Home Social Sciences The Evolution of Mass Ideologies in Modern American Politics
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

The Evolution of Mass Ideologies in Modern American Politics

  • William J.M. Claggett

    William J.M. Claggett is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida State University and author of The American Public Mind and The Two Majorities, both with Byron E. Shafer, along with numerous articles on American electoral behavior in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, among others.

    EMAIL logo
    , Pär Jason Engle

    Pär Jason Engle is a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin and manager of data and statistics in the Office of Educational Accountability (OEA) in the Department of Public Instruction for the State of Wisconsin.

    and Byron E. Shafer

    Byron E. Shafer is Hawkins Chair of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin and author of, most recently, The American Political Landscape, with Richard H. Spady, and The American Public Mind, with William J.M. Claggett.

Published/Copyright: August 8, 2014
Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

A newly created dataset makes it possible to go looking for the mass ideologies most common in American politics across the postwar years. For this purpose, it is necessary to distinguish five great ideological groups: Liberals, Conservatives, Populists, Libertarians, and Moderates. These prove to have distinct voting behaviors, not just in the ballot for President but also in the propensity and manner by which they split their tickets. They have distinct perceptions of the main organizational referents in politics, both political parties and organized interests, while the distinction between objectively measured versus self-identified ideologies proves to be consequential as well. Finally, these ideological groups do not just evolve differently across the postwar years; they alter the substantive content of major-party coalitions at both the rank-and-file and the activist levels while doing so.


Corresponding author: William J.M. Claggett, Department of Political Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA, e-mail:

About the authors

William J.M. Claggett

William J.M. Claggett is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida State University and author of The American Public Mind and The Two Majorities, both with Byron E. Shafer, along with numerous articles on American electoral behavior in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, among others.

Pär Jason Engle

Pär Jason Engle is a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin and manager of data and statistics in the Office of Educational Accountability (OEA) in the Department of Public Instruction for the State of Wisconsin.

Byron E. Shafer

Byron E. Shafer is Hawkins Chair of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin and author of, most recently, The American Political Landscape, with Richard H. Spady, and The American Public Mind, with William J.M. Claggett.

References

Abramowitz, Alan. 2010. The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Ansolabehere, Stephen, Jonathan Rodden, and James M. Snyder, Jr. 2006. “Purple America.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20: 97–118.10.1257/jep.20.2.97Search in Google Scholar

Argersinger, Peter H. 1995. The Limits of Agrarian Radicalism: Western Populism and American Politics. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Search in Google Scholar

Bibby, John F., and L. Sandy Maisel. 1998. Two PartiesOr More? The American Party System. Boulder: Westview.Search in Google Scholar

Boaz, David. 1997. Libertarianism: A Primer. New York: Free Press.Search in Google Scholar

Carmines, Edward G., and Michael W. Wagner. 2006. “Political Issues and Party Alignments: Assessing the Issue Evolution Perspective.” Annual Review of Political Science 9: 67–81.10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.091905.180706Search in Google Scholar

Carmines, Edward G., and Michael J. Ensley. 2004. “Ideologically Polarized Parties, Ideologically Inconsistent Voters, and Split-Ticket Voting in the United States.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, 2004.Search in Google Scholar

Carmines, Edward G., Michael J. Ensley, and Michael W. Wagner. 2012. “Political Ideology in American Politics: One, Two, or None?” The Forum 10 (3): Article 4.10.1515/1540-8884.1526Search in Google Scholar

Claggett, William J. M., and Philip H. Pollock, III. 2006. “The Modes of Political Participation Revisited, 1980–2004.” Political Research Quarterly 59: 593–600.10.1177/106591290605900408Search in Google Scholar

Claggett, William J.M., and Byron E. Shafer. 2010. The American Public Mind: The Issue Structure of Mass Politics in the Postwar United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511816420Search in Google Scholar

Fiorina, Morris P., and Samuel J. Abrams. 2009. Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Search in Google Scholar

Gillespie, J. David. 1993. Politics at the Periphery: Third Parties in Two-Party America. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Search in Google Scholar

Hyndman, Rob J. 1996. “Computing and Graphing Highest Density Regions.” The American Statistician 50: 120–126.Search in Google Scholar

Kazin, Michael. 1998. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lilie, Stuart A., and William Maddox. 1981. An Alternative Analysis of Mass Belief Systems: Liberal, Conservative, Populist, and Libertarian, Policy Analysis No. 3. Washington, DC: Cato Institute.Search in Google Scholar

Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Stein Rokkan. 1967. “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments.” In Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, edited by Lipset and Rokkan. New York: The Free Press.Search in Google Scholar

McCarty, Nolan, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. 1997. Income Redistribution and the Realignment of American Politics. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.Search in Google Scholar

McClosky, Herbert. 1964. “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics.” American Political Science Review 58: 361–382.10.2307/1952868Search in Google Scholar

McClosky, Herbert, Paul Hoffman, and Rosemary O’Hara. 1960. “Issue Conflict and Consensus among Party Leaders and Followers.” American Political Science Review 54: 406–472.10.2307/1978302Search in Google Scholar

Miller, Gary, and Norman Schofield. 2003. “Activism and Partisan Realignment in the United States.” American Political Science Review 97: 245–260.10.1017/S0003055403000650Search in Google Scholar

Miron, Jeffrey A. 2010. Libertarianism from A to Z. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar

Poole, Keith T., and Howard Rosenthal. 1997. Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Schofield, Norman, Gary Miller, and Andrew Martin. 2003. “Critical Elections and Partisan Realignment in the United States.” Political Studies 51: 217–240.10.1111/1467-923X.00181-i1Search in Google Scholar

Shafer, Byron E. 1991. “What is the American Way? Four Themes in Search of Their Next Incarnation.” In Is America Different? A New Look at American Exceptionalism, edited by Shafer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Shafer, Byron E., and William J.M. Claggett. 1995. The Two Majorities: The Issue Context of Modern American Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Stanley, Ben. 2008. “The Thin Ideology of Populism.” Journal of Political Ideologies 13: 95–110.10.1080/13569310701822289Search in Google Scholar

Trier, Shawn, and D. Sunshine Hillygus. 2009. “The Nature of Political Ideology in the Contemporary Electorate.” Public Opinion Quarterly 73: 679–703.10.1093/poq/nfp067Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2014-8-8
Published in Print: 2014-7-1

©2014 by De Gruyter

Downloaded on 11.1.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/for-2014-5005/html
Scroll to top button