ectofEcommic Issues —-——Marginal EffectofNewPolibcs Issues __._ 95%Corlidencehterval ___95%Confidencelnterval Figure 5.7: Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right. identification as confi- dence in government changes in the middle class. Comparing the economic and New Politics issue attitudes graphs for each class demonstrates that for both the working and upper classes, economic issue attitudes retain the greatest impact on Left-Right identification across the entire range of confidence in government scores. For the middle class, economic issues clearly dom- inate Left—Right identification for those who have all but the greatest. confidence in government; however, for those who do possess the highest level of confidence in government, economic and New Politics issue attitudes appear to contribute equally to Left-Right identification. 107 Analyzing only those whose issue attitudes actually conflict - by reducing issue attitudes to a binary Left-Right classification — (analyses not shown) does not change the substantive (ironclusions already reached. While increased confidence intervals on some analyses lead to a few more circumstances where economic and New Politics issue attitudes equally contribute to Left-Right identification, economic issue atti- tudes still remain the predominant predictor of Left-Right identification and at. no point do New Politics issue attitudes ever outweigh the impact of economic issue attitudes. Dependent Variable: Left-Right Identification Marginal Effect of Economic Issues Marginal Effect of New Politics lssues 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 Confidence in Govemment Confidence in Government Marginal Effect of Economic Issues Marginal Effect of New Potitics Issues ____ 95%Corfidenceflerval ___95%Corfidencehterval Figure 5.8: Marginal effects of issue attitudes on Left-Right identification as confi- dence in government changes in the upper class. 5.4 Discussion Not only has a new dimension of political conflict been introduced into the political arena. but that dimension has quickly become a source of political conflict. This new 108 dimension of political conflict has led to a. schizophrenic. ideological identification in that large segments of democratic societies now hold ideologically conflicting sets of issue attitudes. Numerous authors refer to the existence of multiple dimensions in a country’s political space; there is the old Left and the old Right, which refers to orientations on (lass—based economic issues, and there is a new Left and a New Right, which refers to orientations on New Politics issues (e.g., Dalton, 2008). If there is one continuum - the Left-Right continuum - with multiple dimensions - an economic issues dimension and New Politics issues dimension - then how do those who possess conflicting dimensions. such as a right-wing economic orientation and a left-wing New Politics orientation, identify themselves on the Left-Right continuum. This chapter seeks to answer this question. The analyses here, in addition to those reported by numerous other scholars, demonstrate that indeed a. large group of individuals across countries have ideologi- cally conflicted issue attitudes. Both correlations and cross tabulations of economic and New Politics issue attitudes in this chapter confirm that these discrepancies apply equally to the subset of countries used in the above analyses. Given the discrepancies, then, one would expect there to be certain conditions which predict. when the Left-Right identification of certain individuals will be dic— tated by their economic issue attitudes and other conditions which lead their Left- Right identification to be dictated by their New Politics issue attitudes. The theories tested in this chapter, however, do not fully explain such conditions. This may be for a rather simple reason: there are. some who do not use issue attitudes to deter- mine their Left-Right identification. Given the findings reported in Chapter 3 and the suggestion by some authors that ideological identification is not always a case of rational determination but a largely symbolic act (cg. Sears, Hensler. (KI Speer. 1979), this would not. be the least. bit surprising. 109 “hat. the previous analyses do suggest, however, is that for those in the middle and upper classes with no confidence in their government. their Left—Right. identifi- cation has absolutely nothing to do with their attitudes on New Politics issues. The same thing can be said for those in the working class who place in the top half of the. confidence in government scale (approximately 75% of the working class) - a finding which lends some support to strain theory - and for those in the middle class who score lowest on the religiosity measure. In all conditions in all classes, there is no point where New Politics issue at.- titudes outweigh economic issue attitudes in determining Left—Right. identilical ion. In fact, in most conditions, economic issue attitudes far outstrip New Politics issue attitudes in determining individuals’ Left—Right. identification. For those with the highest levels of religiosity and those in the middle and upper classes with the ut- most conlidence in governn’ient, however, econon'iic. and New Politics issue attitudes appear to lend approximately equal weight to Left-Right identification. Perhaps the most surprising result of these analyses is that related to the effect of religiosity on the impact New Politics issue attitudes have on Left—Right identifi- cation. 'l‘he reflexive thought that the weight of New Politics issues. especially given the composition of the scale used here, will increase and overtake economic issue attitudes with an increase in religiosity is not supported by these findings: though it is true that the relative weight of New Politics issue attitudes does increase for all classes as religiosity increases. Predicting who will use one set of issue attitudes over the other and when is, for the most part, still up in the air. There are clearly other considerations beside issue attitudes that need to be accounted for to determine why some in the working class idmitify with the Right and why some in the upper and middle classes identify with the Left. 110 5.5 Appendix 5-A Linear Mixed Model of Left-Right Identification 1999 European Values Survey, 7 countries Left-Right Identification Coefficient Economic Issue Attitudes 0.312*** Social Issue. Attitudes 0.091*** Age ().004*** Education ~0.059 Gender -0.084 Political interest 0.075** Religiosity 0136* * * Social Class ().121*** Self-expression Values -0.049 Trust in government (1077* Effective Parties -0.063 Constant 2.678*** N 8,811 Countries 7 Note: *** p g 0.001, ** p g 0.01, * p g 0.05 111 Chapter 6 Conclusion In Chapter 1, I distinguish between the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of ideology and ideology itself. Ideology is a fundamental belief; it is the central belief upon which all other political beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are based. Of course, this statement. presumes perfect information. which is rarely the case in reality; the ability of an individual’s political ideology to structure the rest of his political world is dependent upon his level of and ability to assimilate information, in other words, his level of political sophistication. Ideally, then, when attempting to determine the causes of political ideology, it would be best if we could look directly at an individual's political ideology rather than subsequently-derived proxy. However, current survey instruments do not, and perhaps cannot, obtain a direct measure of an individual’s political ideology. So, I must rely on a subsequently-derived proxy for political ideology: Left-Right identification. I argue in Chapter 1 that Left-Right identification is the most reliable proxy for political ideology. as this construct filters out much of the noise that question batteries seeking issue attitudes or abstract values generate. As noted by nun'ierous scholars over the years, issue attitudes can be mere “doorstep opinions” or “non— attitudes" (e.g., Converse, 1964, 1970) and the link between abstract values and more concrete issue attitudes can be tenuous at the best of times (e.g., IVIcClosky, 1904: Prothro &. Grigg, 1960) and becomes even worse when an individual's sense of security is threatened (e.g., Davis 8: Silver, 2004). When, on survey instruments, we. ask for an individual’s issue attitudes, we assume that these issues are relevant to the individual we ask, especially when we use such to predict political behaviors, such as vote choice. However, as Converse notes, “Large proportions of the elec- torate do not have meaningful beliefs, even on issues that have formed the basis for intense political controversy among elites for substantial periods of time” (1964, p. 245). Further. Krosnick (1990) finds that an issue attitude will only have political conserpiences for those interested in that specific: issue. Therefore, we cannot assume that any of the issues inquired about on survey instruments are relevant to any given individual. Left-Right identification. as a categorical heuristic for summarizing in- dividually rele. rant political attitudes (Dalton, 2005; Fuchs & Klingemann, 1990; Inglehart, 1984; Inglehart & Klingemann, 1976), better avoids the pitfalls which accompany self-reported issue attitudes or value statements. Further, research and theory suggest that emotion plays a powerful role in the developn'ient of an individual’s ideology. Fine and Sandstrom argue that: People’s emotions sensitize them to beliefs and attitudes that are. linked to cognitive choices which produce an integrative worldview. Images of the morally proper structure of society influence which solutions feel as if they “make sense.” These images operate viscerally as emotional tools, as does effective rhetoric, and suggest. that one’s conclusions about. the moral order will be based in lived experience. (1993, p. 29) Similarly, Jost and colleagues (Jost, Glaser, Krnglanski, 8; Sulloway, 2003) argue that emotions such as fear motivate the development of ideologies and ideological identification. Clearly, the existence of an ideology produced by emotive responses to ones lived experiences does not require any degree of political scmhistication; however. as Chapter 3 demonstrates, the application of this ideology or ideological 113 identification to more concrete political attitudes does. The inconsistent. nature of issue attitudes along with the emotive develol‘nnent of Left—Right identification indi- cates that this latter form of ideological identification is a more consistent reference to an individual’s political ideology. This dissertation analyzes the causes of Left-Right identification. Many of the findings revealed in these analyses can reliably be said to reveal not only the causes of Left-Right. identification. but also the causes of political ideology. \Vhile these analyses are, without doubt, noisier than would be preferred due to being a step or two removed from the actual concept of interest, they nevertheless provide insight. into why individuals possess the political ideology they do. Understamling the causes of an individual’s political ideology (or his Left-Right. identification if one prefers not to make the jump from Left—Right identification to political ideology) is not merely an academic. question. First and foremost is the relation between political ideology and vote choice. Indeed, research finds a consid- erable impact of Left-Right identification on an individual‘s vote choice (Bolanger, Lewis-Beck, Chiche, & Tiberj, 2006; Sears, Lau, Tyler, 8r. Allen. 1980). 6.1 Left-Right Identification and Vote Choice Certain aspects of democratic theory rest on the qualification that individuals are able. to translate their policy preferences into a vote choice. Contrary to this require- ment, Chapter 1 demonstrates that the mean aggregate. correspondence between is- sue attitudes and vote choice is not much better than chance (approximately 55%): however, the mean aggregate corresptindence between Left-Right identification and vote choice is a. good deal greater (approximately 64%). This suggests that indi- viduals rely more on their Left-Right identification than their issue attitudes when determining their vote choice. There are two broad intm'pretatitins of this pattern: the first is to see this as a 114 Table 6.1: Linear Mixed Model of the Mediating Effects of Left-Right Identification on Vote Choice ESS 2002 & 2004 EVS 1999 Vote Choice Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Demographics Age 0001““ 0.001** -0.002 0.006 Education 0.002 0.018 -0.605** ~0.355 Cender -0.078* ** -0.042*** -0.434 -0.292 Income 0.024*** 0.012*** 0.464*** 0.347*** Minority Status -0.244*** -0.137*** --— —-- Psychological Left-Right Identification NA 0.182*** N A 2.850*** Economic Issue Attitudes --- 5.337*** 3.232*** New Politics Issue Attitudes ~— 1.086*** ().550** Agreeableness -0.159*** -0.072*** - —- Conscientiousness 0.053*** 0.027*** _ —- Extroversion 0.038*** 0.022*** ~~ * Openness —0.068 0.044 _ fl Personal Safety 0.001 -0.002 »— Religiosity 0.057*** 0.016*** 2.210*** 0.765*** Trust. in Government -0.007* —0.015*** 1.596*** 1.022*** Trust in People —0.013*** —0.010*** -1.663*** —0.969*** Country Effective Parties 0.014 0.077 -0.336 -0.677 Income Disparity 0.103 0.063 7.604 6.965 Years Free -0.012 --0.012 -0.406 -0.366 Interactions Education * Openness 0.000 -0.004 ~ —- Education * Parties 0.005 -0001 ----- »* Openness * Parties 0.018 -0.008 ~- ~-- Education * Openness * Parties -0.002* 0.000 "Commit, 5.281*** 4.019*** 7.2541 #3245 N 39219 37349 15406 14046 Countries 46 46 27 27 Note: *** S 0.001, ** S 0.01, * S 0.05 problem. If issue attitudes are reliably derived from an individual’s political ide- ology, then for those whose issue attitudes do not correspond to their Left-Right identification (approximately 45%), their Left-Right identification must be incorrect leading to “incorrect” voting decisions (Lau & Redlawsk, 1997). The second inter- pretation is to see this as a blessing. Given the potential nonexistence of politically relevant issue attitudes (Converse, 1964) or the malleability of attitudes that do exist (Chong & Druckman, 2007), the symbolic representation of an individual’s political ideology, captured by his Left-Right identification, is the most accurate Il‘lO‘dSllI‘G we have of what his issue attitudes would be in a perfect information environment and can be thought to accurately represent an individual’s policy preferences.1 T here- fore. it is better that individuals rely on their Left-Right identification over their issue attitudes when determining their vote choice. Looking again at the European Values Survey data used in Chapter 1 and the European Social Survey data used in Chapter 2 provides evidence of the powerful mediating effect of ideological identification on vote choice.2 Table 6.1 presents two models of vote choice for each dataset: model 1 does not include Left—Right identification while model 2 does. The coefficients on nearly every variz-ible included 1This appears to be the general assumption of much of the literature on politi— cal representation. In this research, scholars argue that electoral systems that best. represent voters are those where the Left-Right identification of parties and the elec— torate most closely align (e.g., Klingemann, Volkens, Bara, & Budge, 2006; Lijphart, 1994; McDonald, Mendes, & Budge, 2003). 2For the purposes of this analysis I use only rounds 1 and 2 of the European Social Survey as the corresponding data taken from the Comparative Manifesto Project (see below) was available only through the years which correspond with round 2 of the ESS. Rounds 1 and 2 of the ESS contain data covering twenty-seven countries; the first round contains 22 countries. while the second round contains 26 countries. 21 of these countries were identical across both rounds. Each individual’s vote choice was determined via the ESS and the CMP. Each individual was asked which party they voted for in the most recent national election. Each party was then assigned a numeric value to represent its position on the Left-Right continuum using the appropriate score from the Comparative Manifesto Project (Klingemann et al., 2006). This number, potentially ranging from -100 to 100, was recoded to correspond to an 11-point. scale comparable to that used for the Left-Right self— identification measure. Again a linear mixed modelwas used to analyze the data. A random-effects ANOVA of the vote choice variable reveals that. approximately 24% of the. variance is attributable to country-level factors. 116 in model 1 are substantially reduced with the inclusion of Left-Right identification in model ‘2 - including both economic and New Politics issue attitudes. A large portion of each variable affects vote choice indirectly via Left—Right. identification. However. many variables also possess a. direct effect nearly as strong as their indi- rect effect through Left-Right identification. The interaction of education. openness, and the effective number of parties (the quantification of the modified core values thesis discussed in Chapter 2) is demonstrated to only indirectly affect vote choice via its impact on Left-Right identification. Further supporting this, education loses its significance in model 2 of the EVS data. The evidence provided by this brief analysis indicates the powerful effect of Left- Right identification on an individual’s vote choice, as has been previously suggested; Left-Right identification is of considerable importance to vote choice and thereby to democratic politics more generally. 6.2 The Causes of Left-Right Identification Clearly there are. a number of proximate and distal causes to Left—Right identifica- tion. These causes stem from demographic, institutional, and psychological sources. However, an ANOVA of both the European Values Survey and the European Social Survey tells us that only about 3% of the variance in Left—Right identification is attributable to country-level sources. While only a small contributor to Left-Right identification. country—level sources are nevertheless important, especially when con- sidering that interaction effects with lower-level sources may magnify the impact of these sources (as in the case of the modified core values thesis). Table 6.2 presents models for the ESS (2002—2006) and EVS (1999) data. account- ing for as many similar variables across the datasets as possil.)le. This table provides a succinct view of the data in order to recapitulate the. findings examined in the previous chapters. 117 I have only examined a small number of possible country-level sources of Left— Right identification in this dissertation. These were included for their mention in previous literature and their theoretical relevance to this research. However, none of (11980 factors in and of themselves were found to predict individual-level Left-Right identification. The duration a country has been considered ” free” by the Freedom House ratings returns insignificant coefficients. The disparity between the mean and median incomes in a country has no significant relationship with Left—Right identification. Finally. the effective number of legislative parties in a country is also statistically unrelated to Left-Right. identifittation. Of the three country-htvcl sources analyzed in this dissertation, then, none are significantly related to Left- Right it‘lentification in either dataset. The individual—level sources of Left-Right identification can be broken down into demographic and psychological sources - though it is important to note that due to the self-reporting of many of the demographic variables. in some cases there may be. a. psychological element to even these variables; hence my preference for referring to an individual‘s gender rather than his or her sex. While certain demographic sources appear inconsistent. across the two datasets in this research, others do not. These differences may indicate that the relationship of these. variables to Left-Right identification is dependent on time and space. An individuals age is significantly and positively associated with Left-Right identifi— cation in the ESS data, yet it is significantly and negatively related to Left-Right identification in the EVS data. Gender, while always negatively related to Left- Right identification, is insignificantly so in the EVS data. Income is positively and significantly related to Left-Right identification in both datasets; a finding that is consistent throughout many decades of the literature. lV'Iinority status, examined only in the ESS, is negatively and significantly related to Left-Right. identification. The W' VS data from Chapter 5, while examining only 7 countries, reveals that. 118 subjective self-classification of social class membership - a variable that. is not. mea- sured in either the ESS or the EVS - is positively and significantly related to Left.- Right identification. A discussion of education will follow later as its relationship to Left-Right identification requires a more extended discussion than is warranted here. Table 6.2: Linear Mixed Models of Left-Right Identification Left-Right Identification ESS EVS Age 0.002*** —0.004*** Authoritarian predisposition ~— 0.095*** Economic issue attitudes --—- 0.215*** Education -0.007*** -0.029 Effective parties 0.046 0.085 Equality preference ----- —0.234*** Gender —0. 186* * * -0.054 Income 0.056*** 0.05]*** Income disparity 0.185 0.134 Minority Status -0.728*** - -» Personality: Agreeableness -0.478*** ~ C onscz'cntiousness 0132* * * m Extroversion 0.090*** a- Openness -0.273*** Personal Safety 0.018 _ -~ Political interest —-~ -0.()35 Religiosity 0.196*** 0.311*** Self-expression values ----— 0.023 Social issue attitudes —-- 0.042 Trust in government 0056*“ O.166*** Trust in people 0.002 -0.226*** Years ” free” -0.005 -0.012 Constant 5.966*** 2.691*** N 80,782 17,554 flountries 65 27 Note: *** p 3 0.001 From these analyses, then, decisive statements can be made regarding income, minority status, and social class membership. Higher income, as found over and again in the literature, is positively related to right-wing identification; as income 119 increases, so does the likelihood of right-wing identification. Minority status, as the- ory would suggest, is related to left—wing identification; an individual who considers himself a racial or ethnic minority in a country is more likely to identify as left-wing. Membership in the higher social classes, considered at one point in time to be the quintessential predictor of one’s vote choice as determined via a party’s ideological stance, is positively related to right-wing identification; as one proceeds from work- ing class to upper class, one becomes increasingly likely to identify as right—wing. While these findings are uncontested in this research, it must be kept in mind that minority status is only examined in the ESS and social class membership only in the W VS (and only in 7 countries). However, given the findings of other researchers, it is likely that income. minority status, and social class identification are consistent. smn‘ces of Left-Right identification over both space and time. The psychological variables also reveal a mixed pattern across all three datasets in this research. First of all are the four personality variables: agreeableness, con- scientiousness, extroversion, and openness. Each of these four variables, examined only in the ESS, reinforces evidence presented in previous research: agreeableness and openness are positively and significantly associated with left—wing identification while conscientiousness and extroversion are positively and significantly associated with right-wing identification. Feelings of personal safety, examined only in the ESS, are unrelated to Left-Right identification when controlling for demographic variables (see Chapter 2). Religiosity is positively and significantly associated with right-wing identification in both datasets. Trust in government, also examined in both datasets, is positively and significantly related to right-wing identification. Trust in people is positively and significantly associated with left-wing identification in the EVS but. insignificantly related to Left-Right identification in the ESS. Personality. religiosity, and trust in government, then, are the psychological factors consistently related to Left-Right. identification. 120 The three “values” variables examined in this research - authoritarianism, pref- erence for equality, and self-expression values - are only found in the. EVS. The pref— erence for equality over freedom is positively and significantly related to left-wing identification. Preference for more. libertarian child-rearing practices. a measure of lil)ert.arian-authoritarian values, is positively and significantly related to left-wing identification. The preference for self-expression values. as opposed by survival val- ues, is not. significantly related to Left-Right identification, as is expected given the professed aggregate-level nature of the variable. As argued in Chapter 1, the. Left.- Right continuum is primarily concerned with the value of equality and also relates to authoritarianism insofar as this value is “packaged”, by political parties, with instituting egalitarian or hierarchical principles. The. data examined above also indicates that issue attitudes relate strongly to Left-Right. identification; both economic. and New Politics issue. attitudes are pos- itively related to Left-Right identification; those who identify with the Left also identify with left-wing attitudes in both the economic and New Politics domains, and vice versa for those who identify as right-wing. The directionality of this rela- tionshi p, however, it certainly debatable, and the research in this dissertation does not change that fact. However, Chapter 3 does indicate that it may be more com- nmnplace for issue attitudes to cause Left-Right. identification rather than vice versa - though in certain countries is appears that Left-Right identification may cause issue attitudes, as demonstrated by the analysis of Finland. Generally speaking, though, for the more. politically sophisticated, Left-Right ident ification is at. least partially a result of issue attitudes, whereas for the less sophisticated. Left-Right identification has very little to do with issue attitudes and is therefm‘e likely to be at least. partially a result. of a symbolic or emotive attachment to ideological terminology. Issue attitudes can be divided into the class-based, economic issue attitudes that have. traditionally been associated with the. Left-Right continuum and New Politics 121 issue attitudes which revolve around concerns over social and political equality and the environment. Economic issue attitudes, however, consistently affect Left-Right identification to a larger degree than do New Politics issue attitudes. This impact is a result of the centuries over which the Left-Right continuum has been prin‘iar- ily concerned with economic issues. New Politics issues have only recently become integrated into the Left-Right continuum via a process of political evolution. Chap— ter 4 finds that as a country’s level of self-expression values increases. so too does the. correlation betwmn New Politics issue attitudes and Left-Right identification relative to that of economic issue attitudes and Left-Right identification; as a coun- try's inhabitants shift from survival values to self-expression values, their Left-Right identification is increasingly determined by New Politics issues relative to economic issues. \Vhile Tables 6.1 and 6.2, along with the evidence presented in Chapter 3, demon- strates that. both sets of issue attitudes are positively related to Left—Right identifica- tion, evidence from Chapter 1 indicates that a substantial proportion of individuals in any country analyzed in this dissertation possess ideologically inconsistent issue attitudes, i.e., those who possess right-wing (left-wing) economic issue attitudes and left-wing (right-wing) New Politics issue attitudes. Chapter 5 presents theoretical arguments for predicting that those in the working class who possess little to no confidence in government and those, regardless of class, who possess higher levels of religiosity will most likely use New Politics issue attitudes to determine their Left~ Right identification when these issue attitudes are conflicted. As might be. expected given the findings from previous chapters. economic issue attitudes reign supreme in nearly all cases. However, there is minimal support for the theoretical positions presented in the chapter: those in the working class who possess no confidence in government rely equally on both economic and New Politics issue attitudes to determine their Left- 122 Right identification while those with the highest level of confidence in government rely only on economic issue attitudes: also, as an individual increases in level of religiosity, the impact of economic and New Politics issue attitudes on Left-Right identification equalizes - with the impact of economic issue attitudes declining to the level of New Politics issue attitudes. So, while economic issue attitudes are more of- ten of greater importance in predicting an individuals Left-Right identification than are New Politics issue attitudes, there are conditions in which the two contribute equally. 'l‘hese findings minimize concern over conflicting issue attitudes. Generally speak- ing. economic issue attitudes are of greater consequence to Left-Right identification and while models that take both issue sets into account consistently reveal both to have an impact. on Left-Right identification. it is likely that. they do so only insofar as New Politics issue attitudes correspond to economic issue attitudes. 6.3 Sophistication and Constraint As a social manifestation of individuals” political ideologies, Left-Right identification should effectively summarize individuals’ issue positions; a political ideology, after all. is a ratl’ier abstract notion, while the theoretical results of such, an individuals" issue attitudes, are quite concrete. Theoretically, in a perfect information environ— ment, individuals’ ideologies — their belief as to the proper relationship between the government and the governed — cause their attitude on any given issue. These issues should be summarized using the Left-Right COI’ltlnllllIll. An individual's Left-Right identification. therefore, should be a (direct or indirect) result of his ideology. How- ever. as noted by McClosky (1964) and Prothro and Grigg (1960), translating the abstract into the concrete is a process that requires a certain level of sophistication; and certainly, it is the more. sophisticated. almost. as a matter of definition. who possess the level of information needed to connect the abstract to the concrete. 123 I argue that this sophistication is strongly related to political interest. As Chap- ter 3 notes, the politically interested portray a causal relationship between their issue attitudes and Left-Right identification. The less interested. however, have a much more difficult. time of it. There may be some constraint. among their issue attitudes, but this constraint does not. appear to include their Left-Right. identifica- tion. The politically aware, therefore, are able to use the Left—Right continuum more. accurately than those who are not, a result we see again and again in the research. This is indicative of a serious disconnect between either ideology and issue at.— titudes or ideology and Left—[tight identification. I would presume that it is the former for the simple reason that the developing “correct” issue attitudes is heavily reliant on political awareness whereas identifying with a position on the Left-Right continuum is much less so. Personality, as indicated in Chapter ‘2 and in other research, predicts Left-Right identification. At the same time, individuals prefer politicians who have similar personality profiles to themselves. Individuals therefore prefer politicians with similar "true” Left-Right identification to them, as far as this is associated with personality, and may thereby adopt the ideological identification of the politician, or of the party associated with that politician (i.e. Left-Right. identification by proxy via party (Inglehart & Klingemann, 1976)). Individuals can certainly “pick up” a Left—Right label via this pathway much more easily than they can “pick up” a slew of issue attitudes via the same pathway. 6.4 Left-Right Identification and Authoritarian- ism Revisited Education. though always negatively related to Left-Right identification. is insignif- icant. in the EVS data (see Table 6.2). This inconsistency in the data, along with other variables included in the relevant models. implies that education may influence 1‘24 Left-Right identification via authoritarianism and/0r social issue attitudes rather than directly. If I remove both the authoritarian and social issue attitudes variables from the model, the education variable gains statistical significance (see Table 6.3). Reversing the equations so that the dependent variable is authoritarianism or so- cial issue attitudes and accounting for the same set of variables shows education to predict. both even when controlling for the other and Left-Right identification (not shown). It appears, then, that education does not directly affect Left-Right. identi- fication but. authoritarianism and social issue attitudes. Only insofar as education affects these two constructs does it impact Left-Right identification. Table 6.3: Left-Right Identification, Education, and Authoritarianism 1999 European Values Survey, 27 countries Left-Right Identification llfodel 1 Model 2 Model 3’ Model 4 Age ~0.004*** -0.004*** —0.003*** -0.003** Authoritarian predisposition 0.095*** ~ 0.10l*** Economic issue attitudes 0.215*** 0.216*** 0.217*** 0.219*** Education -0.029 —0.047 -0.036 ~0.056* Effective parties 0.085 0.088 0.082 0.084 Equality preference -0.234*** —0.233*** -O.234*** -0.231*** (lender —0.054 —0.064* ~0.069* -0.082** Income 0.051*** 0.050*** 0.051*** ().049*** Income disparity 0.134 0.13 0.12 0.114 Political interest —0.035 —0.046* —0.036 -0.049* Religiosity 0.311*** 0.317*** 0.333*** 0.343*** Self-expression values 0.023 0.007 0.023 0.033 Social issue attitudes 0.042*** 0.047*** — Trust in government 0.166*** 0.178*** 0.180*** 0.105*** Trust in people —0.226*** —0.237*** —0.207*** -().215*** Years ”free” -0.012 -0.012 -0.012 -0.013 Constant 2.691*** 2.966*** 2.950*** 3.284*** N 17.554 7,554 17,554 17,554 Countries 27 27 27 27 Note: *** p g 0.001. ** p g 0.01, * p ;<_ 0.05 This conclusion leaves the findings presented in chapter 2 vulnerable. Chapter ‘2 concludes that Left-Right identification is affected by the interaction between ed- ucation, openness, and the Left—Right leaning of a society’s core values rather than education in and of itself. The findings above, however, suggest. that. it may be authoritarianism or social issue attitudes that are affected by this interaction and authoritarianism and /or social issue attitudes, in turn, influence Left—Right identi- fication. Thereby, the modified core values thesis affects Left-Right identification only indirectly. Unfortunately, toqthe best of my knowledge, multi-country survey data. do not exist to examine this supposition. However, we can use the findings of Chapters 1 and 2 to indirectly examine this thesis. The graph for Eastern Europe in Chapter 2 (Figure 2.3) indicates that it is not. only via its effects on authoritarianism that education affects Left-Right iden— tification. If the effect of education on Left-Right identification is solely a function of its effects on authoritarianism, then we would expect there to be no relationship between the two in countries in which authoritarianism is not related to Left-Right identificat ion. as is the case in Eastern Europe (see Chapter 1). That. this graph shows there to be a significant relationship demonstrates that it is not solely through authoritarianism that education affects Left-Right identification. This stands to re' .— son as it is not only those values associated with authoritarianism that are likely to be transmitted through educational institutions, but also those of equality and hierarchy. 6.5 The Causes of Political Ideology What, then, can be said of political ideology, of the belief in the proper relationship between the government and the governed? Both political ideology and Left-Right identification share a number of similarities. For example, both can be said to be both personal and societal. Fine and Sandstrom note that “Simultaneously [ideol- ogy] is a property of the social actor, is enacted in a relationship, and is a property of the group or community. . . In its cognitive and emotive components we see, the importance of the actor; in its enactment we see the role. of the comn‘iunity, class. 126 or social network” (1993, p. 32). Inglehart and Klingemann (1976) make a similar suggestion regarding Left-Right identification. However, I argue in Chapter 1 that. Left- Right. it‘lentification is developed after an individual‘s political ideology. In the case of the more politically sophisticated, Left-Right identification is a result of is- sue attitudes whereas for the less sophisticated it is likely a result of a symbolic or emotive. attachment to a label. Issue attitudes or the motive behind this attachment is a result. of an individual’s political ideology. So, though Left-Right identification can act as a proxy for political ideology, the causal factors should not be identi- cal. What we can say about the causes of political ideology, then, rests on both theoretical reasoning and statistical evidence derived from the analysis of a proxy, i.e., Left-Right identification, one or two steps removed from the actual concept. of interest, political ideology. Without any empirical evidence, I am hesitant to suggest which variables cause political ideology. Definitionally. as the belief in the proper relationship between government and the governed, political ideology would clearly be affected by those things that create this belief. I would suggest, again with no empirical support, that value priorities most directly affect this belief. In turn, I would surmise that it is the interaction of personality and worldview - which in turn would be determined by environment - that most directly causes value priorities. Left—Right identification, on the other hand, would be an indirect result of many of these variables and thereby would show, as it does, a. significant relationship to any variable which causes political ideology. Therefore, those variables which predict Left-Right identification but which do not logically come subsequent to political ideology, such as issue attitudes. should thereby be those variables which cause political ideology. From those variables considered in this dissertation, clearly those representing values, i.e., preference for equality and authoritarianism, would be the most likely candidates. Figure 6.1 illustrates how I see the progression of causation for political ideology. 127 Personality\\ \\ Worldview \l \Environment Value Ordering k Culture I \ Ideology Figure 6.1: Proposed causal interactions for the production of an individual’s ideol— 6.6 Final Thoughts The purpose of this research is to find the general causes of Left-Right identification. This has been done to understand the general causes of political ideology, a concept that is logically prior to Left-Right identification. As such, it is of the utmost importance that we remove any context specificity that is contained in the analysis of Left—Right identification. To do so, I have examined Left—Right identification over as broad a range of countries as I felt comfortable doing. Ideally, I would have liked to examine data for every country from which I could get my hands on data. However, in order to explore a concept as abstract as political ideology, it is necessary to find an appropriate proxy, as the concept itself has not directly been measured in any survey instrument I am aware of. For this proxy, I chose Left-Right identification, for reasons explicated above. In so choosing this proxy, I have thereby limited myself to those countries which have a tradition of using this societal-level construct. Europe is the obvious choice for this examination. While a few other Western countries and South America would have also been appropriate to include in the above analyses, the necessary data was unavailable for those countries. Therefore, my analyses were 128 restricted, for the most part, to European countries. Future research on this topic would benefit from surveys designed specifically to examine as broad a variety of countries as possible using surveys which include questions aimed at measuring values and personality, along with a solid collection of questions aimed at revealing demographic and psychological constructs often as— sociated with Left—Right identification. It is quite frustrating to me that there are a number of cross—country surveys which, taken as a whole, could likely reveal a fairly broad and cohesive image of the causes of Left-Right identification, and political ide- ology more generally. I find myself especially frustrated with the. lack of a Left-Right identification question in the International Social Survey Programs questionnaire. F inally, it would be beneficial to the understanding of individual political psy— chology, if we were to develop a more. direct, reliable, and valid measure of political ideology. While Left-Right identification has its benefits, it is still one. or two steps removed from the actual concept of interest. At this time, I am unable to make any suggestion on the front. In fact, I am still unsure as to whether this is even possible, especially in the context of a cross-country survey instrument. 129 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams. G. D. (1997). Abortion: Evidence of an Issue Evolution. American Journal of Political Science, 41(3), 718-737. Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality (1st ed.). New York: Harper. Akaike, H. (1974). 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