A tweet by Elon Musk recently went viral among one of the least viral groups in society: political scientists. In an effort to explain why he no longer identifies as a liberal, Mr. share a cartoon (created Colin Wright) that spans the familiar “left-right” political spectrum. In this image, centrist heroes and conservatives remain stagnant while liberals “wake up progressives” move to the left. As a result of cartoons calling him “fellow liberals” stretching the political spectrum to the left, Mr Musk indicated, he had gone from center-left in 2008 to center-right in 2021 – even though his political beliefs had not changed.
Our fellow political scientists, most of whom identify as “liberal” or “progressive”, were outraged at the suggestion that their side had peaked. He cited a vast academic literature, much of which relies on a statistical application called “DW-NOMINATE”, arguing that the Republican Party has moved to the “extreme authority” in recent decades, while their own Democratic The party remains relatively liberal and sensible.
But the whole debate is based on a misconception. “Left” and “Right” are not fixed and enduring philosophical belief systems. They are the only social group whose views, point of view and position of the issue are constantly changing. As the meanings of “left” and “right” evolve, it makes no sense to talk about individuals, groups or parties going “left” or “right”. Nonetheless, talk of left and right dominates our public discourse and claims of “ideological polarization” fill the political science literature. Both Mr. Musk and political scientists are seriously wrong in assuming that left and right have a certain meaning. Polarization is a myth.
The left-right model ignores that politics is about multiple issues. Like every other area of life, it is multidimensional, yet we describe it using only one-dimensional graphs. It is true that many Americans voice their views in packages we call “liberal” and “conservative” – which currently support abortion rights, for example, support for vaccinations, income tax hikes, free trade and military intervention. more likely to do. Ukraine. But the question is why. Why is there a strong correlation between these seemingly unrelated issues, and why do we find them clustering in predictable and binary patterns, rather than completely random and pluralistic?
The answer is socialization. When the Democratic and Republican parties change (as they have at times), the content and meaning of their ideologies also change, meaning that ideologues (“liberals” and “conservatives”) tend to conform to their political tribe. Will change your thoughts. , Social conformity, not philosophy, explains their beliefs. Those who refuse to accept and maintain their political views independent of the tribe will appear to have “changed” groups—even if they persisted while the ideologies around them changed.
This is what happened with M/s Musk and Wright. Liberals did not go to the left; He redefined the Left (for example, being less concerned with free speech and more with preventing the spread of infectious disease, even at the cost of increasing educational inequality), and M/s. Musk and Wright disliked the new version.
It’s also happened to many Never Trumpers: it’s not like conservatives went “on the right.” Conservatives redefined the “right”—for example, to be more nationalist, naturalist, isolationist, conservationist, and statistician than before—and never did Trumpers like the new version. Many of them insisted in 2015-16 that
Donald Trump
was not a “true conservative”. Some later held on to their earlier views, while others changed their positions on issues such as abortion and race to fit more with their newly acquired social group.
For example, it makes no sense to say that Democrats “moved left” away from free speech when it was the defining value of “left-wing.” It is equally absurd to say that conservatives or Republicans “went right”, moving away from values such as eligibility reform, emphasizing personal ethics in elected officials, and free trade when “rights” were once defined.
But what about our common-sense intuition that our politics has become more extreme? True, politicians are increasingly breaking the norms of decency, ideologues are becoming increasingly uncivilized, protesters increasingly extremist, and a growing number of Americans are unwilling to accept the results of elections. But these extreme behaviors are not the product of excessive commitment to ideas so much as to political tribes.
On some issues both sides have taken more extreme stances than before, but on other issues they have softened or switched entirely. Democrats support gay rights far more than in the 1950s, but so do Republicans. Republicans favor a lower income tax than in the 1960s, but so do Democrats. Democrats call for greater government intervention in the economy than they did in the 1990s, but so do Republicans, and from the 1860s to the 1910s the Republicans were the party of “big government”. Democrats are more interventionist in foreign policy, but a decade ago Republicans were more interventionist. Can either of these be described as going left or right? Clearly no.
Political scientists sometimes refer to the growing anger between parties as “effective polarisation”, but it would be better to call it increased animosity. The term “polarization” confuses matters by suggesting that parties have moved towards definite ideological poles. Yes, partisans, tribals and the isolated are increasingly in the media echo chambers. But to attribute it to a position on a mythical left-right spectrum completely misunderstands our politics.
Although there are two major ideological tribes in America, there is nothing uniting all the positions on both sides. Parties have accumulated around the concepts of “left” and “right”, but the concepts themselves are fictitious. The ubiquitous left-right model of politics frames our thinking, shapes our language, and sets the terms of public debate, but it is completely wrong. There are many issues in politics. We confuse ourselves by using a political model that turns them into one.
Instead of fighting over which group has moved further left or right on a spectrum, Democrats and Republicans—not to mention political scientists—should completely do away with the imagining that there is only one way to move forward. is spectrum. Doing so will help them to think clearly about political issues and be altruistic towards people outside their political clan.
Verlan Lewis is a visiting scholar at the Harvard Center for American Political Studies. Hyrum Lewis is a professor of history at BYU-I. He is a co-author of “The Myth of Left and Right”, coming from Oxford University Press.
Copyright © 2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
opinion | the myth of ideological polarization
A tweet by Elon Musk recently went viral among one of the least viral groups in society: political scientists. In an effort to explain why he no longer identifies as a liberal, Mr. share a cartoon (created Colin Wright) that spans the familiar “left-right” political spectrum. In this image, centrist heroes and conservatives remain stagnant while liberals “wake up progressives” move to the left. As a result of cartoons calling him “fellow liberals” stretching the political spectrum to the left, Mr Musk indicated, he had gone from center-left in 2008 to center-right in 2021 – even though his political beliefs had not changed.
Our fellow political scientists, most of whom identify as “liberal” or “progressive”, were outraged at the suggestion that their side had peaked. He cited a vast academic literature, much of which relies on a statistical application called “DW-NOMINATE”, arguing that the Republican Party has moved to the “extreme authority” in recent decades, while their own Democratic The party remains relatively liberal and sensible.
But the whole debate is based on a misconception. “Left” and “Right” are not fixed and enduring philosophical belief systems. They are the only social group whose views, point of view and position of the issue are constantly changing. As the meanings of “left” and “right” evolve, it makes no sense to talk about individuals, groups or parties going “left” or “right”. Nonetheless, talk of left and right dominates our public discourse and claims of “ideological polarization” fill the political science literature. Both Mr. Musk and political scientists are seriously wrong in assuming that left and right have a certain meaning. Polarization is a myth.
The left-right model ignores that politics is about multiple issues. Like every other area of life, it is multidimensional, yet we describe it using only one-dimensional graphs. It is true that many Americans voice their views in packages we call “liberal” and “conservative” – which currently support abortion rights, for example, support for vaccinations, income tax hikes, free trade and military intervention. more likely to do. Ukraine. But the question is why. Why is there a strong correlation between these seemingly unrelated issues, and why do we find them clustering in predictable and binary patterns, rather than completely random and pluralistic?
The answer is socialization. When the Democratic and Republican parties change (as they have at times), the content and meaning of their ideologies also change, meaning that ideologues (“liberals” and “conservatives”) tend to conform to their political tribe. Will change your thoughts. , Social conformity, not philosophy, explains their beliefs. Those who refuse to accept and maintain their political views independent of the tribe will appear to have “changed” groups—even if they persisted while the ideologies around them changed.
This is what happened with M/s Musk and Wright. Liberals did not go to the left; He redefined the Left (for example, being less concerned with free speech and more with preventing the spread of infectious disease, even at the cost of increasing educational inequality), and M/s. Musk and Wright disliked the new version.
It’s also happened to many Never Trumpers: it’s not like conservatives went “on the right.” Conservatives redefined the “right”—for example, to be more nationalist, naturalist, isolationist, conservationist, and statistician than before—and never did Trumpers like the new version. Many of them insisted in 2015-16 that
Donald Trump
was not a “true conservative”. Some later held on to their earlier views, while others changed their positions on issues such as abortion and race to fit more with their newly acquired social group.
For example, it makes no sense to say that Democrats “moved left” away from free speech when it was the defining value of “left-wing.” It is equally absurd to say that conservatives or Republicans “went right”, moving away from values such as eligibility reform, emphasizing personal ethics in elected officials, and free trade when “rights” were once defined.
But what about our common-sense intuition that our politics has become more extreme? True, politicians are increasingly breaking the norms of decency, ideologues are becoming increasingly uncivilized, protesters increasingly extremist, and a growing number of Americans are unwilling to accept the results of elections. But these extreme behaviors are not the product of excessive commitment to ideas so much as to political tribes.
On some issues both sides have taken more extreme stances than before, but on other issues they have softened or switched entirely. Democrats support gay rights far more than in the 1950s, but so do Republicans. Republicans favor a lower income tax than in the 1960s, but so do Democrats. Democrats call for greater government intervention in the economy than they did in the 1990s, but so do Republicans, and from the 1860s to the 1910s the Republicans were the party of “big government”. Democrats are more interventionist in foreign policy, but a decade ago Republicans were more interventionist. Can either of these be described as going left or right? Clearly no.
Political scientists sometimes refer to the growing anger between parties as “effective polarisation”, but it would be better to call it increased animosity. The term “polarization” confuses matters by suggesting that parties have moved towards definite ideological poles. Yes, partisans, tribals and the isolated are increasingly in the media echo chambers. But to attribute it to a position on a mythical left-right spectrum completely misunderstands our politics.
Although there are two major ideological tribes in America, there is nothing uniting all the positions on both sides. Parties have accumulated around the concepts of “left” and “right”, but the concepts themselves are fictitious. The ubiquitous left-right model of politics frames our thinking, shapes our language, and sets the terms of public debate, but it is completely wrong. There are many issues in politics. We confuse ourselves by using a political model that turns them into one.
Instead of fighting over which group has moved further left or right on a spectrum, Democrats and Republicans—not to mention political scientists—should completely do away with the imagining that there is only one way to move forward. is spectrum. Doing so will help them to think clearly about political issues and be altruistic towards people outside their political clan.
Verlan Lewis is a visiting scholar at the Harvard Center for American Political Studies. Hyrum Lewis is a professor of history at BYU-I. He is a co-author of “The Myth of Left and Right”, coming from Oxford University Press.
Copyright © 2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8