Polarization Eh? Ideological Divergence and Partisan Sorting in the Canadian Mass Public

There has be increasing concern among commentators and scholars about a possible polarization of the Canadian public that resembles what we have seen in the United States. There are, however, multiple competing conceptual definitions and perspectives on polarization, and we do not yet have a full and complete picture on which dimensions Canadians have or have not polarized, nor on the magnitudes of any patterns. This paper uses the 1993-2019 cumulative file of the Canadian Election Study (CES) to measure trends in ideological divergence, ideological consistency, and partisan sorting in the Canadian mass public. It finds little evidence that Canadians are becoming more ideologically polarized. They are, however, becoming modestly more ideologically consistent and much more sorted – that is, partisanship, ideological identification, and policy beliefs are increasingly interconnected, particularly among those with high levels of political interest. This paper also provides some evidence as to the mechanism undergirding partisan sorting using the 2004-2008 CES panel. Partisan sorting appears to be driven by people switching their partisanship into closer alignment with their beliefs rather than vice versa. These findings call for additional research on the causes and consequences of partisan sorting in Canada and further efforts to situate these results in a comparative context.

Examining Trends in Ideological Identification: 1972–2016

Has polarization influenced how members of the public identify with ideological labels? In our analysis of patterns of ideological identification since the 1970s, we demonstrate that there has been an increase in the proportion of the electorate willing to locate themselves on the standard seven-point ideological scale as the parties have polarized. Moreover, consistent with existing evidence of partisan-ideological sorting, our results indicates that most of the increase in identifying with a label is associated with an increase in partisans selecting the ideological label that matches their partisanship. Finally, we show that attitudes toward moral traditionalism are increasingly related to ideological identifications. Our evidence indicates that the broader political system influences how members of the public identify with ideological labels.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter teases out two sets of implications illuminated in the book: one for our understanding of culture and one for our understanding of nationalism and extremism. Both implications rest on the evidence presented in the previous chapters of how the use of coded symbols can serve as a mechanism both of belonging and of resistance, helping youth feel connected to other insiders in the far right scene while simultaneously expressing resistance against mainstream society. The chapter argues that this “push and pull” of belonging and resistance ought to expand our understanding of gateways to radicalization and violence by showing how commercialized extremist products—and other “lifestyle elements” like tattoos or far right wing music—help strengthen racist, nationalist, and ideological identification and act as conduits of resistance to mainstream society. In the German case, the commercialized, coded references and symbols—many of which use humor or aggressive coded references to historical atrocities against Jews, Muslims, and others deemed not to belong—desensitize and socialize consumers and their peers and dehumanize victims. Disaffected and disenfranchised youth who enter extremist and radical scenes through their consumption of subcultural elements like tattoos, clothing, styles, or music may become gradually more involved with extremist ideologies. Far from being mere “subcultural style,” commercialized extremist products can be a gateway to extremist scenes, radicalization, and violence. Style and aesthetic representation thus need to be considered more seriously for their potential role in radicalization.

Social identity and the use of ideological categorization in political evaluation

In this research, we address a longstanding question concerning how individuals evaluate social and political issues. We focus on the role that political self-identification plays when individuals evaluate policy statements. In a laboratory setting, participants completed a task facilitation procedure, in which they made paired sets of judgments about a series of policy statements. Relative to a control task, ideological categorization of policy statements as liberal or conservative influenced the ease of evaluation. On experimental trials that began with ideological categorization, policy evaluations that were consistent with the participant’s own ideology were made more quickly than responses that were ideologically inconsistent and more quickly than responses following a control judgment. In three experiments, we show that this effect is stronger for individuals with more accessible ideological identification (Experiment 1) and more extreme ideological identification (Experiment 2), and that it holds when examining partisan instead of ideological identification (Experiment 3). The findings suggest that the use of ideological category information can facilitate and interfere with evaluative judgments of political issues, and that the use of such categories varies as a function of individual differences in the strength of political identification.

On the Dynamics of Ideological Identification: The Puzzle of Liberal Identification Decline

Our focus is a puzzle: that ideological identification as “liberal” is in serious decline in the United States, but at the same time support for liberal policies and for the political party of liberalism is not. We aim to understand this divorce in “liberal” in name and “liberal” in policy by investigating how particular symbols rise and fall as associations with the ideological labels “liberal” and “conservative.” We produce three kinds of evidence to shed light on this macro-level puzzle. First, we explore the words associated with “liberal” and “conservative” over time. Then we take up a group conception by examining the changing correlations between affect toward “liberals” and affect toward other groups. Finally, we consider the changing policy correlates of identification.

Ideological diversity and ideological autonomy of personality: problems of modern Russian statehood

The article analyzes the content of the constitutional principle of ideological diversity and problems of its realization in modern Russia. There inextricable link with the autonomy of the ideological freedom of the individual, the need for comprehensive protection of human ideological autonomy for the development of Russian society. The author attempts to formulate the problem of the relation of ideological diversity as a basis of the constitutional system with the introduction of new vectors ideological identification of the social and legal environment.