Abstract
Political constraint and issue consistency are key variables in the study of public opinion, but the existing literature contains many parallel but contradictory accounts of the sources and predictors of ideological constraint. Some posit that constraint is essentially a function of a person’s partisan commitment, others suggest it is rooted in participation in politics, while others see a wide range of correlates summarized as “sophistication.” Still others deny that constraint exists in the mass public altogether. Contrary to these accounts, we argue that issue consistency exists within the American public and is best predicted by political knowledge, which should be thought of as separate from those other predictors. In fact, after accounting for political knowledge, other variables like partisanship, participation, and demographic variables have little independent relationship to ideological constraint. The data show that political knowledge is about as strong a predictor of issue consistency as is one’s self-placed ideology – a widely used proxy for constraint. These results help us understand how citizens think about politics and which groups of people most closely resemble elites in the structure of their opinions. Our findings show that previously hypothesized predictors of constraint – particularly partisanship and participation – are mainly related to ideological constraint through a person’s level of political knowledge.
References
Abramowitz, Alan I. 2012. The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, American Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Abramowitz, Alan I. 2013. The Polarized Public? Why American Government Is So Dysfunctional. New York, NY: Pearson.Search in Google Scholar
Achen, Christopher H., and Larry M. Bartels. 2016. Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400882731Search in Google Scholar
Ahler, Douglas J., and David E. Broockman. 2016. “Does Elite Polarization Imply Poor Representation? A New Perspective on the “Disconnect” Between Politicians and Voters.” Working Paper: https://people.stanford.edu/dbroock/sites/default/files/ahler_broockman_ideological_innocence.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, Jonathan Rodden, and James M. Snyder. 2008. “The Strength of Issues: Using Multiple Measures to Gauge Preference Stability, Ideological Constraint, and Issue Voting.” American Political Science Review 102 (2): 215–232.10.1017/S0003055408080210Search in Google Scholar
Bafumi, Joseph, and Michael Herron. 2010. “Leapfrog Representation and Extremism: A Study of American Voters and their Members in Congress.” American Political Science Review 104 (3): 519–542.10.1017/S0003055410000316Search in Google Scholar
Baldassarri, Delia, and Andrew Gelman. 2008. “Partisans without Constraint: Political Polarization and Trends in American Public Opinion.” American Journal of Sociology 114 (2): 408–446.10.1086/590649Search in Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 2000. “Partisanship and Voting Behavior, 1952–1996.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (1): 35–50.10.2307/2669291Search in Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 2008. “The Irrational Electorate.” Wilson Quarterly 32 (4): 44–50.Search in Google Scholar
Bauer, Paul C., Pablo Barberá, Kathrin Ackermann, and Aaron Venetz. 2016. “Is the Left-Right Scale a Valid Measure of Ideology?” Political Behavior 39 (3): 553–583.10.1007/s11109-016-9368-2Search in Google Scholar
Bishop, Bill. 2009. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing us Apart. Wilmington, MA: Mariner Books.Search in Google Scholar
Broockman, David E. 2016. “Approaches to Studying Policy Representation.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 41 (1): 181–215.10.1111/lsq.12110Search in Google Scholar
Campbell, James E. 2016. Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400883448Search in Google Scholar
Campbell, James E., and Carl M. Cannon. 2006. “Polarization Runs Deep, Even by Yesterday’s Standards.” Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics and Causes of America’s Polarized Politics 1: 72–85.Search in Google Scholar
Clinton, Joshua, Simon Jackman, and Doug Rivers. 2004. “The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data.” American Political Science Review 98 (2): 355–370.10.1017/S0003055404001194Search in Google Scholar
Converse, Philip. 1964. “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.” In Ideology and Its Discontents, edited by David E. Apter, 1–74. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.10.4324/9780203505984-10Search in Google Scholar
Ellis, Christopher, and James A. Stimson. 2012. Ideology in America. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139094009Search in Google Scholar
Freeder, Sean, Gabriel S. Lenz, and Shad Turney. 2016. “The Importance of Knowing ‘What Goes With What’.” Working Paper. Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8e58/9ba838570ce50369 dd078ce239f1bde1d010.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
Grossmann, Matt, and David A. Hopkins. 2015. “Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats: The Asymmetry of American Party Politics.” Perspectives on Politics 13 (1): 119–139.10.1017/S1537592714003168Search in Google Scholar
Grossmann, Matt, and David A. Hopkins. 2016. Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190626594.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. 2014. “After the “Master Theory”: Downs, Schattschneider, and the Rebirth of Policy-Focused Analysis.” Perspectives on Politics 12 (3): 643–662.10.1017/S1537592714001637Search in Google Scholar
Hetherington, Marc J. 2001. “Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization.” The American Political Science Review 95 (3): 619–631.10.1017/S0003055401003045Search in Google Scholar
Hill, Seth J. 2015. “Institution of Nomination and the Policy Ideology of Primary Electorates.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10 (4): 461–487.10.1561/100.00015023Search in Google Scholar
Iyengar, Shanto, Gaurav Sood, and Yphtach Lelkes. 2012. “Affect, Not IdeologyA Social Identity Perspective on Polarization.” Public Opinion Quarterly 76 (3): 405–431.10.1093/poq/nfs038Search in Google Scholar
Jacobson, Gary. 2012. “The Electoral Origins of Polarized Politics: Evidence From the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study.” American Behavioral Scientist 56 (12): 1612–1630.10.1177/0002764212463352Search in Google Scholar
Jacoby, William G. 1995. “The Structure of Ideological Thinking in the American Electorate.” American Journal of Political Science 39: 314–335.10.2307/2111615Search in Google Scholar
Jennings, M. Kent. 1992. “Ideological Thinking among Mass Publics and Political Elites.” Public Opinion Quarterly 56 (4): 419–441.10.1086/269335Search in Google Scholar
Jessee, Stephen A. 2009. “Spatial Voting in the 2004 Presidential Election.” American Political Science Review 103 (1): 59–81.10.1017/S000305540909008XSearch in Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald, and Nathan Kalmoe. 2017. Neither Liberal Nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Klein, Ezra. 2014. “The Single Most Important Fact about American Politics.” URL: http://www.vox.com/2014/6/13/5803768/pew-most-important-fact-american-politics.Search in Google Scholar
Knight, Kathleen. 1985. “Ideology in the 1980 Election: Ideological Sophistication Does Matter.” The Journal of Politics 47 (3): 828–853.10.2307/2131213Search in Google Scholar
Lane, Robert E. 1962. Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does. New York, NY: The Free Press.Search in Google Scholar
Layman, Geoffrey C., and Thomas M. Carsey. 2002. “Party Polarization and ‘Conflict Extension’ in the American Electorate.” American Journal of Political Science 46 (4): 786–802.10.2307/3088434Search in Google Scholar
Layman, Geoffrey C., Thomas M. Carsey, and Juliana Menasce Horowitz. 2006. “Party Polarization in American Politics: Characteristics, Causes, and Consequences.” Annual Review of Political Science 9: 83–110.10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.070204.105138Search in Google Scholar
Lenz, Gabriel S. 2012. Follow the Leader? How Voters Respond to Politicians’ Policies and Performance. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226472157.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Lewis, Jeffrey B., and Chris Tausanovitch. 2015. When Does Joint Scaling Allow For Direct Comparisons of Preferences. In Conference on Ideal Point Models, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, May. Vol. 1.Search in Google Scholar
Lupton, Robert N., William N. Myers, and Judd R. Thornton. 2015. “Political Sophistication and the Dimensionality of Elite and Mass Attitudes, 1980–2004.” Journal of Politics 77 (2): 368–380.10.1086/679493Search in Google Scholar
Luskin, Robert C. 1990. “Explaining Political Sophistication.” Political Behavior 12 (4): 331–361.10.1007/BF00992793Search in Google Scholar
Mann, Thomas E., and Norman J. Ornstein. 2012. It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. New York, NY: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar
McCarty, Nolan, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 2006. Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
McGhee, Eric, Seth Masket, Boris Shor, Steven Rogers, and Nolan McCarty. 2014. “A Primary Cause of Partisanship? Nomination Systems and Legislator Ideology.” American Journal of Political Science 58 (2): 337–351.10.1111/ajps.12070Search in Google Scholar
Noel, Hans. 2013. Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139814775Search in Google Scholar
Peress, Michael. 2013. “Candidate Positioning and Responsiveness to Constituent Opinion in the US House of Representatives.” Public Choice 156 (1–2): 77–94.10.1007/s11127-012-0032-zSearch in Google Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M., and Edward H. Stiglitz. 2012. The Reputational Premium: A Theory of Party Identification and Policy Reasoning. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.23943/princeton/9780691154145.003.0002Search in Google Scholar
Stimson, James A. 1975. “Belief Systems: Constraint, Complexity, and the 1972 Election.” American Journal of Political Science 19 (3): 393–417.10.2307/2110536Search in Google Scholar
Supplemental Material:
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/for-2018-0007).
©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
