4
warring tribes (e.g. Barker and Carman 2000).
3
Similarly, the latest progressive movement in the
Democratic Party (as represented by the Dean movement, Air America radio, and the army
internet bloggers such as Daily Kos), appears equally committed to economic populism, civil
liberties, and peace (see Sperling 2004). So, while much of the electorate may still be
characterized in terms of ambivalence (e.g. Zaller and Feldman 1992, Lavine 2001) or even
“ideological innocence” (e.g. Zaller 1992), the proportion of the polity that is consistently liberal
or conservative across different policy domains has been steadily increasing, at least among
reasonably sophisticated voters (Layman and Carsey 2002). Furthermore, some evidence suggests
that constrained liberalism-conservatism is driving party attachment to a greater extent than has
previously been observed (e.g. Abramowitz and Saunders 1998).
But why should this have occurred? Perhaps, as public levels of education have risen in
the past 40 years, increases in sophistication have led to greater ideological thinking (Abramowitz
and Saunders 1998). Indeed, sophistication has been shown to predict ideological voting (Knight
1985). But a great deal of work on political sophistication has shown that, while education levels
may have increased, Americans are no more knowledgeable about politics than they were 40
years ago (e.g. Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, Zaller 1992). Furthermore, Scott Althaus (1998)
has shown that, if the electorate were perfectly informed, mean ideology would actually trend
libertarian -- more liberal on social issues, but more conservative on economic issues. This
finding seems to suggest that increased political knowledge would likely diminish constraint
across policy domains, not increase it.
The observations of Althaus raise another important point: why should we expect
ideological constraint across policy domains anyway? Is there really a coherent rationale that
links opposition to abortion rights, absolutist embrace of the 2
nd
Amendment, hawkish foreign
3
Although each of these groups sometimes butts heads with more traditional budget hawks
within the Republican Party.
Convention