Ideological Identification: Meaning, Origins, Dynamics, and Consequences.

Ideological identification is a fixture in studies of voting and public opinion. Our paper takes a fresh look at the conceptualization of ideological identification and tests the assumptions that have grown up around its habitual use. What do Americans mean when they claim to be a conservative or a liberal or when they reject these identities altogether? Under what conditions do Americans abandon one ideological identity for another? When do Americans act on their ideological identity? For comparison, we ask these same questions for partisan identification â€" where evidence is more abundant and theory is more elaborately developed. Finally, we draw out the implications of our findings for the great debate over ideology set in motion by Converse some forty years ago. Converse’s conclusion â€" that most citizens are ideologically innocent provoked a strong reaction, but one that did not fully account for the empirical results on ideological identification, a literature that did not exist when Converse’s critics were firing back. What does the evidence on ideological identification, properly understood, say to the thesis of ideological innocence? Together, these interrogations give rise to a new theory of ideological identification. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]