The Ideological Structure of American Belief Systems: Mapping Topological and Dimensional Alignment

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Measuring Politics (Table 5)

Abstract

Literature on American belief systems has long debated the extent to which the public is ideologically constrained. While understandings of American ideology are overwhelmingly operationalized with a unidimensional liberal-to-conservative spectrum, scholars as well as recent polling data suggest that a plurality of Americans seem to fall outside of this dichotomy. However, discussions of worsening polarization further complicate this picture, as they predict increasingly consolidated and differentiated opinion poles. This project then addresses these debates by mapping the topological and dimensional structure underlying contemporary belief systems in the United States. I assess the relational structure of opinion co-occurrence, using recent national General Social Survey data. I rely on a combination of belief network analyses, exploratory factor analyses, and multidimensional scaling metrics to triangulate findings. Results show that a unidimensional liberal-conservative axis does not adequately represent American opinion variation. Instead, a multidimensional structure suggests meaningful belief heterogeneity even among domains previously characterized as polarized.

Author

• Firdaous Sbaï, University of Toronto