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Ideological Consistency as a Collective Phenomenon

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  • Feld, Scott L.
  • Grofman, Bernard

Abstract

Researchers ordinarily consider ideological consistency to be a characteristic of individuals; groups are considered to be ideological only if they are composed of ideologically oriented individuals. We show how a group as a whole can be characterized as exhibiting an ideological basis for its preferences even though many, or even most, of its members have preferences that are inconsistent with the supposed unidimensional ideological continuum. As an illustration, we show that the United States electorate of 1980 had collective preferences among the candidates Kennedy, Carter, Ford, and Reagan as if these preferences reflected an underlying left-right dimension among these candidates, despite the fact that a high proportion of individual voters had preferences among these candidates that did not fit the left-right dimension. In general, we show reasons why collectivities are likely to be more ideologically consistent than are the individuals composing them.

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  • Feld, Scott L. & Grofman, Bernard, 1988. "Ideological Consistency as a Collective Phenomenon," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(3), pages 773-788, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:82:y:1988:i:03:p:773-788_19
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Nicholas R. Miller, 2019. "Reflections on Arrow’s theorem and voting rules," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 113-124, April.
    2. Marks, Gary & Hooghe, Liesbet, 2003. "National identity and support for European integration," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Democracy and Democratization SP IV 2003-202, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Thomas L Brunell & Bernard Grofman & Samuel Merrill, 2016. "Components of party polarization in the US House of Representatives," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(4), pages 598-624, October.
    4. Scott L. Feld & Bernard Grofman, 1990. "Collectivities as Actors," Rationality and Society, , vol. 2(4), pages 429-448, October.
    5. Michel Regenwetter & Bernard Grofman, 1998. "Approval Voting, Borda Winners, and Condorcet Winners: Evidence from Seven Elections," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(4), pages 520-533, April.
    6. Achuthankutty, Gopakumar & Roy, Souvik, 2017. "Strategy-proof Rules on Partially Single-peaked Domains," MPRA Paper 82267, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Scott L. Feld & Bernard Grofman, 1992. "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Cycle? Evidence from 36 Elections," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(2), pages 231-237, April.
    8. Amihai Glazer & Bernard Grofman, 1989. "Why representatives are ideologists though voters are not," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(1), pages 29-39, April.
    9. Reffgen, Alexander, 2015. "Strategy-proof social choice on multiple and multi-dimensional single-peaked domains," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 349-383.
    10. Scott Feld & Bernard Grofman & Nicholas Miller, 1988. "Centripetal forces in spatial voting: On the size of the Yolk," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 37-50, October.
    11. Michel Regenwetter & James Adams & Bernard Grofman, 2002. "On the (Sample) Condorcet Efficiency of Majority Rule: An alternative view of majority cycles and social homogeneity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 153-186, September.

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