Revealing the Subterranean When Measuring Ideological Consistency

• In Event: Innovations in the Study of Constraint in Mass Belief Systems

Abstract

When it comes to ideology in the public, some scholars say the public is ideologically innocent (Converse 1964; Kinder and Kalmoe 2017) while others say “ideology is everywhere” (Jost 2006). The latter group of researchers, heavily grounded in social psychology, tend to be skeptical about the utility of certain traditional measures, including Converse’s measure of ideological consistency. These authors, for instance, say that Converse’s analysis “gives up too much” (Lane 1974), and that it fails to account for the “latent” (Jost 2006) or “subterranean” (Hibbing 2020) nature of ideology. However, Converse’s consistency measure is still one of the most useful measures available for determining the amount of ideological structure, and perhaps even the amount of ideological division, in the public. Rather than doing away with the measure, I seek to adjust it to be more faithful to the social-psychological conception of ideology. I critique Converse’s values-agnostic approach to measuring ideological consistency, and present survey research using items intended to make the “subterranean” more visible. I provide survey items that a.) intentionally cover a broad range of left-right value conflicts; b.) tie public policies to specific values rather than leaving values implied; c.) interrogate respondents’ seeming ambivalence by asking several questions per policy area, each one highlighting a distinct value. I expect the results to show a public that is more ideological, and more ideologically divided, than we tend to think.

Author

• Jeremy Levy, Northwestern University