CHAPTER 2: THE AMERICAN
IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM

Contentsjump to start of text

PAINTING THE IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM WITH A BROAD BRUSH
     Popular Conception of Liberalism and Conservatism
     Non-military Spending as a Percentage of GDP
BEYOND LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM
   The Limits of Liberalism versus Conservatism
        Lowi's Analysis of Liberals and Conservatives
    Ideological Poles and the Political Center
     Political Parties on the Ideological Spectrum
THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM
    The Concept of the State
    Laissez-Faire
        1964 Republican Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater on Laissez-faire
    The Social Security State
        Franklin Roosevelt on the Social Security State
    The Limited Interest State
    Social Democracy
        Lyndon Johnson on Social Democracy
    Summary of Ideologies about Political Economy
    Corporate Planning
SOCIAL ISSUES AND THE CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF IDEOLOGY
   Ideology, Interests, and Identity
   The Christian Right
        Ronald Reagan on Christian Values
   The Countercultural Left
   Cultural Pluralism
   Cultural Monism
        Vicepresident Agnew on Cultural Monism
CONCLUSION

PAINTING THE IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM WITH A BROAD BRUSH:
LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM return to top

When one thinks of political ideology in American politics, the first terms that come to mind are liberalism and conservatism.  Many American politicians since the 1930s have used one of these two terms to describe their political philosophy, although many who do often qualify their self-identification with hedging terms life "moderate liberal" or "compassionate conservative."  In this chapter we will move beyond the simplified concepts of liberalism and conservatism to a more complex typology of the American ideological spectrum.  But first it is worth looking broadly at the impact of the ideologies of liberalism and conservatism since the 1930s.  Just how much did the liberalism of the 1930s-1960s change public policy and the policy discourse of the country?  Has there really been a conservative tide in the past generation?  Which philosophy had more impact on American public policy in the 20th century?  A more complete answer will only be possible after a detailed analysis of the parameters of American ideological discourse, but we have to start somewhere.

On the most general level, liberalism is thought to be the "left" in American politics, while conservatism is seen to be the "right" in American politics.  Liberalism is associated with activist government, while conservatism is associated with limited government.  Liberalism is associated with various ethnic and gender "rights" movements, like civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, etc., while conservatism is associated with traditional values.  Liberals are generally believed to favor the poor and working class, while conservatives are generally thought to favor the more well-to-do and the corporations.  Liberal foreign policies put more emphasis on diplomatic engagement of enemies, multilateralism, and support for international institutions,while conservative foreign policies put more emphasis on the building up of military strength, American unilaterlateralism, and distrust of international institutions and diplomacy with enemies.

Popular Conception of Liberalism and Conservatism return to top

	Liberals	Conservatives
Domestic Policy	Activist Government	Limited Government
Social Groups	Rights Movements	Traditional Values
Economic Class	Poor and Working Class	Upper Classes
Foreign Policy	Engagment Multilateralism International Institutions	Military Strength Unilateralism Distrust of Diplomacy

As we will see later in this chapter and throughout this book, this is a grossly oversimplified and often inaccurate portrayal of the American ideological spectrum.  But it is a reasonable first approximation for assessing broad tides in American public policy in the 20th century.

Of these issue area, the one most amenable to quantitative analysis is government activism in domestic policy.  Non-military national government spending is a very gross, but useful measure of the changing structure of the American state and the impact of the philosophies of liberalism and conservatism on public policy.  As we can see, before the Great Depression and the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, the national government spent less than 5% of national GDP on non-military programs.  Roosevelt's liberal New Deal programs beginning in 1933 drove this figure to around 10% of GDP in the late 1930s.  Non-military spending fell dramatically during the second World War (1941-1945) and again in the Korean War, as resources were concentrated on the war efforts.  But beginning in the mid 1950s non-military spending accelerates again, mainly because the first generation to pay Social Security taxes begins to retire and collect benefits.  The rate of growth flattens out a bit in the early 60s but then accelerates again after the liberal programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society which began in the mid-1960s and grew steadily into the mid-70s.  Non-military spending reaches more than 15% of GDP in the mid-70s.


return to top

The rate of non-military spending begins to level off in the late 1970s.  In 1980 the most conservative president since the 1920s is elected, Ronald Reagan, and the perception of a turning of the tides toward conservatism begins to develop.  But the Reagan administration was not able to reverse the level of government spending set by the liberal presidents who preceded him.  Reagan was only able to hold the rate of non-military spending relatively constant.  Even the Republican capture of Congress in the 1994 election was unable to reduce the rate of government spending.  Two decades of political gains by conservative Republicans has not undone the welfare state constructed by the liberals of the 1930s through the 1960s.
 

BEYOND LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM return to top

The Limits of Liberalism versus Conservatism return to top

But the concepts of liberalism and conservatism can only take one so far in understanding the American ideological spectrum.  Political scientists are acutely aware that the simple dichotomy of liberalism vs. conservatism is insufficient to truly capture the complexity of American policy discourse.  The problem of characterizing the range of political ideologies has perplexed students of American politics for a long time. The idea of an ideological spectrum makes sense on one level, but when one moves from the general concept to actually characterizing political views, the task becomes difficult.

The basic problem in thinking about the ideological spectrum is the problem of multidimensionality. There are always many active political issues, and philosophical agreement on one issue or even one set of issues does not guarantee philosophical agreement on others. For example, most conservatives believe in limiting government and maximizing individual choice on economic issues like regulation, government spending, and taxation. Yet in the area of social issues like abortion, sexual behavior, women's roles, and alcohol and drug usage, many who call themselves conservatives favor traditional values over individual choice. Yet others who think of themselves as conservatives, particularly younger people, believe in the primacy of individual choice in these areas as well. When one factors in other clusters of issues, such as foreign policy, the waters become even more muddied.

The problem is further compounded by changes in what is considered liberal or conservative over historical time. From the 1930s into the 1950s, conservatives tended to be isolationist and to oppose U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts. In this period it was liberals who tended to support intervention abroad. Yet by the 1970s and 1980s the picture was different. Conservatives were the strongest supporters of interventions overseas, while liberals had become more skeptical of foreign military actions. Another problem with the liberal-conservative dichotomy is the pervasive tendency of American politics to be "centrist." Many successful presidential candidates are not too closely identified with either liberalism or conservatism. It is no accident that presidents recycle lines from past presidents from the opposing party who sought to blur ideological distinctions. Thus Jimmy Carter repeated Eisenhower's phrase that he was "a conservative on economic issues, but a liberal on social issues." Ronald Reagan used John Kennedy's line muting conflict over economic ideology, "A rising tide lifts all boats." Even presidents who come to office strongly associated with one doctrine, such as FDR or Reagan, tend to move to the center over time.

But perhaps the most serious problem with using the ideas of conservatism and liberalism to characterize presidential administrations is that these labels do little to illuminate the actual policies pursued by either Republican or Democratic administrations. Theodore Lowi argues that while the public debate between the parties emphasizes a conflict between the "liberal" philosophy of using the activist state to help the disadvantaged and the "conservative" philosophy of the limited state, neither party lives up to its rhetoric in practice. Despite their rhetoric, conservative Republican presidents do not shrink the size of government; they only slow the rate of growth of government programs, and sometimes they change the forms of government spending. Similarly, the official liberal ideology is the use the activist state to help the disadvantaged members of society, while in practice the programs that liberals put in place more often serve powerful interest group oligarchies. According to Lowi, Republican and Democratic administrations' rhetoric is still fixed on an issue that was settled in the 1930s—whether government is to play an activist role in society.

Lowi's Analysis of Liberals and Conservatives return to top

	Support Government Spending	Oppose Government Spending
Benefit the poor and working class	Democratic rhetoric	Republican rhetoric
Benefit the rich and corporations	REAL PRACTICE OF BOTH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS	Republican rhetoric

However, the very fact that pundits continually try to label various administrations and the actions of these administrations as liberal or conservative attests to the necessity for some way of characterizing ideological variation. Sometimes these terms are a convenient shorthand way of locating presidents on the ideological spectrum and describing movements of political philosophy between and within administrations.

Ideological Poles and the Political Center return to top

But the twofold liberal-conservative typology, or even a threefold liberal-moderate-conservative typology, is not adequate to deal with the complexity of the issues. Nor can any one typology cover all the different kinds of issues the nation faces. But at the risk of repeating all of the mistakes I have just alluded to, I would like to suggest a set of typologies that put current and recent ideological conflict into better perspective.

These typologies begin with recognition that ideological conflict is characterized by simultaneous tendencies toward centrist politics and toward ideological polarization. Therefore, each party is cross-pressured by its centrist wing and its ideological wing. The obvious similarities between the parties is the result of their striving for the elusive political center. The differences in rhetoric and policy between the parties is the result of the different political and ideological groups that are part of the party coalition. The picture is further complicated by the fact that the center is continuously in flux—what is perceived as the ideological center changes significantly over time, largely as a result of the differing forces exerted by the ideological poles. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was a centrist position to conduct a cold war with the Soviet Union. But by the late 1980s it was centrist to support arms reduction treaties and a more flexible approach to the Soviet Union.

The relationship between the polar and centrist tendencies of the parties can be represented by aligning them on a spectrum of political philosophy. To begin, let us use the conventional terminology "liberalism" and "conservatism." By breaking the ideological spectrum into four categories, we can represent the political center as opposed to the ideological poles of thought. We can also show that each party has an ideological wing and is uncomfortably located between its ideological wing and the centrist wing of the opposing party.

Political Parties on the Ideological Spectrum return to top
 
 

Ideological Left (Very  Liberal)

Democratic Center (Moderately  Liberal)

Republican Center (Moderately Conservative)

Ideological Right (Very  Conservative)

[Range of Policies of Democratic Administrations]

[Range of Policies of Republican Administrations]

 
THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM return to top

But the picture is still not complete. In order to understand the policy maneuvers of presidents of either party, we need to know more about the substantive differences between the expectations of the political center and of each party's ideological wing. The rest of this chapter and Chapter 3 describe the different ideas about public policy and the role of government that have held the political center or emerged on the ideological wings to challenge the center.

The Concept of the State return to top

The typologies of political philosophy and public policy introduced in this chapter often use the term "state," so it is useful to make clear how the concept of the state is being used in this book. The term as it is being used here has four dimensions: (1) a set of similar public policies, (2) a set of ideas that justify these policies, (3) a set of institutions and government agencies that carry out these policies, and (4) a set of political and power relationships that supports these policies, ideas, and institutions—a social bloc that sustains these philosophies and practices.

For example, I have used the term "national security state" to label the institutions, ideas, and practices that dominated U.S. foreign policy-making in the 1950s and 1960s at the height of the cold war and that still play a large role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. The national security state pursued a clearly definable set of policies toward the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. These policies were justified by a series of ideas about the roles of the United States and the Soviet Union in the world and how the United States could be safe in world of hostile forces. The national security state has also been a series of government and nongovernment institutions, most notably those established by the National Security Act of 1947, at the beginning of the cold war. And finally, the national security state has been a set of powerful political actors who push to maintain the ideas, practices, and institutions that pursue the ends they seek.

The discussions of these clusters of policies in this chapter are necessarily relatively brief and sketchy. The details of these philosophies and how they have been put into practice over the years will be covered in much more detail in later chapters. The purpose here is simply to introduce the framework that structures analysis in succeeding chapters.

IDEOLOGIES ABOUT ECONOMIC POLICY return to top

Presidential economic policy-making ultimately rests on some theory about the role of the state in a capitalist economy. Most of the range of American political thought about the proper role of government in the economic system can be captured by the following categories aligned on a continuum from ideological left to ideological right, as represented in the following schematic:
 

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

SOCIAL INSURANCE STATE

LIMITED INTEREST STATE

LAISSEZ- FAIRE

Laissez-Faire return to top

Laissez-faire was the dominant public philosophy of the late nineteenth century, and still exerts considerable influence on political rhetoric, if not on government budgets. At the heart of the laissez-faire philosophy is the separation of the public and private spheres of society. Government, or the state, is defined as the realm of coercion, and the private sector as the realm of freedom and prosperity. According to laissez-faire philosophy, the smaller the coercive state, the greater the private realm of freedom. The greater the realm of freedom, the better the life of the people. The laissez-faire philosophy believes in a state that is strictly limited in its size and scope. As Thomas Jefferson put it, "The government that governs least, governs best." The laissez-faire philosophy does prescribe certain appropriate roles for the state. It is legitimate for government to defend against foreign enemies, to maintain law and order, and to set some basic rules for the conduct of commerce. But the emphasis in laissez-faire philosophy is on the protection of individual rights. The legitimate roles of the state derive only from protecting individual rights against those, foreign and domestic, who would violate them. The metaphor which is often used to describe the ideal state is that of a nightwatchman, whose role it is to protect property but not to interfere unless that property is threatened.

Laissez-faire philosophy still influences the political rhetoric of presidents. In preparing for his 1964 campaign as Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater gave a succinct statement of the laissez-faire philosophy:
 

Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man's liberty. Government represents power in the hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men. And power, as Lord Acton said, corrupts men. return to top

More recently, some of Ronald Reagan's most famous lines appealed to laissez-faire principles. When Reagan spoke of "getting government off the backs of the people" or when he argued that "government is the problem, not the solution," he was expressing laissez-faire sentiments. But, as we shall see in later chapters, the policies pursued by the Reagan administration cannot really be understood as being driven by an authentic laissez-faire philosophy.

In the late nineteenth century laissez-faire was the predominant philosophy that guided American government, though not without challenges. During the Theo-dore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson presidencies in the first two decades of the twentieth century, the hold of laissez-faire weakened as the principle that government has an important role in regulating economic markets was established. But with the "return to normalcy" after World War I and the conservative Republican administrations of the 1920s, laissez-faire once again asserted its primacy.

The Social Insurance State return to top

The FDR administration was the final turning point. The horrors of the Great Depression led the mass public, and ultimately political elites, to demand a newly activist role for government in economic and social affairs. The growing role of the state was reinforced by the international undertakings of the United States from World War II on. The laissez-faire philosophy still has its authentic advocates. However, today what is crucial in interpreting American public policy is the significant differences in what those who advocate an activist state want to do with that state. Let me begin describing these differences by characterizing what I call the social insurance state.

The Social Security program, the largest single program in the American budget, is prototypical of the many programs of the Social Insurance State which are based on a general set of beliefs about modern government. The Social Security program protects citizens from the inability to maintain their earnings in old age through a system of government insurance. Roughly 40 million Americans currently collect benefits. In the same manner, the social insurance state protects a wide range of economic and social groups from interruptions of their income or from competition that they cannot effectively meet. It provides not only insurance but also subsidies, regulation, trade protection, and other government benefits to political groups that are organized to obtain them. As with the Social Security program and the elderly, the effect, if not the rhetoric, of the social insurance state is maintenance of the income of politically organized groups.

FDR captured the essence of the social insurance philosophy when he reviewed the achievements of his first term.
 

Democratic government has [the] innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster. return to top

FDR was talking about the Great Depression, but the philosophy of government action to provide security to those who experience economic distress has since been generalized to cover a much wider range of economic pressures on ever- increasing segments of American society.

The Limited Interest State return to top

In our time, the key question is not whether to have an activist state, but what kind of activist state we should have. The social security state defines a different set of roles for government than either the limited interest state or the social democratic state. The limited interest state retains much of the rhetoric of the laissez-faire philosophy while at the same time accepting a wider range of roles for the state than true laissez-faire philosophy prescribes. This seeming contradiction is not simply an irrational residue of old ideas in a new age.

Rather, it reflects the fact that some of the most powerful groups in American society, particularly corporations and upper-income groups, favor an activist state when it works to serve their interests and oppose too broad a definition of the roles of an activist state when that works against their interests. Corporate executives may oppose social programs on the grounds that they create dependency on the state at the same time they are getting most of their revenue from military contracts. Farmers may support their subsidies at the same time they oppose aid to the cities, just as big city mayors may call for more urban aid while opposing farm subsidies.

The key distinctions between the social insurance state and the limited interest state are in (1) the range of government activism they support, (2) the relationship between government and economic markets, and (3) the political forces that support these philosophies. Advocates of the limited interest state retain much of the rhetoric of the laissez-faire philosophy precisely because they, too, favor restricting the scope of state activity in society. While the limited interest state accepts a much wider set of roles for government than does authentic laissez-faire philosophy, it still has a more restrictive view of legitimate government action than does the social insurance state. Only some interests deserve protection, not all who demand it.

Both the limited interest state and the social insurance state are committed to maintaining a market society. But their rhetorical emphasis on the relationship between government and markets is different. The limited interest state extols the virtues of market competition even as it provides selective protection from the effects of market competition to a limited range of interests. But in order to justify the denial of benefits to excluded groups, the limited interest state relies on market philosophy. A caricature of the limited interest position would be "Markets for you, protection for me."

Senator Jesse Helms, a leading conservative advocate of the free market,
has consistently supported government subsidies for
tobacco farmers in his home state of North Carolina

On the other hand, while accepting the essentials of a market society, the social insurance state is more broadly committed to mitigating the effects of markets when they threaten established social institutions or organized political groups. The social insurance philosophy consciously endorses the role of the state in providing a wide range of tangible and intangible public goods and services, in correcting social inequities, and, in certain circumstances, asserting the primacy of political values over market outcomes. The caricature of the social insurance position might be "Some protection for everybody."

The difference in the range of state activity sanctioned by the limited interest state versus the social insurance state reflects the differences in the electoral coalitions of the major parties. The Republican coalition, based largely on corporate organizations, upper-income groups, and white Protestant communities, simultaneously seeks to use government to benefit these groups and to limit the claims of other social groups to government assistance. The Democratic coalition, on the other hand, with its base in lower-income groups, unions, ethnic minorities, and feminist organizations, represents a broader diversity of interests. To the extent that this coalition can be held together at all, it is on the basis of a common commitment to a state that not only serves narrow particular interests but also is philosophically committed to a broad involvement in many sectors of society.

Social Democracy return to top

The differences between the laissez-faire philosophy and the limited interest state pinpoint the fundamental differences between the pure economic ideology of the American right and the more centrist practices of Republican administrations that accept the existence of the activist state. In the same manner, the left of the American political spectrum can be divided between those who have very different images of the purposes and institutions of the programs of the activist state.

The left pole of the ideological spectrum demands more of the activist state than protection of well-organized political interests. The social democratic philosophy envisions a government that goes beyond ameliorating the worst excesses of market society and becomes an agent of social transformation. The basic purposes of government in the social insurance philosophy are to maintain the income shares of organized social groups and to supplement private markets with public goods. However, the social democratic philosophy defines the role of government as being an active agent of historical change. Government is seen as the means by which the lives of ordinary citizens, poor and middle class alike, can be significantly improved.

In European democracies this image of the state gets most of its support from trade unions and their political parties, but in the United States it is the civil rights, women's, environmental, and peace movements that have most recently made these kinds of demands on government. The government envisioned in Martin Luther King's dream is a force for massive social change, not one that ensures the maintenance of the status quo.

Just as there is an echo of laissez-faire philosophy in the rhetoric of conservative Republican presidents, so there is a trace of social democratic philosophy in the rhetoric of liberal Democratic presidents. In 1965, in the midst of the civil rights struggle, the image of social transformation was strong in the inaugural address of Lyndon Johnson:
 

Justice was the promise that all . . . would share in the fruits of the land. . . In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. . . . In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write. . . Before this generation of Americans is finished, (poverty) will not only retreat—it will be conquered. return to top

The social democratic view of government is more than a maximal interest group coalition. Social democracy seeks a significant redistribution of income and power. It expands the role of government not so much in the number of sectors of society it regulates as in the kinds of goals it seeks to achieve.

Summary of Ideologies about Political Economy
 

	Social Democracy	Social Insurance State	Limited Interest State	Laissez-faire
who should benefit from government programs	large social groups + lower income groups: workers women racial minorities	many organized interest groups +  key social blocs	selected organized interest groups: military-industrial complex transnational corporations (TNCs) agribusiness	no one or everyone
most important purposes of the state	redistribution of income + empowerment of common person +  social justice	serve organized interests + broker political economy + maintain economic + social equilibrium protect powerful + from losses	promote TNCs +  maintain economic equilibrium	protect private property +  promote economic competition +  maximize individual liberty
role of state in markets	reconstitute market system to address fundamental inequities	promote well-organized industries + ameliorate specific inequities of specific markets	state aid for most powerful corporations	state vs. market= maximal market + minimal state
central focus of economic policy	lift up living standards of lower to middle end of economic scale	maintenance of social and economic equilibrium +  maintain living standards of most organized groups	profits of transnational corporations	keep state from affecting markets
income/wealth distribution	current distribution unjust redistrubtion	maintain current distribtuion +  insure currently organized interests against big losses	trickle down= distribution less important than growth	not a matter of state policy
attitude toward transnational corporations (TNCs)	TNCs must be restructured to benefit workers + consumers	promote TNC  + protect some TNCs + protect against some impacts of TNCs	promotion of TNCs	positive

 
 

Corporate Planning return to top

One final component of some philosophies of the activist state bears mentioning: the concept of corporate planning. Throughout the twentieth century many of the advocates of activist government have called for government, business, and other sectors of society to join in cooperative planning to guide the direction of the U.S. economy toward desired goals. Corporate planning was a central element of the early New Deal attempts to resuscitate the economy during the Great Depression. Today many Democrats call for corporate planning and industrial policy to meet the trade challenges of Japan and other competitors in the new international economy.

However, the political meaning of corporate planning is difficult to characterize because different forms of corporate planning can have very different effects on society. The concept of corporate planning directly conflicts with the right-wing laissez-faire philosophy of letting markets operate without government interference. Indeed, the idea of corporate planning has often been associated in the United States and around the world with left-wing political forces that seek to use such planning to empower groups previously excluded from economic decision making. But when business groups dominate the planning process, corporate planning can serve very conservative business interests, as the cases of Japan and France show. In these countries corporate planning has not worked against business interests but, rather, has entrenched their power in politics and society. Along with the issue of who participates in and controls the process, another key issue is whether corporate planning is designed to be broad industrial policy or is limited to rationalization of particular sectors of the economy. Sectoral planning is limited to one set of economic activities, such as agriculture or energy. The U.S. government has long engaged in sectoral planning in agriculture and military production. Such planning usually works as a form of cartelization, where producers band together to keep price levels high.

World War II War Production Board billboard: an example of corporate planning in wartime

Industrial policy plans more broadly, trying to steer the overall development of the economy and make choices about which sectors of the economy to target for investment. Such broad industrial policy was tried during World War I, the early New Deal, and most extensively during World War II. However, it has been largely abandoned in the second half of the twentieth century. Today some Democrats advocate such a broad industrial policy as a response to the chronic trade imbalance the United States runs with the rest of the world. They argue that targeting key growth industries for public and private investment and correcting crucial deficiencies in the skills of the work force could make the United States much more competitive in the world economy. The idea of a corporate planning state has not yet had much impact on the actual practices of contemporary American government. If a future Democratic administration were to adopt an industrial policy, the key questions would be what groups participate in the process and what the goals are. Different forms of corporate planning can have very different outcomes, and thus the concept of planning itself does not fit easily on the ideological spectrum.

The Political Bases of Ideologies About the State return to top

Each ideology about the role of government has disproportionate strength in particular sectors of society. The rise of laissez-faire philosophy was associated with the rise of the modern American industrial corporation in the nineteenth century. But the Great Depression and then World War II broke the commitment of most industrial and finance capital to a minimal state. Alarmed by the ever more severe economic cycle, lured by the guaranteed profits of the military-industrial complex, and eager for government assistance in opening up foreign markets, corporate capitalism came to accept and even to advocate certain new roles for the state. Today most elements of corporate capitalism are committed to many forms of the activist state, as long as this state is limited to a set of prescribed roles that protect corporate interests and markets.

Today authentic laissez-faire views are more associated with small businesses and certain professions that are disproportionately burdened by the activist state, elements of southern and western capital that never accepted the commitment of the "eastern establishment" to an activist state, and traditionalist Christian groups that take laissez-faire tenets more as a part of the revealed legacy of their forefathers than as political theory.

The social insurance state draws its support from organized groups who seek a broader definition of the roles of activist government so they can gain the benefits that flow from government programs. While the advocates of the limited interest state seek to limit government to forms that benefit them, the political forces which press for social insurance state programs are held together by their shared interest in a more activist state. All the partners in the social insurance coalition recognize that the philosophy of a limited state is a key impediment to realization of their group interests. This is the ideological glue of the New Deal coalition and the contemporary Democratic Party.

American Association for Retired People Rally:
Organized seniors support the Social Security
program and expansion of benefits to seniors

Social democratic forces in the U.S. political system can be traced back at least as far as the populist, progressive, and socialist movements during the era of laissez-faire hegemony. In the FDR years, social democrats were major organizers of the trade unions and the source of the bolder programs and rhetoric of the FDR administration. The civil rights movement further added to the belief that the state could and should be an agent of social transformation, and spurred the expansive programs and rhetoric of LBJ's Great Society. The civil rights movement was a model for the emergent antiwar, women's, and environmental movements. In the wake of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race, mass movements for social transformation also increasingly focused on change in the U.S. role in the world as well as at home.

Just as the limited interest state subordinates an impulse toward laissez-faire to organized economic and political interests that benefit from government programs, so the social insurance philosophy subordinates a vision of a state that transforms economic and social relations to more tangible economic and political interests. The difference between the social democratic and social security philosophies can be seen in the evolution of the politics of the trade unions. Once the pillar of institutional support for social democracy, the trade unions have evolved into the largest single force in the social security coalition. In the Great Depression, the philosophy of most of those who organized the unions encompassed more than simply increasing the paychecks of their members. Those who built the trade unions had a broad agenda of changing the relationship between owner and worker. During the Depression crisis it was evident to workers that their fates were interdependent and that change in larger political-economic relations was necessary to improve their situation.

But today trade unions rarely articulate much more than the immediate, narrow interest of their members, or at most support for government programs that disproportionately benefit their members. The unions have largely abandoned any quest for social democracy, although they are still a potent force in protecting the access of their members to selective government benefits.
 

SOCIAL ISSUES AND THE CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF IDEOLOGY return to top

Ideology, Interests, and Identity return to top

As can be seen from the foregoing, ideology has much to do with the representation of economic interests and the translation of their demands and desires into public policy. Ideology shapes which economic interests will be served by public policy and which will not.

But politics is more than representation of economic interests, and so are political ideologies. Political ideologies are also about issues of identity. Individual citizens feel they are members of certain social groups, and their political loyalties are shaped by which groups they feel kinship with. For example, take the feeling of national identity. Today the former Soviet Union is undergoing massive transformation because many people in the republics feel stronger bonds with their historic national identities as Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Moldavians, Georgians, or Ukrainians than with Russia. Kurds battle Iraqis (and Turks and Iranians) for national autonomy, Palestinians fight Israelis, and Northern Irish Catholics battle the British, to name just a small handful of such conflicts over national identity.

In the United States there are no serious secessionist movements, but there are serious political cleavages between ethnic groups. Certain black and Hispanic groups assert their special historical identities and demand public policies that recognize their status. Other ethnic groups that in the past felt excluded from mainstream American society, such as Irish, Italians, Poles, and other immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, now tend to feel greater identification with mainstream culture and less identification with currently subordinated groups such as blacks and Hispanics. Religion is another social identity that can have political implications. Earlier in American history, tensions between Protestant and Catholic groups were high, and they persist today. But many religious groups share common positions on many issues of public policy in opposition to more secular political forces. Abortion is one particularly contentious issue, but there are many more.

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Pro-choice button vs. Moral Majority leader Reverend Fallwell:
Abortion is a leading social issue of identity

Individuals belong to more than one social group, and thus their group loyalties can conflict. Individuals are simultaneously members of ethnic groups, religious groups, economic groups, and other groups. Therefore, it is crucial which group loyalties are stronger. A woman of the Catholic faith may feel torn between her sense of her rights as a woman and the expectations of her church. A worker in a company may someday have to choose between a sense of shared interests with other workers and a sense of loyalty to the company. In such cases the individual's sense of social identity is the key to how he or she chooses to act when group loyalties conflict. Therefore, it is a naive view of politics that takes economic interests as easily defined or as the only determinant of political action. It is too simplistic to see politics as just conflict between static groups whose identities are clearly defined. Ideology is crucial in defining which groups individuals identify with, and the sense of political identity is as central to understanding the politics of public policy as is economic interest.

Feelings of social identity interact with public policy in what have come to be called social issues. For example, in the 1960s a plethora of new political groups raising new issues in public policy emerged—black and other ethnic identity movements, the women's movement, the peace movement, the environmental movement. In the last generation another new set of groups has mobilized to seek restoration of more traditional social values, the "new right" or "Christian right." Cultural conflicts are certainly not new to U.S. politics. The struggles between WASPs and earlier immigrant groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were at least as bitter as today's conflicts over social issues. But the emergence of these new groups has given new form to these struggles. The contemporary ideological spectrum on social issues can be broken down into the following categories:

The Christian Right return to top

One of the most striking developments of the 1980s was the reemergence of evangelical Christians as a potent political force. Members of the Christian right are committed to restoring traditional, biblical values to a position of primacy in American society. They are distressed by many of the effects of the sexual revolution on individual behavior and the family unit. They are concerned about increases in abortion, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, illegitimate births, and the divorce rate, and the rise of AIDs and other sexually transmitted diseases. They are opposed to the redefinition of women's roles in the family, the economy, and the society. They are unhappy with rising crime rates and the increase in drug use. They are opposed to affirmative action for minorities and women, and uncomfortable with the attention these groups get from the political system.

The Christian right attributes much of the growth of these trends to stimulation from the media. Even more fundamentally, they trace the rise of these trends to the decline of Christian values and the rise of secular values. They believe the only cure for these social ills is a return to traditional values, and to a society and a legal system that are based on biblical principles.

Presidents Reagan and Bush have given symbolic, if not always material, support to the agenda of the Christian right. In a speech before evangelical ministers, Reagan equated the health of the political system with the health of religion: "Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged." He went on to argue that recent Supreme Court decisions regarding the separation of church and state ignore American values and history.


 

The Declaration of Independence mentions the Supreme Being no less than four times. "In God We Trust" is engraved on our coinage. The Supreme Court opens its proceedings with a religious invocation. And the Members of Congress open their sessions with a prayer. I just happen to believe that the school children of the United States are entitled to the same privileges as Supreme Court Justices and Congressmen.
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The Countercultural Left return to top

At the other end of the ideological spectrum on social issues are the groups that set in motion the changes in the 1960s and 1970s which the New Right finds so distasteful: the remnants of the "New Left." The 1960s and early 1970s were characterized by a wave of new political movements, each of which raised fundamental challenges to historical modes of thinking and each of which generated political organizations that outlived the faddishness of times. The first of these was the civil rights movement, which ultimately not only generated new black civil rights organizations but also contributed to the climate in which Black Power, Hispanic, and other ethnic identity organizations emerged. On the heels of the civil rights movement came the peace movement, questing to end the Vietnam War and the arms race, and to redefine the U.S. role in the world. The coming of the 1970s saw the emergence of the ecology movement, which sought to protect the environment from the ravages of twentieth century technological development. Gathering momentum throughout this period but emerging with greatest force in the early 1970s was the women's movement, which, following the example of the civil rights movement, sought a political and ideological redefinition of the position of women in society. In the footsteps of the civil rights and women's movements came the organization of gay groups that further expanded the redefinition of social roles.

What these diverse groups shared was a dissatisfaction with traditional political institutions and traditional individual roles. Each went beyond raising any single social issue; rather, they sought to change the way the culture thought about the identity of particular groups and political institutions in general. A major work of the Black Power movement of the 1960s put the identity question this way:

Black people must redefine themselves, and only they can do that. Throughout this country, vast segments of the black communities are beginning to recognize the need to assert their own definitions, to reclaim their history, their culture; to create their own sense of community and togetherness. There is growing resentment of the word "Negro," for example, because this term is the invention of our oppressor; it is his image of us that he describes. . . . When we begin to define our own image . . . the black community will have a positive image of itself that it has created.

It was sentiments like these that pushed the term "Negro" out of general usage and made "black" the new usage. In the women's movement as well, there was great emphasis on women defining women's roles and identities, rather than accepting the roles and identities defined by patriarchal culture. In a similar manner, the peace movement sought redefinition of the U.S. role and identity in the world system, and the environmental movement sought redefinition of technology's place in the ecological system.

The American right is, with a few exceptions, almost universally committed to and evangelical about Christianity. Religion also plays a key role at the left end of the political spectrum, although on the left many groups are primarily secular rather than religious. The American left has produced leaders like Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, the Berrigan brothers, Dorothy Day, and others whose political activity was based in a deep Christian faith even as, like Christ, they opposed the orthodoxies of their time. But the counterculture left also has elements that are purely secular or profess non-Christian faiths.

Cultural Pluralism return to top

The countercultural New Left groups gravitated toward the Democratic Party, and the Christian New Right groups aligned with the Republican Party. This is no accident; it reflects the different natures of the social blocs that historically have been at the core of each party. Yet these new ideological groups and the social issues they raised were deeply controversial and represented a threat to each party's ability to maintain its appeal to the political center, as the fate of the Goldwater and McGovern campaigns clearly showed. The centrist elements in each party sought to develop ideological formulations that would simultaneously allow them to mute the stridency of their ideological wings in order to appeal to the political center and yet signal to the ideological wings that their concerns were being heard. The centrist Democratic formulation can be called "cultural pluralism." The centrist Republican formulation can be labeled "cultural monism."

The Democratic Party has always been a collection of diverse groups. Will Rogers' famous line, "I'm not a member of any organized political party—I'm a Democrat," was uttered long before the countercultural movements of the 1960s emerged. The Democratic Party was the home of immigrant ethnic minorities long before the development of the civil rights movement or the Rainbow Coalition. But the developments of the 1960s put new strains on the Democrats' ability to hold together their diverse coalition, as their fate in recent presidential elections has shown.

Reps. Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, and Patsy Mink:
Women members of Congress who were prominent at the 1972 Democratic Convention:
the new rules for delegate selection reflected the Democratic Party strategy of Cultural Pluralism

The Democrats have tried to deal with these tensions through the ideology of cultural pluralism. They have tried to portray themselves as the party that is open to many groups, that balances many different points of view and brokers many competing interests. Perhaps the most significant example of this is the rules for delegate selection the Democratic Party developed for the 1972 convention. Democratic conventions in the 1960s had been torn by conflicts between all-white southern state delegations and blacks who demanded representation in these delegations, and by conflicts between the "old guard" party leaders who controlled their state delegations and the demands of the Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy forces for a share of state delegations proportionate to their support among the public. As a result, new rules about delegate selection were devised which mandated that each state's delegation must reflect the level of support for particular candidates in that state and must have the same proportion of women, minorities, and youth as in the general population of the state. These rules reflected the recognition that distinct cultural groups had been systematically denied full representation in past conventions. This quota system has since been abandoned, but the attempt of the Democratic Party to recognize and appeal to distinct subcultural groups has not.

Cultural Monism return to top

The problem for the Republicans of reconciling their polar and centrist tendencies is different and elicits a different strategy. The WASP social base of the Republican Party is more homogeneous. But in order to construct their presidential majorities and to have any hope of becoming a true majority party, the Republicans have to attract broader support. The new Christian right movement has been key in attracting evangelical Southerners to the Republican Party, people who, until the civil rights era, for historical reasons favored the Democratic Party. But any real Republican majority also needs considerable support from the more assimilated descendants of Irish, southern European, and eastern European immigrants. While certain themes of the Christian right resonate well with conservative Catholics and Jews, other themes of militant Protestantism can alienate these groups from the Republicans.

One key Republican strategy for finessing this problem is the development of ideological themes that emphasize a kind of nondenominational version of the "one true faith," a kind of civil religion of nationalism and national identity. Such appeals are particularly attractive to members of ethnic groups who wish to assimilate more completely into mainstream American culture, to lessen their sense of ethnic distinctness. This civil religion of an "American way" allows the Republicans to appeal simultaneously to Protestant evangelicals and to non-Protestant conservatives who can each read tenets of their doctrines into the nationalist creed. It also allows the Republicans to differentiate themselves from whatever social groups are perceived as outside the political mainstream or as challenging traditional values.

This strategy is not new to the 1980s. The "law and order" theme of the Nixon campaign in 1968 was aimed at unpopular social groups and was widely acknowledged as a code word for attacking minorities. Spiro Agnew was chosen as Nixon's running mate in large part to send the message he had sent as governor of Maryland: "The biggest race questions that are arising today come from the civil rights militants who are trying to create an unhealthy black racism in this country."

Once in office Agnew turned his attack to the peace movement:

We have among us a glib, activist element who would tell us our values are lies. . . . They mock the common man's pride in his work, his family, and his country. . . . America cannot afford to write off a whole generation for the decadent thinking of a few. America cannot afford to divide over their demagoguery, or to be deceived by their duplicity, or to let their license destroy liberty. We can, however, afford to separate them from our society—with no more regret than we should feel over discarding rotten apples from a barrel.
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There is certainly continuity between Agnew's attacks on unpopular social groups and the fusing of ethnic and ideological themes characteristic of the McCarthy period in the 1950s or the attacks on trade unions and socialists in the 1920s. One can even hear echoes of these themes in contemporary conservative attacks on "special interests."

Of course the Democrats also appeal to some sense of an American national identity. But because of the nature of their coalition, these appeals are cast in terms of cultural pluralism. The Democratic version of the American way is inclusive. It emphasizes that there are many "American ways," and celebrates diversity. The Republican version, on the other hand, has an element of exclusivity. It emphasizes a single national identity that is crucial in differentiating between those who meet its standards and those who deviate from its tenets.

CONCLUSION return to top

The terms "conservative" and "liberal" are useful shorthand to indicate the ideological tendencies of presidents and their administrations. But the actual meaning of these terms for policy behavior is often vague. Further, presidents' rhetoric rarely is completely philosophically consistent, and administrations' actions often do not match their rhetoric. It is useful to break out the ideological spectrum into more categories and to distinguish between various types of issues. This chapter has developed more complex typologies that can help in understanding presidential ideologies in two areas of domestic policy—the political economy and social issues. Chapter 3 will take up foreign policy and pursue a more historical approach to characterizing the American ideological spectrum.

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