A provocative piece. GOVT 2305 students ought to dig into this in order to provide context for the class material on both ideology and public opinion.
- Click here for the article.
The authors call attention to a recently published book that suggests that though a plurality of people tell pollsters that they are conservative - many more than call themselves liberal - similar pluralities show support for liberal policies.
They conclude this suggests that while "liberal may be a dirty word, but liberalism is alive and well — even among people who call themselves 'conservative.'"
- Click here for the article.
The authors call attention to a recently published book that suggests that though a plurality of people tell pollsters that they are conservative - many more than call themselves liberal - similar pluralities show support for liberal policies.
They conclude this suggests that while "liberal may be a dirty word, but liberalism is alive and well — even among people who call themselves 'conservative.'"
For decades now there has been a consistent discrepancy between what Ellis and Stimson call symbolic ideology (how we label ourselves) and operational ideology (what we really think about the size of government).
Looked at this way, almost 30 percent of Americans are “consistent liberals” — people who call themselves liberals and have liberal politics. Only 15 percent are “consistent conservatives” — people who call themselves conservative and have conservative politics. Nearly 30 percent are people who identify as conservative but actually express liberal views. The United States appears to be a center-right nation in name only.
This raises the question: why are so many people identifying as conservative while simultaneously preferring more government? For some conservatives, it is because they associate the label with religion, culture or lifestyle. In essence, when they identify as “conservative,” they are thinking about conservatism in terms of family structure, raising children, or interpreting the Bible. Conservatism is about their personal lives, not their politics.
But other self-identified conservatives, though, are conservative in terms of neither religion and culture nor the size of government. These are the truly “conflicted conservatives,” say Ellis and Stimson, who locate their origins in a different factor: how conservatives and liberals have traditionally talked about politics. Conservatives, they argue, talk about politics in terms of symbols and the general value of “conservatism” — and news coverage, they find, usually frames the label “conservative” in positive terms. Liberals talk about policy in terms of the goals it will serve — a cleaner environment, a stronger safety net, and so on — which are also good things for many people. As a result, some people internalize both messages and end up calling themselves conservative but having liberal views on policy.
Ideology has two faces: the labels people choose and the actual content of their beliefs. For liberals, these are mostly aligned. For conservatives, they are not. American conservatism means different things to different people. For many, what it doesn’t mean is less government.
