Ideological Structure and Consistency in the Age of Polarization

Abstract

Decades of research establish that political elites hold more ideologically consistent and structured policy preferences than ordinary citizens. Since the late 1970s, American politics, at the elite level, has become increasingly polarized and changes in the news media have made it easier for citizens to find news catering to their ideological tastes. We capitalize on these developments to examine whether ideologically engaged citizens-those who hold strong ideological identities, who are politically informed, and who participate actively in public affairs-match elites in ideological consistency and structure during the age of polarization. We test this hypothesis by applying correlation and measurement modeling techniques to data from multiple National Election Study and Convention Delegate Study surveys. We find that (a) ideologically engaged masses hold more tightly organized opinions than the less engaged every year, but lagged elites by a wide margin in 1980; (b) convention delegates manifest impressive levels of consistency every year; (c) by 1992 engaged citizens had caught up to political elites; and (d) ideological consistency increased substantially over time in the mass public, but only among the most ideologically engaged.

Is Political Ideology Stable? Evidence from Long-Serving Members of the United States Congress

“…Additionally, analysis of the pooled data suggests that, after accounting for inertia in political ideology and individual legislator effects, Republican legislators become more conservative over time. These results, which run somewhat counter to the finding in prior studies of stability in the political ideologies of lawmakers and other political elites by Jennings (1992) and Jewitt and Goren (2016), not only have implications for how well legislators represent the interests of their constituents in representative democracy, they also provide a rationale for new avenues of empirical investigation in the public choice literature.…”

How Ideology Fuels Affective Polarization

“…Or does the polarization toward public officials indicate that the public is simply responding to the political choices that are provided? While some argue that the public is increasingly polarized along party and ideological lines (Abramowitz and Saunders 2008;Bafumi and Shapiro 2009;Baldassarri and Gelman 2008;Mason 2015), others claim that most Americans are fundamentally centrist but provide polarized evaluations of polarized officials (Fiorina et al 2011; see also Jewitt and Goren 2015;Lupton et al 2015). Expanding on such research to examine how and when political elites generate polarized evaluations from the public is important for interpreting the consequences of those evaluations.…”

“…Scholars vigorously debate the extent of ideological and partisan polarization among the mass public (e.g., Abramowitz 2010; Bafumi and Shapiro 2009;Baldassarri and Gelman 2008;Fiorina et al 2011;Jewitt and Goren 2015;Lupton et al 2015;Mason 2015). 3 We contribute to this literature by studying how ideological differences between political officials shape citizens' affective evaluations of those officials.…”

Polarisierung in der Demokratie: Formen und Wirkungen

“…Vor allem in den Vereinigten Staaten ist politische Polarisierung in den vergangenen Jahren zu einem (nicht nur) politikwissenschaftlich außergewöhn-lich intensiv diskutierten Gegenstand avanciert (vgl. etwa zuletzt Binder 2014;Hare/Toole 2014;Rosenfeld 2014;Hetherington/Rudolf 2015;Kenworthy 2015;Brewer/Stonecash 2015;Persily 2015;Smidt 2015;Thurber/Yoshinaka 2015;Jewitt/Goren 2016;Lelkes 2016;Gentzkow 2016). Mit der umstrittenen Präsidentschaftskandidatur und dem Wahlsieg Donald Trumps hat die Debatte über Formen und Wirkungen politischer Polarisierung dort jüngst zusätzli-chen Schub erhalten.…”