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Most Americans are united in their commitment to proceduralism and individualism at some level, and to the key values of democracy, freedom, and equality. This shared political culture gives us a common political language, a way to talk about politics that keeps us united even though we may use that common language to tell different narratives about who we are, what’s important to us, or what direction we feel the country should move in.

The sets of beliefs and opinions about politics, the economy, and society that help people make sense of their world, and that can divide them into opposing camps, are called ideologies. Again, like the values and beliefs that underlie our culture, our ideologies are based on normative prescriptions. Remember that one of the reasons we can disagree so passionately on political issues is that normative statements about the world are not true or false, good or bad—instead, they depend for their force on the arguments we make to defend them. We cannot even pretend to live in a Norman Rockwell world where we learn our values face to face at our parents’ dinner table. In a mediated age there are more and more arguments from more and more channels that are harder and harder to sort out. While it might seem clear as a bell to us that our values are right and true, to a person who disagrees with our prescriptions, we are as wrong as they think we are. And so we debate and argue. In fact, anyone who pays attention to American politics knows that we disagree about many specific political ideas and issues, and that our differences have gotten more passionate and polarized (that is, farther apart) in recent years.

ideologies sets of beliefs about politics and society that help people make sense of their world

But because we share that political culture, the range of debate in the United States is relatively narrow. We have no successful communist or socialist parties here, for instance. The ideologies on which those parties are founded seem unappealing to most Americans because they violate the norms of procedural and individualistic culture. The two main ideological camps in the United States are the liberals (associated, since the 1930s, with the Democratic Party) and the conservatives (associated with the Republicans), with many Americans falling somewhere in between. But because we are all part of American political culture, we are still procedural and individualistic, and we still believe in democracy, freedom, and equality, even if we are also liberals or conservatives. Even though Bernie Sanders, a self-identified democratic socialist, ran for president in 2016, he did it as a Democrat (a party he had joined only briefly, to run), and he lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton.

There are lots of different ways of characterizing American ideologies. It is conventional to say that conservatives promote a political narrative based on traditional social values, distrust of government action except in matters of national security, resistance to change, and the maintenance of a prescribed social order. Liberals, in contrast, are understood to tell a narrative based on the potential of progress and change, trust in government, innovations as answers to social problems, and the expansion of individual rights and expression. For a more nuanced understanding of ideology in America, however, we can focus on the two main ideological dimensions of economics and social order issues.

conservatives people who generally favor limited government and are cautious about change

liberals people who generally favor government action and view change as progress

Traditionally we have understood ideology to be centered on differences in economic views, much like those located on our economic continuum (see Figure 1.1). Based on these economic ideological dimensions, we often say that the liberals who take a more positive view of government action and advocate a large role for government in regulating the economy are on the far left, and those conservatives, more suspicious of government, who think government control should be minimal are on the far right. Because we lack any widespread radical socialist traditions in the United States, both American liberals and conservatives are found on the right side of the broader economic continuum.

In the 1980s and 1990s, another ideological dimension became prominent in the United States. Perhaps because, as some researchers have argued, most people are able to meet their basic economic needs, many Americans began to focus less on economic questions and more on issues of morality and quality of life. The new ideological dimension, which is analogous to the social order dimension we discussed earlier, divides people on the question of how much control government should have over the moral and social order—whether government’s role should be limited to protecting individual rights and providing procedural guarantees of equality and due process, or whether the government should be involved in making more substantive judgments about how people should live their lives.

Do ideological differences strengthen or weaken a political culture?

Few people in the United States want to go so far as to allow government to make all moral and political decisions for its subjects, but there are some who hold that it is the government’s job to create and protect a preferred social order, although visions of what that preferred order should be may differ. Clearly this social order ideological dimension does not dovetail neatly with the more traditional liberal and conservative orientations toward government action. Figure 1.5 shows some of the ideological positions that are yielded by these two dimensions, though note that this figure shows a detail of the broader political spectrum that we saw in Figure 1.3 and is focused on the narrower spectrum commonly found in an advanced industrial democracy.

Economic liberals hold views that fall into the upper-left quadrant of the figure because they are willing to allow government to make substantive decisions about the economy, and they tend to embrace procedural individualistic positions on the social order dimension. Some economic policies they favor are job training and housing subsidies for the poor, taxation to support social programs, and affirmative action to ensure that opportunities for economic success (but not necessarily outcomes) are truly equal. As far as government regulation of individuals’ private lives goes, however, these liberals favor a hands-off stance, preferring individuals to have maximum freedom over their noneconomic affairs. They are willing to let government regulate such behaviors as murder, rape, and theft, but they believe that social order issues such as reproductive choices, marijuana usage, gay rights, and assisted suicide are not matters for government regulation. They value diversity, expanding rights for people who have historically been left out of the power structure in the American social order—women, minorities, gays, and immigrants. Their love for their country is tempered by the view that the government should be held to the same strict procedural standard to which individuals are held—laws must be followed, checks and balances adhered to in order to limit government power, and individual rights protected, even when the individuals are citizens of another country.

economic liberals those who favor an expanded government role in the economy but a limited role in the social order

Economic conservatives, in the upper-right quadrant of the figure, share their liberal counterparts’ reluctance to allow government interference in people’s private lives, but they combine this with a conviction that government should limit involvement in the economy as well. These economic conservatives prefer government to limit its role in economic decision making to regulation of the market (like changing interest rates and cutting taxes to end recessions), elimination of “unfair” trade practices such as monopolies, and provision of some public goods such as highways and national defense. When it comes to immigration, they favor more open policies, since immigrants often work more cheaply and help keep the labor market competitive for business. The most extreme holders of economic conservative views are called libertarians, people who believe that only minimal government action in any sphere is acceptable. Consequently, economic conservatives also hold the government accountable for sticking to the constitutional checks and balances that limit its own power.

economic conservatives those who favor a strictly procedural government role in the economy and the social order

libertarians those who favor a minimal government role in any sphere

Social liberals, in the lower-left quadrant of the figure, tend to favor a substantive government role in achieving a more equal distribution of material resources (such as welfare programs and health care for the poor) but carry that substantive perspective into the social order as well. Although they continue to want the freedom to make individual moral choices that economic liberals want, they are happy to see some government action to create a more diverse and more equal power structure (including the way different groups are treated in the media and popular culture) and to regulate individual behavior to enhance health and safety (promoting environmental protections, motorcycle helmets, gun control, food labeling, restrictions on how food is produced, and the like). The most extreme adherents of social liberalism are sometimes called communitarians for their strong commitment to a community based on radical equality of all people. Because American political culture is procedural both economically and socially, not a lot of Americans are strong adherents of an ideology that calls for a substantive government role in both dimensions. Many economic liberals, however, pick up some of the policy prescriptions of social liberals, like environmentalism and gun control, but do not embrace their more extreme forms of communitarianism.

social liberals those who favor greater control of the economy and the social order to bring about greater equality and to regulate the effects of progress

communitarians those who favor a strong, substantive government role in the economy and the social order in order to realize their vision of a community of equals

Social conservatives occupy the lower-right quadrant in our ideological scheme. These people share economic conservatives’ views on limited government involvement in the economy but with less force and commitment and perhaps for different reasons. (In fact, many social conservatives, as members of the working class, were once liberals under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s.) They may very well support government social programs like Social Security or Medicaid for those they consider deserving. Their primary concern is with their vision of the moral tone of life, including an emphasis on fundamentalist values of a variety of religions (demonstrated, for instance, by government control of reproductive choices, opposition to gay rights, and promotion of public prayer and the display of religious icons). They endorse traditional family roles, and a rejection of change or diversity that they see as destructive to the preferred social order. Immigration is threatening because it brings into the system people who are different and threatens to dilute the majority that keeps the social order in place. Social conservatives seek to protect people’s moral character rather than their physical or economic well-being, and they embrace an authoritarian notion of community that emphasizes a hierarchical order (everyone in his or her proper place) rather than equality for all. Since limited government is not valued here, a large and powerful state is appreciated as being a sign of strength on the international stage. Patriotism for social conservatives is not a matter of holding the government to the highest procedural standards, as it is for those at the top half of Figure 1.5. Less worried about limiting government power over individual lives, they adopt more of a “my country right or wrong,” “America First” view that sees criticism of the United States as unpatriotic.

social conservatives those who endorse limited government control of the economy but considerable government intervention to realize a traditional social order; based on religious values and hierarchy rather than equality

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Figure 1.5 Ideological Beliefs in the United States