Two Theories of What an Ideology Is

What is a conservative? Not who, but what. Ask ten thoughtful Americans and you will hear about tradition, markets, religion, national strength, limited government, law and order, and perhaps a skepticism toward rapid change. Then ask a follow-up: which of those is the essence, the thing from which the others follow? The conversation usually slows down. Markets and tradition are sometimes allies and sometimes enemies. National strength and limited government pull in opposite directions on the budget. Law and order can mean a strong state or a suspicious one.

This difficulty is not a failure of the ten Americans. It is, according to Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis in The Myth of Left and Right (2023), a clue about what ideologies actually are.

The essentialist theory

The Lewises describe two competing accounts. The first, which they call the essentialist theory, holds that an ideology is a philosophy: a set of positions that cohere because they flow from a single underlying principle. On this view a liberal favors a higher minimum wage, looser immigration rules, and stricter environmental regulation because all three express one commitment, perhaps to equality, perhaps to change. A conservative opposes them for the mirror-image reason. The spectrum, then, is a real measurement of a real quantity, and a person's placement on it tells you something deep about how she reasons.

Most political commentary assumes this theory without stating it. When a columnist writes that a politician has "drifted left" or "abandoned conservative principles," the sentence makes sense only if there is a fixed principle to drift from.

The social theory

The second account, which the Lewises defend, is the social theory. On this view the bundle of positions associated with a party label is not derived from a principle at all. It is assembled by history, geography, and group loyalty, and then rationalized afterward. People join a political tribe for reasons that are often inherited or circumstantial (family, region, religion, profession, the one issue that first drew them in) and then adopt the rest of the tribe's package because that is what members believe. The philosophy comes last, as explanation, not first, as cause.

Their summary sentence is the one I want readers to remember: "social ties, not philosophical ties, hold together the dominant ideologies in America today."

The Lewises support the claim with three kinds of evidence, each of which this series will revisit. The historical evidence is that positions switch sides. Enthusiasm for free markets was once coded as "liberal" and later as "conservative"; across the twentieth century the parties traded places on tariffs, on federal power, and on foreign intervention. The experimental evidence is that party cues move stated opinions: tell a sample of partisans that their party supports a policy and support rises, even when the party opposed that policy a few years earlier. The survey evidence is that, outside the most politically engaged minority, ordinary citizens' issue positions do not cluster the way the spectrum predicts.

Why does any of this matter beyond the seminar room? Because the two theories lead to opposite conclusions about what voters should do.

If the essentialist theory is right, then choosing a party is choosing a philosophy, and loyalty to it is a form of integrity. If the social theory is right, then choosing a party is more like joining a team whose playbook is rewritten every decade or so, and loyalty can quietly become the surrender of one's own judgment on each separate question. Under the social theory, the citizen who says "I hold these views because I am a conservative" has the causation backward. She holds the views because the people she trusts hold them, and the label is the receipt.

Notice what the social theory does not say. It does not say that political beliefs are fake or that principles do not exist. It says that the bundles are contingent. An individual can hold a coherent philosophy; a coalition of millions almost never does. The appearance of a coalition-wide philosophy is produced by the fact that members defer to one another and to shared leaders. Remove the social pressure and the bundle unravels into its separate parts, which is what happens, historically, every time a party realigns. Later posts will watch it happen in 1912, in 1948, in 1964, and in 2016.

Where the evidence pushes back

The social theory has serious critics. Hans Noel, in Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America (2013), argues that ideologies are real coalitions of ideas built over decades by intellectuals and writers, and that the parties later adopted them; on that reading the bundle is not arbitrary even if it is not logically necessary. John Jost and colleagues find stable psychological differences, especially in attitudes toward change and hierarchy, that correlate with self-placement on the spectrum. And the economist Bryan Caplan has argued that the Lewises set the bar for an ideological "essence" too high: a loose family resemblance among positions may be all anyone ever claimed. A fair summary is that the social theory explains the switching of positions better than its rivals, while the essentialist theory still has something to say about who is drawn to which team.

Why this matters for the ballot

If party bundles are assembled by circumstance rather than deduced from principle, then a voter who agrees with one bundle on some issues and the other on the rest is not confused; she is normal, and she deserves candidates who can represent that combination. Fair access for independents and third parties is how such voters get a choice instead of a jersey.

— Michael W. Cunningham, Ph.D.

Cover image: "Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. - c. 1902" via Wikimedia Commons. See the file page for author and license.