Ideology, Partisanship, and the New Political Continuum

by ROBERT B. SMITH

Society, March-April 1997, volume 34, number 3, pages 13-18

 

Journalists, pollsters, and pundits use categories of political analysis that they do not always clearly define and whose meanings are ambiguous. To make sense of the political rhetoric even the informed public must struggle hard. A single news analysis in the New York Times used the following ambiguous expressions: "social conservatism," "economic conservatism," "pragmatic conservatives," "doctrinaire conservatives," "a presentable conservative," "a centrist or moderate state," and "painted as a liberal." The Economist adds to the confusion by defining one vague term by two others: Republican moderates, mostly from the Northeast, are "gypsy moths"; Democratic moderates, mostly from the South, are "boll weevils." In Values Matter Most Ben Wattenberg vilifies liberalism and liberals but never states which interests differentiate liberals from conservatives or moderates from extreme liberals or extreme conservatives. He contends that President Bill Clinton's victory in 1992 was due to the Republicans' inept campaign and Clinton's moderation rather than to his liberalism. He urged Clinton and other candidates to move to the center if they desired victory in 1996.

When commentators fail to define their analytical categories clearly, their advice and reports lack specificity. Since ambiguity increases the opportunities for social influence, this lack encourages the use of propagandistic campaign techniques. The application of these techniques may transform an election from one largely based on rational discussion of clearly defined issues and consent to one largely based on advertising and manipulation. Campaign managers use these techniques, which they have borrowed from advertising and public relations, to attach highly desirable attributes to their own candidates and political philosophies and undesirable attributes to the opposition candidates and their political philosophies, thus obscuring the basic issues and confusing the electorate. By reinforcing the belief that ends justify means, such political advertising undermines the electorate's political values, the quality of political discourse, and thoughtful political participation.

To shift the current discourse away from tit-for-tat attacks, name calling, and positive and negative labeling toward more rational discussions of the costs and benefits of political and policy choices, an explication is needed of the meanings of the categories of political analysis. What are the contemporary meanings, defined by political interests, of political ideology and current political partisanship? How are ideology and partisanship interrelated? What interests compose the categories of the new political continuum of progressives, liberals, moderate conservatives, and minimal-state conservatives? How do these categories relate to ideology, partisanship and distrust?

The philosophies of liberalism and conservatism, as Seymour Martin Lipset has noted, may have failed to adapt to new circumstances, and the public may not see viable answers coming from either. However, three broad domestic interests - economic equity, social equality, and the public's health - which are components, respectively, of the prior politics of class and status and the more recent politics of health, shape the platforms of the political parties and now, with the end of the Cold War, do much to define key aspects of contemporary liberalism and conservatism and the new political continuum.

The first interest, which pertains to the politics of social class and the distribution of economic resources, harks back to the 1930s and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and helps to distinguish liberals, centrists, and conservatives:

1. Economic Equity. With Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Fair Deal, and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, progressives, liberals, and Democrats have favored trade unions, price controls, welfare, and other governmental regulations and interventions in the economy that promise to facilitate the establishment of countervailing power against concentrated economic power and protect the interests of the poor. Conservatives and Republicans have not favored such policies and instead have advocated tax cuts. Centrists have desired a reduced deficit.

Women, people with low family income, and ethnic minorities - those who most experience inequity - support these governmental interventions.

The second interest, which relates to the status of dis-esteemed social groups, harks back to President Truman's desegregation of the Army, President Johnson's civil and voting rights initiatives, and, circa the 1960s and early 1970s, the reform-minded New Politics of the Vietnam era. It pertains to civil, social, and constitutional rights for African Americans, women, other ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, and defendants in criminal trials:

2. Social Equality. Compared to conservatives and Republicans, centrists, progressives, liberals, and the Democratic party outside the South have been more supportive of governmental interventions favoring the diverse interests of disfranchised minorities.

The third interest, recently crystallized in the 1992 election, is a fundamental component of the new political continuum. It harks back to President Truman's and Adlai Stevenson's discussions of the environmental issue, Presidents Truman's and Richard Nixon's desires for universal health insurance, and the decision of the Supreme Court in 1973 (Roe v. Wade) that legalized abortion. It pertains to the public's health - universal access to health care (especially Medicaid for the poor and Medicare for the elderly), a healthy environment, and women's choice concerning childbearing or abortion:

3. Public Health. Since most progressives and many liberals and Democrats are receptive to governmental activism, they are more likely than conservatives and Republicans to favor governmental interventions aimed toward universal access to health care, a healthy environment, and the public's health, especially women's reproductive choice. Centrists take an intermediate position.

The issues of public health are rooted in the politics of resources and rights. Because the environmentally concerned would use tactics involving governmental economic interventions and regulation of industry, the issue of a healthy environment is an extension of the politics of resources. Because they tend to reside in unhealthy environments, minorities and the poor are environmentally concerned. Thus, environmental concern here means the protection of people from unhealthy environments more than it means the protection of the environment from people.

Because its comprehensive strategies are guided by the premise that health care is a right and not a privilege and that universal access should be provided, health care reform is an extension of the politics of rights. Since minorities, the poor, and youths may lack health insurance, they support these interventions. The demand for women's freedom to choose whether or not to abort an unwanted pregnancy is an extension of the politics of rights to reproductive life. But abortion is now most clearly an issue of women's mental and physical health - note President Clinton's veto of a bill banning a type of late-term abortion that protects the woman's life but kills the fetus. (Since the survey did not cover this topic, the analysis lacks measures of this variable.)

Offsetting the positive politics of governmental interventions that aim to augment equity, equality, and health, there is now the negative politics of distrust - attacks on a candidate's character and the legitimacy of the federal government. In May 1996, about 72 percent of voters and nonvoters said they seldom or never trust the government to do what is right (League of Women Voters survey). The advocates of governmental interventions, though diverse, are less concerned about the character of a candidate than are those who oppose such interventions; they are also more likely to trust the federal government:

4. Distrust. Since conservatives and Republicans desire limited government and limits on personal behavior, they are more likely to oppose governmental interventions designed to augment equity, equality, and health and, compared to centrists and liberals, to distrust candidates who favor such interventions.

Three hypotheses, based on the preceding theory and research, shaped expectations about the current election and guided the analyses of ideology, partisanship, and the new political continuum:

Hypothesis 1: Because progressives, liberals, and Democrats favor an active federal government and conservatives and Republicans prefer a limited state, ideology, partisanship, and vote will correlate strongly with support for governmental interventions for equity, equality, and health. Centrists and Independent voters will support some but not all interventions.

Regarding character, Hypothesis 2: Because conservatives and Republicans stress the moralistic sociocultural issues of family values, crime control, protection of the fetus, and prayer in the schools; ideology, partisanship, and vote will correlate strongly with concern about a candidate's character. Conservatives and Republicans will be more concerned; liberals and Democrats will be less concerned. Since centrists and independents are less concerned about moralistic issues than the religious Right, apropos character they will be more similar to the political Left.

By counting political interests - the number of kinds of governmental interventions a voter supports - researchers can gauge the new political continuum. From the political Left to the political Right this continuum ranges from progressives, who, believing that the more appropriate governmental activism is, the more good government can do, support three interventions (for equity, equality, and health); to liberals, who support any two; to moderate conservatives, who support any one; and to minimal-state conservatives, who, believing in economic freedom and traditional religious and moral values, oppose all three:

Hypothesis 3: Because interests define the categories of the new political continuum, these categories will predict ideology, partisanship, vote, distrust, delegitimation of authority, and perceived fiscal constraint.

Concepts and Indicators. Indicators of a single item are taken as ingredients of an index to gauge ideology, partisanship, and evaluations of a candidate's character. To interpret the consequences of these variables and, therefore, their meanings, I created several indices based on the apparent content of their constituent indicators. These indices measure, respectively, the politics of economic equity, the politics of social equality, health care reform, environmental concern, the politics of public health, the new political continuum, delegitimation of governmental authority, and perceived fiscal constraint. Except for the indicators of delegitimation, for each indicator below, the first alternative is the more liberal response. Three items compose the index of support for presidential interventions to augment economic equity: regulation of industry to protect consumers versus deregulation, economic expansion and jobs versus a larger deficit, and the protection of U.S. companies and jobs versus free trade. Three indicators compose the ad hoc index of support for interventions aimed toward enhancing equality (that is, social, civil, and constitutional rights): stating that universal access to health care is the most important aim of reform, being an employed woman, and being a member of an ethnic minority group. Two items compose an index of support for comprehensive health care reform: whether the respondent trusts federal management of health care and says that radical change is necessary. Two items compose an index of environmental concern: whether the respondent finds the environmental record of a firm important for forming an opinion about it and whether the environment is very important in deciding what candidate the respondent will vote for. To form an index of public health politics, the latter item was combined with the index of some support for health care reform. To create the new political continuum, each voter's scores (plus or minus) for the dichotomized measures of support for interventions to augment equity, equality, and health were summed. Two items compose the index of delegitimation of governmental authority: in deciding what candidate to vote for, whether gridlock and crime and drags were very important factors. Both items tap the voters' perceptions of governmental ineffectiveness. Delegitimation is associated with concern about character, taxes, the deficit, and the index of perceived fiscal constraint, which sums the latter two items.

Social Attributes. The following social attributes, when used as instrumental variables in the statistical analysis, can reveal the reciprocal effects of ideology and partisanship. The first category of each attribute predicts liberalism, Democratic partisanship, or a vote for Clinton. Five attributes are formulated as dichotomies: region (those who reside on either coast versus those in the Middle West or the South); gender (females versus males); employment (paid work versus not paid); political age (being a first-time voter versus not); and minority ethnicity (African-American, Hispanic, and so on versus white). Two are formulated as trichotomies: for age the categories are fifty years or older, thirty through forty-nine, and eighteen through twenty-nine; for family income the categories of economic status are less than $30,000, $30,000 through $49,999, and $50,000 or more.

Statistical Effects. Since the variables are ordinal, to quantify relationships in the cross-tabulations, I applied Kendall's measure of ordinal correlation, tau-c ([Tau]). I then assigned equal-interval scales to the ordered categories of the variables and, applying least-squares regression methods (ordinary and two-stage), I used betas ([Beta]s) to quantify effects. The quantified relationships I report are statistically significant at the .05 level of confidence or better.

In this survey, among the 1,138 valid responses to the question "For whom did you vote for President - Bill Clinton, George Bush, or Ross Perot?" about 46.6 percent said Clinton, 19.9 percent said Perot, and 33.5 percent said Bush. These percentages approximate the actual national distribution of votes, which was about 43.3 percent for Clinton, 19 percent for Perot, and 37.7 percent for Bush. The three candidates fell on a continuum that ranges from Clinton on the political left, through Perot in the center, to Bush on the political right. Clinton voters (compared to Bush voters) were more likely to support interventions to gain equity, equality, and health, the strongest association. The strong negative association between votes for Clinton and the voters' concern about a candidate's character offset some of the impact of the positive associations.

Political Ideology. To assess political ideology, the survey asked: "When it comes to politics in general, do you consider yourself very liberal, somewhat liberal, middle-of-the-road, somewhat conservative, or very conservative?" Because of small percentages in the extreme categories (6.5 percent and 11 percent, respectively), to facilitate the subsequent analysis, I grouped the categories as liberal, centrist, and conservative. (This change from five categories to three categories does not noticeably change the value of the correlations that quantify the relationships between ideology and other variables.) In 1992 there were 8 percent fewer liberals than conservatives - about 29 percent of the voters were liberal, 34 percent were centrist, and 37 percent conservative. In August 1995, perhaps because of a shift of liberals to a more moderate position (and not because of the difference in polling agencies), the Gallup Poll found that there were 18 percent fewer liberals than conservatives: only 17 percent of the electorate were liberal, 44 percent centrist, and 35 percent conservative. In June 1996, 18 percent were liberal, 47 percent moderate, and 31 percent conservative (according to a NY Times/CBS poll).

During the presidencies of Roosevelt, Truman, John Kennedy, and Johnson, liberals had interests in governmental interventions that were designed to augment economic equity by neutralizing concentrated economic power and (after Roosevelt) to secure by federal regulations social equality and opportunity for disadvantaged minorities and women. Conservatives had the opposite interests: minimal government, transfer of power to the states, and infrequent federal economic and social interventions.

With the addition of the public health issues, contemporary relationships are similar to those of the past. Liberals are more likely than conservatives to support governmental interventions that are intended to augment equity, equality, and health. They are also more likely to trust a candidate's character, be partisan Democrats, and vote for Clinton.

Centrists have ambivalent interests and their policy choices are located between those of liberals and conservatives. Concerning equity and equality, the centrists are much closer to the conservatives. Concerning issues of public health, they are equidistant. Concerning a candidate's character, they are much closer to the liberals.

Current Partisanship. The survey assessed current partisanship by asking "Do you consider yourself [now] to be a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent?" In 1992 about 40 percent said Democrat, 30 percent said Independent, and another 30 percent said Republican; there were 10 percent more Democrats than Republicans. In 1995 the two parties were about even: 32 percent of the electorate supported each party; 35 percent were Independent. In May 1996, there were more Democrats (36 percent) than Republicans (31 percent); 28 percent were Independent (NY Times/CBS poll).

Since no recent realignment of ideology with partisanship has taken place, current partisanship should have correlates similar to those for ideology, and it does. Partisanship aligns from left to right, with Independents having the same pattern as centrists. Democratic partisans support interventions for equity, equality, and health. They are more likely to trust a candidate's character.

In the classic voting studies partisanship very strongly predicted vote and, with the exception of votes for congressional candidates, it still does. Current partisanship is highly consistent ([Tau] = .63) with senatorial vote and presidential vote. Also, Democrats who voted for Perot were more likely to say they would have voted for Clinton had Perot not run.

Ideology as a Pivotal Variable. If ideology and not partisanship is the voter's pivotal evaluative standard, then ideology should have a stronger effect on partisanship than partisanship has on ideology. Moreover, since political interests are taken to compose ideology, differences in political interests should interpret some of the effect of ideology on partisanship. These ideas are tested next.

Certain social attributes (residence on either coast, female gender, employment, and being a first-time voter) are determinants of liberal ideology; others (minority ethnicity, low income, and older age) are determinants of Democratic partisanship. Because of this pattern, the variables can be used as instrumental variables in a statistical procedure that can quantify the reciprocal. effects of ideology and partisanship. When I apply this method, the effect of ideology on partisanship is large ([Beta] = .51) and statistically significant and the effect of partisanship on ideology is much smaller ([Beta] = .17) and not statistically significant. Thus, for most voters ideology and not partisanship is the more pivotal evaluative variable; ideology directly determines partisanship and evaluations of the candidates and issues.

When the political dispositions - ideology and partisanship - are first included with the seven social attributes as determinants of vote and then excluded from the regression equation, the resulting difference in the explained variances (.50 - .08 = .42) reveals why electoral politics can now be turbulent. Voting is not strongly rooted in these attributes of social structure - the more malleable political dispositions have stronger effects on vote than do the more stable social attributes. The electorate is thus susceptible to political advertisements - positive or negative - and to social influence, and voting choices can now be turbulent.

In the contemporary electorate the positive politics of economic equity, social equality, and public health and the negative politics of distrust have strong qualitative relationships with ideology. To quantify their relative importance as aspects of ideology one can look at the extent to which the zero-order relationship (i.e., no control variables) between ideology and partisanship is reduced, when the test factors - concern about character and the measures of support for governmental interventions - are controlled. This test assumes that, in terms of causal order, the test factors are antecedent to partisanship and thus either explain or interpret the relationship of ideology with partisanship. Without controls, the effect ([Beta]) of liberalism on Democratic partisanship is .35. The controls for the test factors reduce this effect to .22. The [Beta] effects suggest that the recent politics of public health is the most important aspect of ideology: equity = .14, equality = .11, health = .19, and concern about character = -.09; [R.sup.2] = .21.

The effects on vote corroborate the above pattern but the character issue is now more salient. The four test factors reduce the zero-order effect of liberalism on vote from .40 to .24. The more prior politics have weaker effects on vote than the more recent: equity = .16, equality = .10, health = .22, and character = -.19; [R.sup.2] = .31.

In the full model (with current partisanship included), the interpretive variables strongly predict vote for Clinton ([R.sup.2] = .56) and have these significant direct effects ([Beta]s): Democratic partisanship = .55; liberal ideology = .12; public health = .12; economic equity = .09; social equality = .05; and a candidate's character = -.14. When these variables are controlled, the social attributes and specific issues such as crime and drags, governmental ineffectiveness, and fiscal constraint have minuscule direct effects on vote. In 1992 Clinton surmounted the negative effect of the character issue and won, promising an active government.

A Candidate's Character. Since Republican strategists evidently believe that negative advertising is appropriate and effective, and Democratic strategists evidently now believe that each attack must be instantly countered, the issue of a candidate's character divided the electorate in 1996 as it did in 1992. Those more concerned about character voted for Bush, were Republicans, and were conservatives. They also were more concerned about gridlock, crime and drags, governmental ineffectiveness, and fiscal constraint. Homemakers and housewives were more concerned about character than were employed women. Those not paid for their work - homemakers, housewives, students, the retired, the unemployed - were more concerned than the employed. Voters less concerned about character supported governmental interventions for equity, equality, and health.

The New Political Continuum. By closely inspecting the relationships between character, ideology, and partisanship and the eight categories of the typology that results from the simultaneous cross-classification of the voters as supporting interventions to augment equity (+ or -), equality (+ or -), and health (+ or -), I determined that the new political continuum is best operationalized in this survey by simply counting the number of positive responses. The results are closely balanced: progressives (+ + +), 15.3 percent; liberals, 33.6 percent; moderate conservatives, 33.5 percent; and minimal-state conservatives (- - -), 17.7 percent. Liberals may be further broken down into communitarians (+ + -), economic populists (+ - +), and neoliberals (- + +); and moderate conservatives may be broken down into populists (+ - -), libertarians (- + -), and mainstream moderates (- - +).

From left to right the four categories have a small negative association with concern about character and large positive associations with liberal political ideology, current Democratic partisanship, and vote for Clinton. Those on the left prefer a federal health care system, express some delegitimation of governmental authority (i.e., governmental ineffectiveness concerning gridlock and crime and drugs), and are aware of fiscal constraint ([Tau] = .08). Concern about a candidate's character intensifies the latter relationship ([Tau] = .18) and lack of concern destroys it ([Tau] = -.01). Thus, progressives and liberals concerned about a candidate's character, rather than conservatives concerned. about character, rated fiscal constraint - both taxes and the deficit - as a very important determinant of their vote.

Four attributes - residence in a coastal region, female gender, employment, and being a first-time voter - are determinants of liberal political ideology but not of current Democratic partisanship. Minority ethnicity, lower income, and older age are determinants of Democratic partisanship but not of liberal ideology. Ideology (liberal, centrist, or conservative) and current partisanship (Democratic, Independent, or Republican) are parallel concepts; ideology causes partisanship. These two variables illustrate aspects of what James Coleman means by the functional components of the self - one aspect (political ideology) evaluates and another aspect (political partisanship) acts. When a voter's ideology changes from liberal to centrist or conservative, this tends to lead to a change in partisanship, and then to a change in vote.

Liberals and Democrats are more likely than conservatives and Republicans to support governmental interventions designed to augment (1) economic equity and countervailing powers against concentrated economic interests, (2) social equality, especially for minorities and women, and (3) the public's health - including health care reform, a healthy environment, and women's choice. Apropos interventions for equity and equality, centrists are on average much closer to the political Right than to the Left. Apropos public health, centrists are on average only slightly closer to the political Right than to the Left. Apropos character, the centrists are closer to the Left than to the Right.

The recent politics of public health explains much of the effect of ideology on partisanship and on vote, but the negative politics of distrust of character and the politics of economic equity and social equality also are very important. When the issues of crime and drugs, delegitimation, and fiscal constraint are added to the regressions their effects are minuscule, thereby discounting these variables as causes of partisanship and vote in this survey.

The three Political interests readily define the new political continuum of progressives, liberals, moderate conservatives, and minimal-state conservatives. These categories predict ideology, partisanship, vote, distrust, and perceptions of governmental ineffectiveness (i.e., delegitimation). Those on the left, especially those concerned about a candidate's character, perceive more fiscal constraint than those on the right. The progressives and liberals desire an active government but one whose interventions are fiscally responsible.

In 1992 the new political continuum classified 48.8 percent of the voters as progressives or liberals and 51.2 percent as moderate or minimal-state conservatives. Subsequently, because of fiscal constraints, governmental ineffectiveness, and the success of Republican attacks on federal social programs, liberals, and liberalism, polls and election results indicate a shift to the right. If citizens distrust their government and believe its leaders are corrupt, then they will not support governmental interventions for economic equity, social equality, and the public's health - even when these interventions would be sparing of spending and regulation.

The Democratic coalition is heterogeneous with respect to class, skin color, ethnicity, and gender. The Republican coalition is heterogeneous with respect to class, religious fundamentalism, and abortion attitude. If the potentially divisive issues of abortion, affirmative action, crime, education, and welfare become salient and the subject of fear-engendering advertisements, the resulting turbulence could divide both the Democrats and Republicans and lead to a further breakdown of rational discussion and the electorate's informed consent.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS

Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar. Going Negative. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Lilian Handlin and Oscar Handlin. "America and its Discontents: A Great Society Legacy." The American Scholar 64 (1995): 15-37.

Gerald D. Jaynes and Robin M. Williams, Jr. A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989.

Seymour Martin Lipset. "The Significance of the 1992 Election." PS: Political Science and Politics 26 (1993): 7-16.

Sidney Verba and Gary R. Orren. Equality in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Ben J. Wattenberg. Values Matter Most. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Jacob Weisberg. In Defense of Government. New York: Scribners.