Beyond Left and Right: A Scale to Measure Political Ideology in India

Abstract

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.

Who cares about the outgroup? Political ideology, empathy, and moral decision-making

“…Political Ideology Scale (Puthillam et al, 2021) This scale measures the extent to which individuals identify with left and right ideologies across social (norms and hierarchies) and economic issues in India. As in the original construction, the first factor of social and cultural norms and the second factor of obedience in hierarchical authority had acceptable internal consistency scores (ɑnorms =.…”

“…Similarly, Chibber and Verma (2018) discuss two criteria along which ideological debates developed in a post-independent India: whether the state should have to accommodate the interests of marginalized groups in the historically hierarchical society of India, and whether the state should have a role in changing social norms in India. The present study utilizes this two-factor model through the use of the Political Ideology Scale (Puthillam et al, 2021). Ancillarily, a third factor of economic ideology is also explored.…”

I vote NOTA: Ideological Expanses of Partisanship in India

“…The reader is directed to the original dataset from Puthillam et al (2021) to determine participant characteristics and data collection procedures.…”

“…Individual differences in ideology have been formulated as falling along two dimensions: social norms and hierarchies (Puthillam et al, 2021), based on their issue positions. Social norms includes issues such as migration and LGBTQ+ rights, whereas hierarchies include issues such as nationalism and vigilance.…”

“…In the present study, we assess whether ideological beliefs affect party preferences, and whether ideological preferences can be clustered together to understand party preferences. We utilize openly available secondary data from (Puthillam et al, 2021) to ask two questions: RQ1: Does ideology predict partisanship in the Indian context? RQ2: What are the profiles of individuals with respect to their political ideology?…”