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Most work assessing political ideology and its underpinnings has used primarily western samples. Given India’s unique position as the world’s largest parliamentary democracy with a multiparty system, the present research aimed to develop a scale to measure political ideology in India. Pilot work indicated that the social and economic bifurcation of the conception of political ideology was inadequate in assessing Indians’ stance on political issues. Therefore, in Study 1, 48 items were written relevant to the complex context of political ideology in India. Three factors were extracted based on a sample of 541 Indians (Mage = 24.80, SD = 8.44): purity-based cultural norms, obedience to hierarchy, and economic ideology, highlighting the importance attributed to social concerns. In Study 2, 382 Indians responded to a revised scale (Mage = 26.15 years, SD = 9.00). Based on a confirmatory factor analysis, the three-factor structure was retained. Measurement invariance revealed expected differences between men and women in a few gendered issues such as dowry. Across both studies, economic ideology had poor fit, indicating unreliability of economic issues constituting a consistent ideology in India. Implications, especially with respect to temporal contexts and economic ideology, are discussed.

In a bid to curb the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, several countries implemented lockdown procedures to varying degrees. This article sought to examine the extent to which country-level strictness, as measured by the Government Response Stringency Index (2020), moderated the relationship between certain cultural dimensions and estimates of national innovation. Data on 84 countries were collated for Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (2015), and from the Global Innovation Index (2020). Owing to the robust relationships between innovation and the dimensions of uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and individualism, these were used in moderation analyses. In general, power distance was inversely related to innovation, whereas individualism was directly related to it. Results indicated that collectivist and high power distance countries showed lower innovation, irrespective of levels of government stringency as a response to COVID-19. On the other hand, among individualistic and low power distance countries, lower innovation was associated with increased stringency (e.g., blanket restrictions on movement). Higher innovation was observed when such countries had a less severe government response. The dimension of uncertainty avoidance was not significantly associated with innovation at the country level. The implications of lockdowns on general innovation, its inputs, and outputs are discussed in the context of cultural dimensions and country-level policies.

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