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Ideology: A Definitional Analysis
... Because ideology is so broad a concept that there are several definitions that may expand a former definition, or contest them. Even if there are semantic excesses in conceptualizing ideology, this is a central term of social science in which its definition should be clarified (Gerring, 1997). With this, Gerring (1997) provides a comprehensive definitional framework of ideology and divides them into parts. ...
... Even if there are semantic excesses in conceptualizing ideology, this is a central term of social science in which its definition should be clarified (Gerring, 1997). With this, Gerring (1997) provides a comprehensive definitional framework of ideology and divides them into parts. One of the considerations is the location of ideology, which is composed of thought, behavior, and language. ...
... It is impossible to separate language and ideology for social practices are represented and demonstrated through linguistic symbols (Gerring, 1997). ...
With the aim for more inclusive spaces for self-determination and the solution of poverty and conflicts in Mindanao, the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) was deliberated by the Congress on 2014. The bill has garnered media attention, requiring more sensitivity and balanced reporting to the matter. This study looked into the language of BBL news reports in the light of Fairclough’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis and Van Leeuwen’s Representation of Social Actors, analyzing the linguistic patterns, discursive practices, Moro representation, and ideologies. Forty-eight (48) news reports from September to December 2014 were randomly selected from the broadsheets of The Philippine Star, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Mindanao Times, and SunStar Davao.
In the lexical level of the linguistic patterns, the naming and referential strategies, and predication exhibit power, contact, and bias against the Moro. The modality of the corpus shows that the discourse maintains a formal register to establish confidence of writers’ truth claims. On the use of metaphors, their purpose is to highlight solidarity and struggle. Moving to sourcing as a journalistic practice, the results reveal that people of power, usually men leaders in Luzon, are directly quoted, while Moro women and Mindanaoan leaders are indirectly quoted, lessening their authorial appeal.
The Moro is also represented with very few instances of exclusion and nuances in reallocating the actors’ roles usually through passivation, assimilation, and personalization. Lastly, the corpus demonstrates misrepresentation of the Moro by associating the Islamic religion to radicalization and rebellion.
Investigating on the ideologies of the BBL news, its thematic system operates on a continuum of positivism and negativism, showing that the media is ambivalent to the peace agreement. This theme of ambivalence is influenced by three ideological perspectives of BBL news: politics, culture, and psychology.
... As a critical and challenging concept, ideology has been defined and studied from diverse perspectives in the management and organization literature (Seeck et al., 2020). Referring to its motivating function (Gerring, 1997), the current study views that ideology "forms the nexus between ideas and actions" by "organizing and interpreting the world" of actors; the actors "do not passively accept the prevailing winds of historical change," they are also motivated to "embrace, reject, or seek to regulate the course of history" by presenting "an implicit or explicit vision of the good life, the ideal world" (Gerring, 1997, p.972). Considering this action-oriented nature of ideology, organizational ideology can be defined as "prevailing beliefs among organizational members about how the social world operates, including convictions about what outcomes are desirable and how they should be achieved" by shaping organizational norms, policies, values, practices etc. (Gupta et al., 2017(Gupta et al., , p. 1020Simons & Ingram, 1997). ...
... Ideologies are "highly systematized or integrated around one or a few pre-eminent values" (Shils, 1967, p. 66) and located in the thoughts, behaviors, and language of people (Gerring, 1997) by representing a shared meaning system for its proponents (Wuthnow, 1981). Moreover, various ideologies co-exist in pluralistic societies by creating their own clusters among societal members on the geographical, occupational or organizational, and so on. ...
... Therefore, the researchers tend to rely on the self-reported data to measure perceived ideology. However, according to Ewing et al. some key values (Shils, 1967) and widely embedded in the mind, behavior, and language of society (Gerring, 1997) and organizational ideology can be salient not only to the insiders who construct this "prevailing system of beliefs," but also to the outsiders (Gupta et al., 2017, p. 1020) who can observe this cluster and its values. ...
Despite the impact of ideologies on corporate social responsibility (CSR), little is known whether the authenticity of CSR can be assessed in the face of ideological tensions. Following cognitive dissonance and attribution theories, this study investigates the impact of CSR authenticity, which is conceptualized as a function of (1) the ideological fit between company and its CSR initiative and (2) the perceived motive of an ideologically distinct initiative, on organizational attractiveness. Findings of a survey on 253 respondents reveal that while both dimensions of CSR authenticity affect organizational attractiveness, the fit between company and its CSR has a higher effect than does the social motive of CSR. Moreover, positive attitudes toward the CSR initiative as well as the company itself both mediate these relationships. The study shows taking an ideological perspective in authenticity is a relevant approach to understand CSR in the politically polarized contexts of most countries.
... Many cognitive models depict human knowledge as a web of interconnected, or associated concepts (Collins & Loftus, 1975;Anderson, 1983). In political science and communication, there is a long history of understanding political ideology in the same way (Converse, 1964;Gerring, 1997;Jost, 2006;Kalmoe, 2020). Several lines of research have enriched the understanding of elite and public knowledge by operationalizing belief systems as networks and applying methods from network science (DellaPosta, 2020; Boutyline & Vaisey 2017;Brandt, Sibley, & Osborne 2019) to understand them. ...
... Among the many definitions of ideology (Gerring, 1997), several research programs have converged on a conceptualization that views ideology as a system of interrelated attitudes and beliefs bound together in a causal or non-random fashion (Converse 1964;Gerring, 1997;Jost, 2006;Kalmoe, 2020). Much like other models of knowledge and meaning (DiMaggio, 2011;Anderson, 1983;Mohr, 1998), belief systems provide a concrete representation of how concepts are psychologically organized or related, essentially giving a picture of what concepts are associated in the minds of individuals or groups. ...
... Among the many definitions of ideology (Gerring, 1997), several research programs have converged on a conceptualization that views ideology as a system of interrelated attitudes and beliefs bound together in a causal or non-random fashion (Converse 1964;Gerring, 1997;Jost, 2006;Kalmoe, 2020). Much like other models of knowledge and meaning (DiMaggio, 2011;Anderson, 1983;Mohr, 1998), belief systems provide a concrete representation of how concepts are psychologically organized or related, essentially giving a picture of what concepts are associated in the minds of individuals or groups. ...
Current models of elite polarization imply that the behaviors and ideologies of Democrats and Republicans have become increasingly distinct. The congressional roll-call voting record is the most relied-on indicator of congressional polarization, however, voting behavior is limited in its scope, ability to provide deeper insights into the nature of elite polarization, and can be affected by external non-ideological factors. This dissertation leverages the richness of the congressional record and introduces a flexible computational method, the dynamic topic model, to study three unique but related indicators of political polarization across three decades of debate from the floor of the House of Representatives (1983-2016). Using the output of the dynamic topic mode – and through the lens of political communication – this dissertation reveals patterns of increasing polarization in not only what Democrats and Republicans talk about, but also how political issues are discussed. Furthermore, this dissertation interrogates elite ideologies through belief network analysis and finds that the networks of political beliefs held by Democrats and Republicans have not significantly diverged since 1983. This dissertation introduces a novel approach to the study of political polarization in Congress and provides three applied use-cases for studying political polarization through text-as-data and relevant quantities to political communication.
... Of note are also educational visions as identified as social efficiency, scholar academic, learner centred, and social reconstruction (Schiro 2013). Ideology is a vague notion which contains a descriptive component and possibly also an evaluative one -the notion of ideology can therefore be recognised as a so-called thick concept, meaning that a phenomenon can be evaluated on its descriptive content and have prescriptive power at the same time (Williams 1985) (see : Alexander 2005;Bartlett 1986;Denzau and North 1994;Freeden 2016;Gerring 1997). Some scholars claim that due to, inter alia, rigidity and resistance to critique of theses accepted within an ideology (relating to selected or general aspects of reality, for example, the social), they should not become a part of the educational process as a desirable value (Siegel 1990). ...
... Ideology purports to describe and explain the entirety of reality or a selection of it, and also proposes a vision of how this reality should develop. As such, it gives its own specific answers to problems and, as an action-oriented system of beliefs, it sets the standards of social practice (Bell 2000;Denzau and North 1994;Gerring 1997;Putnam 1971;Sartori 1969;Zmigrod 2022). Some scholars of this issue stress that rigidity of beliefs can be given as another feature of ideology; this is explained as stemming from the conviction that one has the right vision of reality and emotional involvement in particular (Arendt 1973;Bell 2000;Jusup, Matsuo, and Iwasa 2014;Neuman 1981;Sartori 1969). ...
... . However, another way political beliefs might be associated with affective polarization is how attitudes are positioned in a wider political belief system (Converse, 2006;Gerring, 1997) that is the structure of political belief systems. Belief system structure is the way political attitudes are interrelated (e.g., strongly/weakly positively/negatively correlated), which captures the logic of the belief system or how people think about politics. ...
... Political beliefs are not isolated but can be interrelated within a political belief system (Boutyline & Vaisey, 2017;Brandt & Sleegers, 2021;Converse, 2006;Gerring, 1997). Belief systems consist of multiple beliefs with some degree of interrelations among them. ...
We investigate the extent that political identity, political belief content (i.e., attitude stances), and political belief system structure (i.e., relations among attitudes) differences are associated with affective polarization (i.e., viewing ingroup partisans positively and outgroup partisans negatively) in two multinational, cross-sectional studies (Study 1 N = 4,152, Study 2 N = 29,994). First, we found a large, positive association between political identity and group liking-participants liked their ingroup substantially more than their outgroup. Second, political belief system content and structure had opposite associations with group liking: Sharing similar belief system content with an outgroup was associated with more outgroup liking, but similarity with the ingroup was associated with less ingroup liking. The opposite pattern was found for political belief system structure. Thus, affective polarization was greatest when belief system content similarity was low and structure similarity was high.
... Researchers have been intensely discussing over the ideology term for several decades (Hamilton, 1987;Gerring, 1997). The ideology concept was initially formed by French theorist Destutt de Tracy as a field concerning thoughts and their related ground in sensation (Lichtheim, 1965;Kennedy, 1979). ...
... The related literature underlines a number of studies focusing on the involvement of various ideologies in textbooks as well as the related perceptions of the users (Apple & Christian -Smith, 2017;Gann, 1995;Gerring, 1997;Hamilton, 1987;Kennedy, 1979;Khodabandeh & Mombini, 2018;Kim & Paek, 2015;Lichtheim, 1965;Medina, 2008;Moss, 2010;Safari & Razmjoo, 2016;Santiago, 2008;Schieffelin, Woolard, & Kroskrity, 1998;Stråth, 2013;Stray, 1994). Nevertheless, an intricate study examining the ideological ingredients in locally written Iranian EFL textbooks seems not to be carried out in the related field of study. ...
... Ideologies 'are primarily some kind of "ideas", that is, belief systems' (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 116). According to Jon Gerring (1997), the definition of ideology could be "a set of idea-elements that are bound together" (p. 980). ...
... To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592724000598. 20 See the online appendix for an empirical exploration of this concept of extremism and terrorism. 21 For definitions, see Gerring (1997). Like most, we use "ideology" to refer to the group's larger political beliefs, not to Parkinson's (2021) notion of "practical ideology," which refers instead to the ways members of a group talk about other groups in disparaging ways to differentiate themselves. ...
Extremism and terrorism are thought to go hand in hand in civil wars. Yet do they? Are rebel groups with more extreme goals more likely than moderate ones to use terrorism, as commonly assumed? Arguments linking extremism to terrorism are often circular: groups are tagged as extremist because they do extreme things. Our article addresses this problem by articulating a novel conceptualization of extremism as the distance of group goals from the status quo. Understanding the relationship between what groups want and how they try to achieve it has obvious theoretical and policy implications. We theorize mechanisms that might connect extremist goals to terrorism and use new data on rebel group aims in civil wars from 1970 to 2013 to examine the empirical relationship between extremism and terrorism in a nontautological way. The results show that some extremist goals are associated with terrorism but not others. Groups with goals that involve changing the political ideology of the state or transforming political power across identity groups are more likely to use terrorism or to use more of it. Secessionist groups, however, are no more likely to produce terrorism than are those with less extreme territorial aims such as autonomy.
... Finally, the definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" are often contested in the political world. There is a constant struggle, even among political scientists, over the formal definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" (Gerring, 1997). The lack of a shared understanding of the ideological labels highlights an inherent drawback of using self-reported ideology to measure operational ideology. ...
American politics scholarship has relied extensively on self-reported measures of ideology. We evaluate these widely used measures through an original national survey. Descriptively, we show that Americans’ understandings of “liberal” and “conservative” are weakly aligned with conventional definitions of these terms and that such understandings are heterogeneous across social groups, casting doubt on the construct validity and measurement equivalence of ideological self-placements. Experimentally, we randomly assign one of three measures of ideology to each respondent: (1) the standard ANES question, (2) a version that adds definitions of “liberal” and “conservative,” and (3) a version that keeps these definitions but removes ideological labels from the question. We find that the third measure, which helps to isolate symbolic ideology from operational ideology, shifts self-reported ideology in important ways: Democrats become more conservative, and Republicans more liberal. These findings offer first-cut experimental evidence on the limitations of self-reported ideology as a measure of operational ideology, and contribute to ongoing debates about the use of ideological self-placements in American politics.
... In its structure, the article has a definitional scope and focuses on both the empirical and theoretical aspects of ideology. However, in conclusion, Gerring suggests that the term "ideology" can be associated with problem-solving when speaking about political discourse (Gerring, 1997). ...
This article examines the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the perspectives of Russian ideology, the tools used by the Russian Federation in the war against Ukraine, and refugee-making. The article uses offensive realism as an approach to understanding the actions of Russia against Ukraine. Russian full-scale aggression against Ukraine in February 2022 provoked international crises in numerous dimensions: political, security, humanitarian, and ecological. It became not only a war between countries, but a war between ways of thinking and ideologies. The reasoning and international policies behind this war might have very different and controversial interpretations; however, some explanation can be found by analyzing Russian inner-political discourse during the last two decades and the development of Russian ideology. The key research question of the article concerns the issue of Russian ideology and its role in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
... The intricate nature of human thoughts and emotions is challenging for AI to completely comprehend and interact with due to the subjective nature of writing. Individual viewpoints, convictions, and ideologies that are influenced by cultural milieu and personal experience are articulated in writing (6). The richness of writing is derived from the diversity of human experiences; therefore, it is improbable that an AI system could encompass such an extensive range of human perspectives. ...
Despite notable progressions in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the imminent complete supplanting of human writers by AI is exceedingly improbable. Undoubtedly, AI is currently capable of producing texts that are only marginally cogent or even imitate specific writing styles by utilizing machine learning and algorithms. However, what distinguishes human writers is their capacity to imbue their works with ingenuity, sentimentality, and distinct viewpoints. Writing is more than simply assembling words; it is an authentic expression of oneself. In addition, human beings possess superior cognitive abilities such as critical thinking, intuition, and the capacity to comprehend intricate contexts beyond the current capabilities of any algorithm. However, who can say what the future may bring? It is not inconceivable that talent-matched AI writers will one day compose bestselling novels and award-winning articles alongside us humans.
... This exploration of how some people make sense of anti-carceral policy proposals invokes the concept of ideology. Ideology is a knowledge structure or schema used to organize and process relevant social and political information (Gerring, 1997). Schemas consist of various predispositions brought to bear on a policy proposal, which can include core values, group attachments, affective judgments, and expectations (Alvarez & Brehm, 2002). ...
Why do many liberal voters in diverse, urban areas express racially egalitarian values but oppose anti-carceral policies that would weaken structural racism? How does this manifest particularly among people whose racial groups and neighborhoods experience the omission of targeting by the carceral state—voters in majority-white neighborhoods? Based on 28 canvassing interviews conducted in 2019 in Los Angeles County, this study shows one way that the omission of carceral state targeting produces ideological schema that bolster structural racism. Specifically, I demonstrate that non-Republican voters typically use four predispositions to make sense of their opinions on a proposed jail decarceration policy: (1) conceptions of criminalized people, (2) beliefs about the purpose and effects of the criminal legal system, (3) understandings of structural racism in the criminal legal system, and (4) racialized emotions. In the absence of carceral state targeting and coherent partisan ideology, these predispositions work together to structure three commonly used schema to formulate opinions towards anti-carceral policies: dangerous, deserving, or harmed. The geographically racialized omission of carceral state targeting thus allows for these voters to use ideological schemas that bolster the continued reproduction of carceral racism in their sense-making of anti-carceral policy proposals.
... Popper (2014: 459) defines the conspiracy theory of society as "the view that whatever happens in societyincluding things which people as a rule dislike, such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortagesare the results of direct design by some powerful individuals or groups." clause […] implicitly or explicitly acknowledge that it basically lacks what Gerring (1997) has distilled as the single most unchallenged dimension of ideology in the literature: coherence." I do not want to comment here on whether the proponents of other accounts (wrongly) hold that populism lacks coherence. ...
The genus problem of populism presents one of the most vexing conceptual questions across the social sciences: Some theorists believe that populism is nothing more than an assembly of discursive patterns, while others maintain that populism is a strategy to gain political power. Then there are those that argue that populism is a thin ideology that lacks a coherent set of guiding principles. The paper intervenes in this debate in two ways: First, it offers a methodological apparatus for evaluating and developing contested concepts such as populism. Second, it puts forward and defends the claim that populism can be fruitfully understood as a coherent ideology that rests on four foundational principles. These principles, I will argue, are necessary for explaining the paradigmatic beliefs and dispositions exhibited by exponents of populism. One of the key characteristics of populism, on the account developed in this paper, is its peculiar epistemic stance.
... En este punto, es importante subrayar que este trabajo adopta una perspectiva ideacional del populismo. Junto con otros conceptos importantes en la ciencia política, tales como democracia (Collier y Levitsky, 1997;Munck y Verkuilen, 2002), ideología (Gerring, 1997) o estado de derecho (Fallon, 1997;Møller y Skaaning, 2012Tamanaha, 2007;Waldron, 2002), el populismo parece ser un concepto esencialmente controvertido (Collier, Hidalgo y Maciuceanu, 2007;Gallie, 1956). Es posible que no se llegue rápidamente a un consenso sobre la definición del populismo. ...
Según la definición ideacional del populismo, una narrativa es populista si se caracteriza por una cosmología maniquea que divide a la comunidad política entre un pueblo, concebido como una entidad homogéneamente virtuosa, y una élite, pensada como una entidad homogéneamente corrupta (Hawkins y Rovira Kaltwasser, 2019; Mudde, 2004). A partir de esta definición, el presidente de México, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) parece haber exhibido una narrativa populista. Partiendo de aquella conceptualización y centrándose en un estudio de caso, este trabajo indaga sobre si tal narrativa produce polarización y, especialmente, cuál de aquellos dos atributos ejerce un mayor efecto causal sobre las actitudes polarizadas entre los ciudadanos, proponiendo la hipótesis de que los mensajes invocando a una élite corrupta son más propensos a generar polarización afectiva que los mensajes aludiendo a un pueblo bueno. Para poner a prueba esta hipótesis, este artículo realiza análisis textual tanto de los posteos de AMLO en Facebook como de los comentarios de los seguidores a tales publicaciones. Los resultados muestran que los comentarios a los posteos de López Obrador son significativamente más polarizados cuando sus publicaciones exhiben un mensaje negativo sobre la “élite” que cuando muestran un mensaje con una mención positiva al “pueblo”. Las alusiones a una “élite corrupta” parecen desencadenar una gran polarización afectiva en las redes sociales.
... One of the first mentions of the term can be seen in the work of Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment philosopher in his Éléments d'idéologie (1818) whose first volume in this work, titled "Ideology Strictly Defined," defined ideology as a science of ideas. For this article, ideology is defined as a set of doctrines, beliefs, or rationalities, forming a body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture, forming the basis of a political, economic, social, or other system (Gerring, 1997;Jost, 2006;Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008;Jost, Frederico, & Napier, 2009). Individuals may embrace various political, sociocultural, economic, and religious ideologies. ...
Students in teacher education programs are often faced with perceived threats to their epistemological heritages. According to System Justification Theory, when faced with these perceived threats, individuals may become more defensive, epistemically resistant, and cognitively rigid. More specifically, due to a palliative psychological need, students may become motivated to justify what they conceive of as the status quo, or system justifications, to defend their episte-mological heritage and socializations. Students may face perceived threats to their social and epistemological heritages in courses which are critically focused, such as foundations of education courses, and courses where there are requirements for both dialogical and dialec-tical engagement. System Justification Theory offers the potential to be utilized as a way of understanding student teachers' epistemologi-cal resistance and epistemic vices while informing teacher educators' pedagogy.
... Rising to the call for more theory-driven inference in the social sciences (Muthukrishna and Henrich 2019), here we derive and test predictions from the Dual Foundations Theory regarding how twodimensional ideology will (a) relate to responses to be affected by the threat of COVID-19. We focus our predictions on SDO and RWA because they are among the most widely used measures of the two dimensions of ideology, they have good psychometric properties, and they have been shown to predict a range of political behaviours and attitudes (Duckitt and Sibley 2009;Duckitt and Sibley 2017;Johnston and Ollerenshaw 2020;Stangor and Leary 2006) 2 . 1 The term 'ideology' is used in many, sometimes contradictory ways (Converse 2006;Jost 2006;Jost, Federico, and Napier 2009), even within political science (Gerring 1997). Here, we build on prior work that considers political ideology in the psychological sense as 'an interrelated set of moral and political attitudes that possesses cognitive, affective, and motivational components' (Jost 2006, 653). 2 We conceptualize SDO and RWA as proxies for the two dimensions of ideology. ...
Political conservatives' opposition to COVID-19 restrictions is puzzling given the well-documented links between conservatism and conformity, threat sensitivity, and pathogen aversion. We propose a resolution based on the Dual Foundations Theory of ideology, which holds that ideology comprises two dimensions, one reflecting trade-offs between threat-driven conformity and individualism, and another reflecting trade-offs between empathy-driven cooperation and competition. We test predictions derived from this theory in a UK sample using individuals' responses to COVID-19 and widely-used measures of the two dimensions – ‘right-wing authoritarianism’ (RWA) and ‘social dominance orientation’ (SDO), respectively. Consistent with our predictions, we show that RWA, but not SDO, increased following the pandemic and that high-RWA conservatives do display more concerned, conformist, pro-lockdown attitudes, while high-SDO conservatives display less empathic, cooperative attitudes and are anti-lockdown. This helps explain paradoxical prior results and highlights how a focus on unidimensional ideology can mask divergent motives across the ideological landscape.
... En ese sentido, siguiendo lo propuesto en otras investigaciones (Luskin, 1990;Gerring, 1997), se señala que la ideología puede funcionar como "un motivador que configura el comportamiento político de los independientes al brindar coherencia, contraste, estabilidad y dirección a sus actitudes, opiniones, comportamiento político" y posiciones temáticas (Cisneros, 2022: 60). De esa manera es que la independencia partidista no implica necesariamente la ausencia de ideología política en los ciudadanos, siendo esta última un elemento que brinda base y estructura a su desenvolvimiento en el panorama político. ...
El autor muestra el panorama de la independencia partidista en América Latina, enfatizando la configuración que ejerce la ideología en los ciudadanos sin identidad partidaria. Analiza el fenómeno desde un enfoque cuantitativo y utiliza datos del Barómetro de las Américas 2018-2019; el argumento analítico distingue entre independientes que no manifiestan un vínculo ideológico, de aquellos que sí lo manifiestan. Asimismo, diferencia a los independientes según su posicionamiento ideológico de izquierda, centro, derecha y sin ubicación ideológica. Los resultados muestran que existe una mayoría de ciudadanos sin identidad partidaria en la región
... First, as the term belief system implies, attitudes are fixed but also related to one another. This assumption parallels Converse's definition of belief systems as "a configuration of ideas and attitudes in which the elements are bound together by some form of constraint or functional interdependence" (Converse 1964, 3; see also Gerring 1997;Jost 2006). Second, attitudes are interdependent and the links between attitudes are causal. ...
This dissertation proposes a theoretical framework of attitude change under threatening conditions based on parallel updating. More specifically, I focus on public preferences for policies to address terrorist attacks, pandemics, climate change and natural disasters in periods when these threats are elevated. I test my argument with four original survey experiments, which include eleven interventions and draw on a nationally diverse sample of a total of 9,110 American citizens. These interventions identify the effects of factual information, partisan cues, incidental emotions, ideological and non-ideological framing, and memory priming.Evidence from these experiments provides consistent support that public opinion updating exhibits five characteristics. First, citizens change their views by a small amount. Second, citizens’ opinions move in the direction of information. Third, attitude change occurs regardless of political predispositions and individual attributes. Fourth, exposure to information about a specific policy area does not impact preferences for policies unrelated to this area. The only exception to this rule is when the treatment is emotionally strong. Finally, attitude- and identity-based cross pressures may introduce only minimal bias in the manner citizens update their opinions.
... La ideología, expresada en términos de izquierda y derecha, es uno de los factores explicativos más relevantes de un sinfín de comportamientos políticos, sobre todo 1. Frase atribuida a Churchill, pero que según la International Churchill Society, el Primer Ministro británico nunca dijo. Véase https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/quotes-falselyattributed/ del voto (Eijk, Schmitt y Binder, 2005); y agrupa de forma coherente muchas actitudes políticas (Gerring, 1997;Corbetta, Cavazza y Roccato, 2009). Conocer cómo funciona la ideología permite entender el funcionamiento de la política de un país, identificar las preferencias de los ciudadanos respecto de gran variedad de asuntos y qué gobiernos son más probables. ...
¿Se ubican los jóvenes de hoy más a la derecha? Existe una creencia popular de que los jóvenes de ubican más a la izquierda que sus mayores. Sin embargo, hay poca evidencia empírica sobre cómo funciona la edad a la hora de entender la ideología de los individuos. En este artículo, tratamos de analizar cómo funciona la edad sobre la ideología de los ciudadanos teniendo en cuenta tanto el efecto de la edad en sí mismo, el efecto de ciclo vital; como el efecto cohorte o generacional, derivado de la socialización política. La evidencia de este artículo apunta a que los jóvenes de hoy, si bien se mantienen más a la izquierda que otros grupos de edad, tienen preferencias menos de izquierda que los jóvenes socializados en los sesenta y setenta.
... While the concept of ideology is notorious for its 'semantic promiscuity' (Gerring, 1997), thematic specialists generally interpret it as referring to collections of ideas and values that help explain or challenge existing social or political arrangements (e.g., Hamilton, 1987;Snow, 2007;Wilson, 1973). Of course, in the context of this paper we are primarily interested in belief systems that explicitly advocate or justify violence, rather than ideologies more broadly. ...
This report focuses on interventions designed to promote and facilitate exits from ideologically justified violence – often referred to as ‘tertiary’ interventions. The beneficiaries of these programmes include individuals convicted of terrorism charges, as well as those who voluntarily disengaged. Relying on the authors’ Attitudes-Behaviours Corrective (ABC) Model of Violent Extremism (Khalil et al., 2022), and drawing from their extensive professional experiences of providing technical support to such interventions, this report presents a novel framework to help practitioners develop and implement these programmes.
... Building a causal argument that takes populist ideas as its starting point requires the proposal of causal mechanisms that connect citizens' cognition to politicians' narrative . Appeals to "corrupt and exploitative elite" seem to evoke resentment and hatred, two strong emotions that have been linked with polarization 1 Along with other major concepts in political science, such as democracy (Collier and Levitsky 1997;Munck and Verkuilen 2002), ideology (Gerring 1997), and rule of law (Fallon 1997;Møller andSkaaning 2012, 2014;Tamanaha 2007;Waldron 2002), populism seems to be an essentially contested concept (Collier, Hidalgo, and Maciuceanu 2006;Gallie 1956). Several contesting conceptions of populism have been provided by Mudde, Hawkins, Rovira Kaltwasser, Weyland, and de la Torre. ...
According to the ideational definition of populism, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), has certainly exhibited a populist narrative (Sarsfield 2022). Departing from such conceptualization, this work tries to explore, however, the contextual dimensions in AMLO's narrative that here, following a growing literature on political rhetoric, we call “storytelling” (e.g., Engesser et al. 2021). We define the idea of storytelling as the “art of telling a story where emotions, characters and other details are applied” in order “to promote a particular point of view or set of values” (Nordensvard and Ketola 2021, p.2). Focusing on a single-case study, this work concerns what are the stories that AMLO uses in his Twitter account and which of these stories provokes greater polarization among his followers. Although the results are not conclusive, findings suggest that we call the “conspiracy theory” and “ostracizing the others” stories push individuals to greater polarization.
... While earlier scholars (Gerring, 1997;McClosky, 1964) attempt to classify political ideologies in a variety of ways (e.g., socialist ideology and liberal ideology), the left-and right-wing typologies are one of the most distinct classifications utilised in the literature. ...
Left-leaning and right-leaning governments hold opposing views on economic policy, resulting in disparities in economic behaviours and outcomes. Given this context, we explore the effect of political ideology on domestic credit using an unbalanced panel data of 29 countries from 1960 to 2014. Our empirical analysis shows that left-leaning governments reduce total domestic credit allocations. Also, we find that right-leaning governments provide more credit to the private sector, while left-leaning governments prefer to boost domestic credit to the public sector. In a further analysis, we show that political parties and their domestic credit strategies remain unchanged even during electoral periods. Our novel insights, that are robust to alternative measures, samples, and a set of econometric identifications, contribute to the literature on partisan politics and lending behaviour.
... While a 'political ideology' would be tautological according to the dictionary definition, the academic definition seems to provide room for a non-political ideology. In this regard, Gerring (1997) poses that to avoid depriving the concept of its utility, it is imperative to define its boundaries as an ideology is, in relation to other social science terms, perhaps one of the most contextdependent. We will therefore restrict the usage of 'ideology' to the political arena, thereby focusing on political ideology. ...
... Exclusively focusing on genocide can also have problematic political consequences, see: Straus 2019; Moses 2021. 76 In this sense I seek to provide a "focused theory" that specifically explicates ideology's role in such violence, see: George and Bennett 2005, 67 & McLellan 1995, 1;Gerring 1997 usage, to say that violence is 'ideological' is not to necessarily impute especially dogmatic or idealistic motives or justifications to it. It is instead to emphasize that the motives and justifications, whatever they are, are vitally embedded in broader distinctive sets of ideas about politics, without which the violence cannot be properly understood or causally explained. ...
This is the introductory chapter from Ideology and Mass Killing: The Radicalized Security Politics of Genocides and Deadly Atrocities. In research on 'mass killings' such as genocides and campaigns of state terror, the role of ideology is hotly debated. For some scholars, ideologies are crucial in providing the extremist goals and hatreds that motivate ideologically committed people to kill. But many other scholars are sceptical: contending that perpetrators of mass killing rarely seem ideologically committed, and that rational self-interest or powerful forms of social pressure are more important drivers of violence than ideology. In Ideology and Mass Killing, I challenge both these prevailing views, advancing an alternative 'neo-ideological' perspective which systematically retheorises the key ideological foundations of large-scale violence against civilians. Integrating cutting-edge research from multiple disciplines, including political science, political psychology, history and sociology, the book demonstrates that ideological justifications vitally shape such violence in ways that go beyond deep ideological commitment. Most disturbingly of all, the key ideological foundations of mass killings are found to lie, not in extraordinary political goals or hatreds, but in radicalized versions of those conventional, widely accepted ideas that underpin the politics of security in ordinary societies across the world. The book then substantiates this account by a detailed examination of four contrasting cases of mass killing - Stalinist Repression in the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1938, the Allied Bombing Campaign against Germany and Japan in World War II from 1940 to 1945, mass atrocities in the Guatemalan Civil War between 1978 and 1983, and the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. This represents the first volume to offer a dedicated, comparative theory of ideology's role in mass killing, while also developing a powerful new account of how ideology affects violence and politics more generally.
... Hamilton (1987) identifica 27 dimensiones o elementos diferentes utilizados en diversas definiciones de ideología, desde referencias a marcos generales de creencias hasta aspectos inconscientes que motivan la acción, pasando por entenderlas como armas conceptuales en la lucha entre clases. En esa variedad, Gerring (1997) identifica cinco aproximaciones diferentes: una nominalista que focaliza el estudio de la ideología desde la capacidad de operacionalizar constructos comparables; una segunda línea que prefiere o abandonar el concepto o delimitarlo para poder ser trabajado analíticamente (tal sería el caso del artículo de Converse antes citado, por ejemplo); una tercera y una cuarta aproximaciones que se focalizan en los acontecimientos históricos en el origen del término y su etiología, respectivamente; y, por último, una aproximación pragmática que cambia de significados según el contexto en que se aplique. ...
La Convención Constitucional chilena del 2021-2022 representa un caso inusual del surgimiento de un cuerpo colegiado sin significativas restricciones para fijar su funcionamiento por otros órganos políticos e integrado por personas sin militancia política. Esta ausencia de inercia institucional impone un desafío para que la toma de decisiones colectivas genere equilibrios estables. Como tal, es un escenario propicio para estudiar el surgimiento de acción colectiva a partir de las preferencias ideológicas de los miembros del cuerpo colegiado. En este estudio se estiman la ideologías de los convencionales a partir del primer mes de votaciones plenarias y se utilizan para testear si la ideología ayuda a explicar las decisiones de copatrocinio de iniciativas dentro del organismo.
... Hamilton (1987) identifica 27 dimensiones o elementos diferentes utilizados en diversas definiciones de ideología, desde referencias a marcos generales de creencias hasta aspectos inconscientes que motivan la acción, pasando por entenderlas como armas conceptuales en la lucha entre clases. En esa variedad, Gerring (1997) identifica cinco aproximaciones diferentes: una nominalista que focaliza el estudio de la ideología desde la capacidad de operacionalizar constructos comparables; una segunda línea que prefiere o abandonar el concepto o delimitarlo para poder ser trabajado analíticamente (tal sería el caso del artículo de Converse antes citado, por ejemplo); una tercera y una cuarta aproximaciones que se focalizan en los acontecimientos históricos en el origen del término y su etiología, respectivamente; y, por último, una aproximación pragmática que cambia de significados según el contexto en que se aplique. ...
The Chilean Constitutional Convention of 2021-2022 represents an unusual case of a deliberative body with few agenda restrictions provided by other political bodies and fulfilled by non-partisan members. This lack of institutional constraints imposes a challenge to reach stable equilibria for collective action. As such, it is an ideal scenario to study the role of ideology to shape the emergence of collective action. In this study, we estimate the ideology of each of its members using the first month of roll calls. Then, the estimated ideology is used to explain members’ decisions to cosponsor bills focused on setting the rules of the game for the Convention.
... Las citas originales están en el apéndice 7 en línea. 40 Esto está en línea con los motivos de permanencia reportados por excombatientes de las FARC en la encuesta de la FIP de 2008: miedo a irse (155), miedo a estar fuera (72), mejorar Colombia (85), identidad (58), dinero (44) y comida (38) fueron los más indicados. Estas razones coinciden en términos generales con los incentivos selectivos (comida y dinero), el atractivo ideológico (mejorar Colombia e identidad) y la coerción (miedo a irse). ...
Objetivo/contexto:
la deserción, o salida no autorizada de un grupo armado, tiene importantes implicaciones para la contrainsurgencia, la terminación de una guerra y la dinámica de reclutamiento. Si bien la investigación existente enfatiza la importancia de motivaciones individuales para la deserción, el declive organizacional, en forma de adversidad militar y financiera, también puede condicionar la deserción. El declive organizacional socava los instrumentos de un grupo para canalizar las preferencias individuales hacia la acción colectiva. Estos instrumentos incluyen los incentivos selectivos, el atractivo ideológico y la coerción. Cuando el poder vinculante de estos instrumentos disminuye, los deseos individuales comienzan a dominar el comportamiento, lo que aumenta la probabilidad de deserción.
Metodología:
se utiliza la insurgencia de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) para examinar este argumento con un enfoque multimétodo. Primero, se realiza un análisis cuantitativo para explorar datos únicos sobre más de 19.000 desertores de las FARC reportados entre 2002 y 2017, proporcionados por el Ministerio de Defensa de Colombia. Al protegerse contra amenazas a la inferencia causal, el análisis estadístico indica que el declive organizacional impulsa la deserción. En segundo lugar, se lleva a cabo un análisis cualitativo utilizando una gran cantidad de informes detallados sobre entrevistas con desertores realizadas por personal militar colombiano.
Conclusiones:
los informes demuestran que el declive organizacional debilita los incentivos selectivos, la ideología del grupo y un régimen coercitivo creíble, y fomenta la deserción mediante estos mecanismos.
Originalidad:
estos hallazgos brindan información clave para los formuladores de políticas, dado que la deserción puede contribuir tanto a poner fin a un conflicto como a acelerar el reclutamiento de nuevos combatientes.
Political party as an institution of the state performs very critical functions in any democratic setting and beyond. Democracy flourishes where there are issue-based political parties. Democracy will be meaningless without political parties and political parties can be defined based on their ideologies. It is because of these important roles of political parties in modern electoral democratic states that made many political researchers and analysts contend that it is a fact that "political parties create democracy; modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties". There is no other thing that determines the people's view and role of political parties in any constituted state except their "political ideologies." Using the historical method of data analysis, this study found out that Nigeria's political parties in Pre-Independence, First Republic, Second Republic, Third Republic, and Fourth Republic lacked political ideologies. The study attributed some of the systemic ills, especially, the porous nature of national security in Nigeria, to the lack of issue-based political parties.
We develop a new class of spatial voting models for binary preference data that can accommodate both monotonic and non-monotonic response functions, and are more flexible than alternative "unfolding" models previously introduced in the literature. We then use these models to estimate revealed preferences for legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives and justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. The results from these applications indicate that the new models provide superior complexity-adjusted performance to various alternatives and also that the additional flexibility leads to preferences' estimates that are closer matches to the perceived ideological positions of legislators and justices.
Diese Skala bildet das ideologische Profil von Befragten ab. Dabei liegt besonderes Augenmerk darauf, die Komplexität eines individuellen ideologischen Profils abzubilden und Gruppenvergleiche (z.B. in der Einstellungs- oder Milieuforschung) zu ermöglichen. Hierzu sammeln Befragte jeweils einen Punktwert
in vier Subdimensionen: Ökonomischer Libertarismus, Konservativismus, Sozialismus und Liberalismus. Diese vier Subdimensionen spiegeln die wichtigsten Ideologien der westlichen Welt wider, was aus der in der Politikwissenschaft empirisch bestätigten Unterscheidung in ökonomische und soziokulturelle Ideologien hervorgeht. Eingesetzt wurde diese Skala bereits in der österreichischen Version der zweiten Erhebung des Values in Crisis Surveys.
The chapter discusses the use of diplomatic sources to research and publish on the history of Brazilian foreign policy
Scholars seeking to understand why individuals become involved in terrorism and violent extremism rely on a multitude of theoretical frameworks. While these are commonly interpreted as being in antagonistic opposition, the core premise of this article is that further advances in our understanding of this violence are contingent upon us treating them as complementary. Limiting ourselves to three frameworks that are perhaps most in tension, we survey the core premises of the rational choice perspective (RCP), the social identity perspective (SIP), and the ideological perspective (IP), identifying opportunities for theoretical integration. We argue that individuals are driven to involvement in this violence by both personal rewards and collective objectives, making both the RCP and SIP frameworks indispensable. We also conclude that SIP interpretations are incomplete without the IP, as ideologies play a pivotal role in constructing and amplifying ingroup and outgroup identities. The RCP is also deficient in the absence of the IP as many rewards that motivate involvement can only be understood through reference to the ideational context in which they are conferred. Systematic recognition and application of this theoretical complementarity is facilitated, we further argue, by the Attitudes-Behaviors Corrective (ABC) Model, which we apply as a heuristic device throughout the article.
The principle of equality and the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation are enshrined in the EU Treaties. A strong baseline is also laid down in secondary EU legislation. However, the impact of the respective provisions is constrained in two ways: by challenges to their enforcement and, regarding the secondary EU law, by limitations in their scope to employment. This paper takes stock of the EU non-discrimination law with respect to sexual minorities’ rights as well as the enforcement mechanisms applied by the EU to safeguard implementation in Member States. To contextualize the findings, we analyse the cases of Hungary and Poland where measures adopted by state and local authorities have led to decisive steps by the EU, including withholding financial transfers. The paper identifies systemic weaknesses in existing enforcement mechanisms and concludes by pointing to institutional reform which could address them.
Is emergism an ideological expression and manifestation of a re-styled imperialism of free trade? This chapter interrogates the basic premise of African economies as ‘emerging’. From what are they emerging? Colonialism? Are they emerging in the sense of nascent newly established entities? Often, the term catching up is also used. I critique these notions, questioning what these emerging economies are catching up to. This paper uses the example of Zimbabwe to demonstrate that African economies are anything but emerging. The continent has always been a part of global system and not a recent entrant to it, and its relations with the world have always developed concurrently. It challenges notions that one continent is years ahead and another is caught in the past or left behind. Using the Zimbabwe case, the study reconsiders the ‘emerging market’ concept as it is applied to Africa as problematic and misleading.Keywords
Emergism
IdeologyEmerging economiesZimbabweAfricaEconomic thinkingEconomies
We propose a model of political competition not over policy programs, but over ideologies: models of the world that organize voters' experiences and guide the inferences they draw from observed outcomes. Policy‐motivated political parties develop ideologies, and voters choose the ideology that best explains their observations. Preferences over policies are then induced by the adopted ideology. Parties thus care about winning the ideological battle as it confers an advantage in the electoral arena. We show that in equilibrium political parties always propose different models of the world. This divergence extends to all features of the environment, not just policy dimensions. A lower degree of policy extremism in the past increases the divergence on the policy dimension, thus leading to higher ideological polarization.
This study aims to explain why some anti-systemic parties come to power while others remain as permanent opposition or disappear over time. The evidence is sought from the comparative analysis of the socialist Workers' Party of Turkey (Türkiyeİşçi Partisi, 1961-1971, permanent opposition) and the pro-Islamic Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, 1983-1998, in power). In particular, the parties are compared and contrasted in terms of their organizational style, leadership structure, and linkage with the voters. The paper argues that while the TIP built a loose and vertical local organization, the RP had a strong grassroots organization cemented through Islamic ideology. Second, while the RP had an unchallenged leadership of Necmettin Erbakan, the TIP had a fragmented leadership resulting from multiple ideological conflicts which undermined the efficiency of the decision-making process and its implementation. Finally, while the TIP was a textbook example of a programmatic party under the guidance of socialist ideology, the RP heavily relied on the distribution of clientelist resources-mostly emanating from its control in the municipalities and central government-to address voters. Overall, the RP took advantage of these strategies to rapidly extend its voter base beyond core voters, particularly in metropolitan areas, while the TIP largely remained restricted to narrow constituencies.
Bu çalışmanın amacı, literatürde bâkir kalan, yönetim tarihi ve yönetim felsefesinde etkili olan ideolojik yaklaşımları eleştirel bakış açısıyla ortaya çıkarmaktır. İdeolojiler toplum düzenini korumaya hizmet eden düşünce sistemleri ve toplumdaki baskın ya da yönetici grubun çıkarlarının kabaca ifade etme şeklidir. Bununla birlikte ideolojiler, kendi zamanının siyasi ve iktisadi eğilimlerine uygun olması dolayısıyla onları desteklemek ve meşrulaştırmak mecburiyetindedir. Bunu başarabilmesi de mevzuubahis olan eğilimlerle örtüşen telkinleri, ahlaki ilkeleri ve kıymet hükümlerini inşa etmek; insanları bu ilke ve kıymet hükümlerine uygun davranmaya yönlendirmekle olasıdır. Bu doğrultuda, yönetim düşüncesinin bilimsel nitelik kazanmasında önemli katkısı olan bilimsel yönetim yaklaşımının farklı bir perspektiften ele alınarak, yönetim tarihi çalışmalarına katkı sağlamak amaçlanmıştır. Bilimsel yönetim, içinde bulunduğu çevre koşullarından ve belli durumsallıklardan etkilenip şekillenmiştir. Literatür iz sürme metodu ile taranarak, bilimsel yönetiminin içinde doğduğu toplumsal, ekonomik ve düşünsel zemin göz önünde bulundurularak Taylorizm-Darwinizm-Sosyal Darwinizm ilişkisi ve bu ilişkide rol alan yönetim teorisyenlerin etkileşmeleri eleştirel bir perspektiften ele alınarak incelenmiştir. Bu inceleme sonucunda; verimliliği geliştirmek ve üretimi artırmak üzerine inşa edilen bilimsel yönetim düşüncesi göz önüne alındığında; Sosyal Darwinizmin determinist ve mutlak kuralcı yaklaşımının bilimsel yönetimin çerçevesini oluşturmak için uygun zemin hazırladığı ve bilimsel yönetimin gelişiminde etkili olduğu görülmüştür.
Ideology is a central concept in political psychology. Here, we synthesise the scholarly debate's major themes. We first examine the ways in which ideology has been operationalised and discuss its prevalence (or lack thereof) in the mass public. This is followed by a discussion of the top-down and bottom-up forces that shape citizens' ideology. Top-down processes include political elites and socialisation. Bottom-up processes range from political values, basic human values, and personality to biology and genetics. Finally, we outline steps that we would welcome in the next generation of research on political ideology. These include fundamental questions about the causal relationship between different bottom-up factors and a call for more attention to measurement of key constructs and of open science practices in the study of political ideology. We hope this chapter inspires others and sets the stage for the next generation of research on political ideology.
Political parties sometimes adopt unpopular positions that condemn them to electoral defeat. This phenomenon is usually ascribed to expressive motives—namely, parties’ desire to maintain their ideological purity. Could ideological parties instead have strategic incentives to lose? To answer this question, I present a model of repeated spatial elections in which voters face uncertainty about their preferred policy and learn via experience. The amount of voter learning, I show, depends on the location of the implemented policy: a more radical policy generates more information. For a party whose ideological stance is unpopular with the electorate, this creates a trade-off between winning the upcoming election so as to secure policy influence and changing voters’ preferences so as to win with a better platform in the future. Under some conditions the party gambles on the future. It chooses to lose today to possibly change voters’ views and win big tomorrow.
The aim of this article is to provide a content analysis of the ongoing shift from the concept of public administration to governance by looking at the theories and approaches that have dominated the public administration arena from the traditional administration approach to the current governance approach. The article also seeks to investigate the reasons for this shift.
How should ideology be understood, and should we be concerned if Americans lack it? Combining widely used survey questions with an incentivized coordination game, we separately measure individuals’ own policy preferences and their knowledge of what other ideological group members expect them to believe. This allows us to distinguish knowledge of ideological norms—what liberals and conservatives believe ought to go with what—from adherence to those norms. We find that a nontrivial portion of those reporting ideologically inconsistent preferences do so knowingly, suggesting their lack of ideological constraint can be attributed to pragmatism rather than innocence. Additionally, a question order experiment reveals that priming ideological norms before measuring policy preferences promotes ideological adherence, suggesting ideological constraint is at least partially attributable to norm‐conformity pressure. Together, these findings raise the question whether ideology is actually desirable or if it instead allows elites to reverse the direction of accountability.
p>Se analiza el papel de los electores sin identidad partidaria en la elección de Diputados Federales de 2021, acentuando de manera novedosa que las características ideológicas de los independientes repercutieron en el apoyo y rechazo a cada una de las principales opciones. Los resultados muestran que los independientes sin ubicación ideológica y los independientes de izquierda apoyaron a la coalición Juntos Hacemos Historia, mientras que los independientes de derecha a la coalición Va por México. Los independientes de centro dividieron su apoyo entre ambas coaliciones. En la decisión de voto, los independientes de derecha y de centro dieron mayor importancia a la evaluación de la economía y de la seguridad, mientras que, los independientes de izquierda y sin ubicación ideológica a la evaluación sobre la vacunación contra Covid-19. Esto representa una contribución teórica y empírica al estudio de la independencia partidista en México.</p
In “Politics, Ideology, And Belief Systems” Professor Sartori has undertaken the Sisyphean task of drawing up conceptual schemes to distinguish the political mentalities of the pragmatist and the ideologist. His “Hypothesis” poses the curious proposition that “ideology and pragmatisms qua ‘political cultures’ are related, respectively, to the ‘cultural matrixes’ rationalism and empiricism.” (p. 402) When political scientists put forth hypotheses, students of history are usually not far behind with their arid facts and pale negations. Sartori's hypothesis is an intriguing theoretical formulation of a central issue in twentieth century politics; whether it is historically valid is the concern of this article. For the question that remains uppermost as I read his article is simply who are the ideologists and who are the pragmatists? Historically considered, if we were to apply Sartori's defining characteristics to a specific context it may very well be that the totalitarian “ideologies” of communism and fascism would have to be judged “pragmatic,” while the mentality of American political behavior may even have to be considered “ideological.” Since I am sure Professor Sartori did not have this ironic interpretation in mind, perhaps some elaboration is in order.
When Marx turned Hegel on his head he not only gave a materialistic base to German idealism but imputed an activistic impulse to political theory. Dialectical materialism is the “actualization of philosophy,” the extension of contemplative thought into real life. And whether regarded as a “knowing-process” or as Sartori's “belief system,” Marxism represented a rejection of both the deductive rationalism of Descartes and the sensationalist rationalism of Locke.
Despite their prominence in political affairs, values have rarely been studied through survey research. This article offers groundwork for quantitative investigations of politicians‘values by describing the development, administration and assessment of a ranking technique in the British House of Commons. It uses tape-recorded interviews which suggest that values are intelligible components of politicians’ belief systems and help identify difficulties in conceptualizing and measuring them. The ranking instrument employed to measure values demonstrates its adequacy by reproducing familiar cleavages between political camps, distinguishing ideological party factions and generating data related to themes MPs put forward when discussing institutions and policy problems. © 1978, American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
With increasing frequency and self-assurance, the scientific objectivity of American social science is proclaimed by some of its prominent practitioners. Various explanations are offered for the onset of social science's Golden Age, but central to most of them is the claim that modern social science has managed to resolve Mannheim's Paradox, namely, that in the pursuit of the truth the social scientist himself is handicapped by the narrow focus and distortions implicit in ideological thought. Presumably, the social scientist can now probe any aspect of human organization and behavior as dispassionately as physical scientists observe the structure of the atom or chemical reactions. For this reason, it is claimed by some that the ideologically liberated social scientists—at least in the United States—can expect to be co-opted into the Scientific Culture, or that segment of society that is presumably aloof from and disdainful toward the moralistic speculations and the tender-heartedness of the literary intellectuals.
The behaviorial “revolution” in political science may have run its course, but it has left in its wake both obscurantist criticisms of empiricism, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an unquestioning belief in “science.” Quite often the latter belief is not merely anti-historical and anti-philosophical but also uncritical about the extent to which empirical observations can be colored by the very orientation to values that one seeks to control in rigorous empirical research.
The claims of modern social scientists are greatly buttressed by the views of Talcott Parsons.
The traditional measure of ideological sophistication, the "levels of conceptualization" index, was developed by authors of The American Voter to measure the "structure of thought the individual applies to politics" and was presumed to be a relatively stable trait. Recent disagreement over issues in measurement has led to uncertainty about the validity of the index as a measure of political sophistication and to questions about its stability. These methodological arguments are fundamental to substantive conclusions about the validity of existing models of political conceptualization and the models one constructs. An attempt is made to resolve recent disagreements through careful attention to issues of validity, reliability, and stability of instruments which measure levels of conceptualization.
One of the central concerns of sociology is the study of ideology. In this paper I shall analyze the ways in which this notion is used by contemporary sociologists. This analysis will disclose a dual usage. I shall argue that this usage is restrictive and fails to do justice to all the aspects of ideology. Ideological phenomena include a minimum of three separate and distinct elements or factors. It follows that any two-factor conception of ideology is necessarily inadequate.
Samuel H. Barnes is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan.
This paper presents evidence that American political elites think and behave in an ideological way. Factor analyses of individual questionnaire items drawn from elite studies in 1958 and 1972 show only marginal evidence of the type of structuring implied by the concept of ideology. However, similar analyses of a priori, multi-item scales constructed from the 1972 surveys clearly show evidence of structure for the elite sample, particularly as compared to a parallel mass sample; this raises serious questions about the use of single item scales in past analyses of political ideology. Further evidence of elite ideology is found in an analysis of interest group ratings of U.S. Representatives in 1970 and 1974. These findings provide strong support for the argument that ideology plays an important role in the perceptions and behavior of American political elites.