3
Perhaps the most complete treatment of this subject has been offered by Geoffrey
Layman (2001). Building upon the anecdotal argument provided by Hunter (1991, 1994),
Layman provides compelling evidence of the institutional, historical, and social changes that
precipitated the current “Great Divide” between Democrats and Republicans in matters of
religion and culture.
2
Layman’s account fits nicely within the now large stream of research
pointing to symbolic predispositions -- and especially core values – as the driving agents behind
specific political choices (e.g. Sears et al. 1980, Peffley and Hurwitz 1985, Feldman 1988,
Feldman and Steenbergen 2001, Tetlock, Peterson and Lerner 1996, Barker 2002).
The political values literature, in particular, has demonstrated quite clearly that abstract
conceptions of “right and wrong” are more predictive of individual attitudes than are “rational”
considerations of “what’s in it for me” (see Kinder, 1998, and Kuklinski 2002 for nice overviews
of this literature). What’s more, this literature has revealed that political values are inherently
conflictual (e.g. Rokeach 1973, McClosky and Zaller 1984, Tetlock 1986) – that is, the variance
in value attachments can best be understood as variance in value priorities.
Interestingly, however, researchers have demonstrated that new cleavages based on “the
culture wars” have not displaced the earlier New-Deal or racial cleavages as much as they have
extended them (Layman and Carsey 2002). That is, party activists, politicians, and even the mass
public now appear much more ideologically constrained than when Converse (1964) first decried
the lack of coherent belief systems in American mass publics (see Abramowitz and Saunders
1998; Levine, Carmines and Huckfeldt 1997). In other words, “conservatism” now predicts
antipathy toward abortion and the United Nations, but it still predicts antipathy toward welfare
programs too; the various factions within contemporary American conservatism (e.g. supply-
siders, neoconservatives and the Christian Right) behave more like pleasant bedfellows than
2
For a good counterargument to the idea of an increasingly divided U.S. citizenry, see Fiorina,
Abrams and Pope 2005.
Convention