Political Behaviour/Sociology

F01 - Ideology

Date: Jun 2 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Éric Bélanger (McGill University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Edana Beauvais (Harvard University)

New Methods for the Study of Ideology as a Complex System:Field-Test of Cognitive Affective Mapping (CAM’s): Jordan Mansell (Université du Québec à Montréal), Steven Mock (Balsillie School of International Affairs), Adrienne Tecza (University of Colorado Denver), Carter Rhea (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: In this study, we conduct the first test of cognitive-affective mapping as an empirical tool to study ideological differences. Based on neuroscientific theories of emotional coherence, cognitive-affective mapping (CAM) is a method to visually represent beliefs as networks of concepts with emotional valence that an individual associates with a given political issue. Using a software application developed for this study, we ask (n=150) Canadians to draw a CAM of their views on a single political issue, the introduction of the Carbon Tax in Canada. Using this data we generate a series of variables capturing the structural properties of each network. After normalizing the network measures using graph theory, these variables are added to a series of traditional linear regressions to test whether different ideological groups show structured differences in how they think about political issues. This is the first attempt to investigate whether the structural properties of CAMs provide insight into ideological thinking.

The British Chasm: Ideological Cleavages and the Probability of Voting Conservative at the 2017 British Election.: Nadjim Fréchet (Université de Montréal), Marc-Antoine Rancourt (Université Laval), Yannick Dufresne (Université Laval)
Abstract: There is an ongoing debate among political scientists about how many ideological cleavages are important to explain voters’ behavior. Some say that the left-right cleavage is still key to explain electoral behavior. Others claim that the center-periphery cleavage has a more significant impact. Some scholars claim that the cultural cleavage is more relevant. The rise of the Conservative Party in Scotland, during the 2017 British general election, could be explained by an ideological realignment of Scottish Conservative voters away from British Conservatives. Using the panel data from the 2014-2017 British Election Study, this article evaluates the effect of voters’ position on the aforementioned scales on the probability of voting for the Conservative Party. The results show that the probability of voting for the Conservative Party remains constant. However, the more voters are economically on the right, the higher is the probability they will vote Conservative in the United Kingdom.

Affective Polarization in Canada: Social Sorting or Ideology?: Eric Merkley (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Rising levels of negative out-group partisan affect in the United States – or affective polarization – has been of increasing concern to scholars worried about its societal consequences. Scholarship on affective polarization has been limited in Canada with a few notable exceptions. Cochrane (2015) finds evidence of affective polarization using party feeling thermometers from the Canadian Election Study. Johnston (2019) shows that changes in affect are driven, in part, by changes in party platforms. This paper has two objectives. First, I supplement party feeling thermometers with additional, less flawed, measures that I included in the Digital Democracy Project’s 2019 election study (N~5,000). For a direct measure of affect, I ask respondents to rate how well certain words describe each of the three main parties (i.e. honest, intelligent, mean, selfish) and randomly assign respondents variants of the question wording to ask respondents to describe either the party’s elites or its voters. I also measure social distance – or the alienation felt towards out-group partisans –with questions eliciting how comfortable respondents are with out-group supporters being their neighbours, close friends, and in-laws. Second, I adjudicate between two competing explanations for affective polarization: ideology and social sorting, where ideological, partisan, and social identities have some into increasingly close alignment. I do so with standard ideological placement and policy issue questions that allow me to create measures of ideological extremity, consistency, and perceived ideological distance from in and out-group parties, along with a unique measure of social sorting adapted to the Canadian context.

Ideological Proximity and Perceptual Biases: Projection Effects in Forty-Two European Elections: Maxime Blanchard (McGill University), Yannick Dufresne (Université Laval)
Abstract: According to classical democratic theory, citizen representation is understood as voters supporting parties that best represent their policy preferences. Yet, this simple task ends up being very demanding for individual voters when interpreted in a spatial-theory literal way. Indeed, in order to synchronise rationally their political preferences with those of parties, citizens require a minimum level of political sophistication, which past research on voting behaviour suggest to be lacking in the electorate. This research investigates specifically this ability of democratic citizens to reliably assess their ideological proximity to parties in 42 European electoral settings. Data analyses of various national election studies and expert surveys reveal systematic perceptual biases among voters when it comes to evaluate parties’ ideological position. In fact, voters’ feelings toward parties have substantial impact on the propensity to overestimate–or underestimate–their actual ideological proximity with these parties. Surprisingly, however, feelings toward party leaders and vote choice itself are not found to be predictive of these perceptual biases. These results contribute to our understanding of the psychological processes underlying the reasoning of voters in representative democracies.

Is Generational Replacement Behind the Rise of the Authoritarian-Libertarian Public Opinion Cleavage?: Valérie-Anne Mahéo (Université de Montréal), Éric Bélanger (McGill University), Richard Nadeau (Université de Montréal)
Abstract: The increased flow of immigration that globalization has brought has contributed to the emergence of a new political agenda based on non-economic issues such as the management of ethno-cultural diversity, and other issues like environmental protection and crime punishment. This new agenda appears to have changed the political landscape in many countries, as several scholars have noted the growing salience across Western Europe of an authoritarian-libertarian cleavage structuring public opinion. This ideological dimension is different from the traditional “old politics” one, which involves economic issues like taxation and state intervention. Since the youngest generations have been socialized during these different political times, we expect that generational replacement is driving these societal shifts in political values and policy preferences, with younger generations adopting a new-left political outlook and older ones reacting through the articulation of a new-right outlook – a phenomenon that had not been predicted by post-materialist theories. We also expect that, in turn, these attitudinal shifts towards new-politics issues have an increasing impact on voting choices. We empirically test these expectations in the case of Canada, with data from an opinion survey administered after the 2019 federal election to 4250 respondents, including a subsample of individuals of the newest generation, aged 16 and 17.