Beyond Liberal and Conservative: Reassessing the Political Spectrum by William S. Maddox & Stuart A. Lilie

Author:William S. Maddox & Stuart A. Lilie [Maddox, William S. & Lilie, Stuart A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Public Policy, General
ISBN: 9781935308645
Google: 3_GdfKGni28C
Goodreads: 16704579
Publisher: Cato Institute
Published: 1984-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Footnote

7This general picture is confirmed by a study (Green and Guth 1983) of active supporters of the Libertarian party. They were found to be upper-middle-income, very highly educated, frequently employed in the knowledge industries or the professions, and mostly under the age of 45-in many ways a distilled version of our more broadly defined libertarianism.

VI. Mass Belief Systems and Political Behavior

Thus far we have described the state of American public opinion in terms of four types of mass belief systems or ideological categories. In the previous chapter we analyzed the social bases of support for those ideologies and offered some demographic explanations of the changing proportions of support for each category. This four-way analysis of American politics, however, differs from that suggested by most political observers and in some crucial ways is at odds with the way the U.S. political system is defined by political leaders in their public statements. Put more bluntly Americans live in a dichotomized political world according to conventional definitions; liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans-these are the labels presented to citizens again and again by the mass media, political leaders, and political scientists. It is our aim in this chapter to describe how far mass belief systems are expressed in that dichotomous world.

What do people do when faced with the either/or choices presented to them, especially when there are two large groups, popu- lists and libertarians, whose ideas are not even superficially addressed by most political elites? To answer this question, we first examine the crucial issue of voter turnout differences between groups and then analyze the actual voting behavior that different ideological types demonstrate in response to the choices presented them. We then look at their level of involvement in or alienation from politics in general. A diverse public, when offered simplistic and not necessarily useful choices in politics, may avoid the process, do the best they can, or develop feelings of alienation from the entire political system. It is these possibilities we explore in this chapter. Finally we present some brief evidence as to how well our four ideological labels can be used to describe the voting behavior of members of Congress. At this point we will see that populism and libertarianism do find some expression in the congressional system, although it is underrepresented as compared to the levels of public support for those views.

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