Partisanship, Preferences, and the Process of Production

• In Event: Social Class, Attitudes, and Partisanship

Abstract

The distribution of power in the workplace has long been seen as an essential gauge that encompasses and reflects broader currents of socioeconomic and sociopolitical power in a given society. In this sense—in terms of what we might call production-based cleavages—one might expect conflicts and cleavages between workers, managers, and owners on issues that would fundamentally reshape power in the workplace. However, the nature of American politics and research on political attitudes suggest that the power of partisanship and political ideology capture most, if not all, of the attitudinal cleavages one might expect to observe in American politics. In this vein—what we might call partisan-based cleavages—there is little reason to expect one’s position in the workplace to have any bearing on policy attitudes since attitudinal cleavages are thought to be rooted in one’s party and political ideology. This paper tests these competing notions of attitudinal cleavages across a range of domains by drawing on data from NAES. The results suggest that partisan-based cleavages account for attitudinal divisions on a number of issues. However, issue domain is important. On issues that affect either the distribution of resources or the fundamental distribution of power in the workplace, production-based cleavages emerge, in spite of partisanship. The findings have implications for our understanding of inequality, the importance of policy domain, and both the strengths and limitations of partisanship as an indicator of policy attitudes.

Author

• Gregory Lyon, Rutgers University