A three-dimensional conceptualisation of ideological attitudes

Abstract

The use of spatial analogies such as ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ in describing ideological

attitudes are ubiquitous in contemporary political society. However, the use of such terms is

so widespread that their precise meaning is difficult to define. To provide a more accurate

measure of ideological attitudes, political scientists have postulated that more than one

‘dimension’ of political attitudes may exist, and that these dimensions can be arranged so as

to form a multidimensional space.

Whilst the two dimensions of economic and social policy are fairly well established, little

attention has been paid to the prospect of a third dimension of foreign policy. Through a

combination of qualitative research, assessing the emergence of a foreign policy dimension in

a historical sense, and a quantitative investigation of ideological attitudes among a sample of

students, I am able to demonstrate the existence of a foreign policy dimension that is salient

and independent of other dimensions of ideology. By utilising new geometric technology I

can conceptualise these three dimensions as part of an interactive ‘cube’ of structured

ideological attitudes.

Ethical note: as part of this study, University of Exeter students were invited to participate in

a survey assessing their ideological beliefs. Participants were made aware that their

responses would be used in a dissertation study, but no personal or contact details were

collected, and all survey data was captured with total anonymity. With the conclusion of this

study, the data will now be destroyed.

1

Introduction

The ideological labels ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ are some of the most overused, misused,

and even abused terms in the modern political lexicon. Used at some time or another to

describe seemingly every policy and politician, ‘left’ and ‘right’ have emerged almost

redundant of qualifiable, let alone quantifiable meaning.

Yet despite the largely indiscriminate way in which they are now deployed, the labels

originally emerged with quite specific meanings. It was the French Revolution of 1789,

catalyst of a great many other political and societal innovations, which introduced the

language of ‘left’ and ‘right’. In the chamber of the first National Assembly, Andrew Knapp

notes,

“those noble members ... who wished to limit the powers of the monarch moved to sit

with the commoners on the left of the Assembly; those who still supported the

absolutism of what was shortly to become known as the ancien regime sat on the

right” (2006: 1).

The ‘left’ and ‘right’ wings thus originated from the physical act of sitting oneself down in a

particular area to signify one’s political allegiance. This physical analogy probably explains

the lasting ubiquity of ‘left’ and ‘right’ as political descriptors: although these terms were

originally used in an historically and culturally specific context, the loading of ‘left’ and

‘right’ with primitive ideological content has persisted to this day.

The notion of a line running between ‘left’ and ‘right’ – that is, the idea that the two labels sit

at either end of some sort of continuum – is quite literally central to the concept. Thus,

although where one sat in the first National Assembly was a strictly bipolar affair – either one

was for or against monarchical absolutism – as Knapp notes, the seating of the modern

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multiparty National Assembly reflects a more general ideological continuum from the

extreme left to the extreme right. With this sense of relative distance in the chamber emerges

what Michael Laver describes as “some form of ‘space’ in which both distances and

movement can be described” (1997: 102).

Anthony Downs, in his 1957 work An Economic Theory of Democracy, was the first theorist

to appropriate this ‘spatial analogy’ for the purposes of political science. Since Downs’

“ingenious formalization” (Stokes 1963: 368), the use of spatial modelling of ideology has

offered “the opportunity for the first time of picturing party relationships directly and simply”

(Budge et al. 1976: 129). Not only political parties, as in the National Assembly, but also

“political leaders and voters may be mapped onto points in this space” (Mauser and

Freyssinet-Dominjon 1976: 203) to form a dynamic ideological environment within which

political preference can be meaningfully represented.

However, the form that this space should take has been a matter of some contention. Most

fundamental to this discussion is the number of ‘dimensions’ of policy which might be

expected to constitute the ideological space. As has been seen, the spatial analogy was borne

out of the left and right wings of the French National Assembly, which was originally divided

over the binary issue of monarchical absolutism. Thus when Downs formulated his spatial

model, he borrowed the language as well as the structure of the National Assembly to create

the ‘left-right continuum’, a one-dimensional structure upon which, it was hypothesised,

ideological battles could be fought. As will be seen, this unidimensional structure remains a

popular way to envisage political conflict, especially in view of its compelling simplicity. But

modern democratic politics encompasses a vast range of substantive issues, policies and

events, on which each voter might potentially hold an opinion; therefore, a single continuum

will be shown to be an inadequate ideological battlefield. Instead, some theorists sought to

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revise and improve the spatial analogy through the development of a multidimensional

structure, whereby political stances are represented on more than one dimension of policy.

Unfortunately, whilst a model containing many dimensions might be a more refined and

accurate representation of ideology, as the number of dimensions grows so too does the

complexity of the structure. With four or more dimensions, the model would not even be

geometric in the sense in which we in our three-dimensional universe are accustomed, which

would result in a model which no longer allows us to visualize a person’s ideology directly

and simply. Clearly we therefore require an ordering process through which to arrange certain

issues and policies together, in order to create a rational and reasonable number of issue

dimensions. In reality, many issue stances can be said to be closely linked, so people might

be able to conceive of “bundles of policies that can each be described in terms of some more

general ‘ideological’ dimension” (Laver 1997: 104). Only by integrating certain policy

positions, then, can we hope to make visual sense of a party’s, politician’s or voter’s

ideology. As such, as Weisberg and Rusk have noted, “the problem of the number of

dimensions should be seen as an empirical question” (1979: 1168), and it is to this empirical

question that this paper ultimately seeks to provide an answer.

If one dimension of ideological conflict is too simplistic and reductive, and if four or more

dimensions are too geometrically complex to be represented spatially, it should follows that a

two- or three-dimensional model would be the best structure upon which to visually represent

ideology. Yet even portraying a three-dimensional structure has proved technically difficult.

For example, in a relatively recent work Michael Laver confined his discussion of

multidimensional competition to just two dimensions because he had “access only to two-

dimensional pages on which to draw pictures of what is going on” (1997: 132). However,

recent technological developments have made it possible to construct an interactive, three-

dimensional model which can effectively visualise political ideology in cube-shaped form.

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This technology is utilised for the purposes of this study. Moreover, technological

developments have coincided with what I contend is the emergence of a new, significant and

independent third dimension of political belief, the foreign policy divide. By combining

recent technology with new political developments, I will be able to show that a three-

dimensional conceptualisation of ideology is not only desirable but necessary to properly

represent political belief systems in modern society.

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Research question, hypotheses and outline of approach

In this paper, the research question addressed is:

Should a foreign policy dimension be included in conceptualisations of

ideological identity?

There are two conditions that generally need to be met in order to demonstrate the emergence

of an enduring policy dimension, namely salience to a sizeable section of the public and

independence from other existing dimensions. Two main hypothesis can therefore be drawn

from these conditions:

1. There exists is an independent and salient dimension of foreign policy which should

be considered as a component of ideological identity.

2. The foreign policy dimension, if there is one, lacks either

a. salience; or

b. independence

and should therefore not be used as a distinct component of ideological identity.

In proceeding with the study, I follow Eric Stokes’ perception that:

“the usefulness of models depends absolutely on the interchange between theory-

building and empirical observation” (1963: 377)

As such, I devote the first half of my study to a theoretical investigation into how dimensions

of policy emerge. I begin with a review of the voluminous literature addressing the two most

common dimensions of policy, before contending that in recent years a new foreign policy

dimension has become salient to the public. I follow this qualitative section by describing the

methodology and results of a quantitative survey I recently carried out, which conceptualised

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foreign policy as one dimension in a three-dimensional ideological space, and tested the

independence of this dimension from the other two. I then sum up my qualitative and

quantitative findings and relate these back to the research question and hypotheses.

Ultimately, I find that the first hypothesis above is proved to be correct. The combination of

my qualitative and quantitative research demonstrates the existence of a salient and

independent dimension of foreign policy. This finding therefore strongly recommends the

inclusion of a foreign policy dimension in future, which if combined with the more traditional

economic and social axes, would justify a three-dimensional conceptualisation of ideological

attitudes.

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The Left-Right Dimension and Economic Policy

As has been seen, the historical emergence of the ‘left-right continuum’ from the French

National Assembly has been paralleled by theoretical work seeking to explain and utilise the

concept for the purposes of political science. Anthony Downs’s groundbreaking 1957 theory

drew upon the work of mathematician Harold Hotelling, whose 1929 article ‘Stability in

Competition’ investigated why commercial businesses “crowd together as closely as

possible” (1929: 53) at the centre of a hypothetical ‘Main Street’ to attract customers.

Downs’s innovation was to borrow this commercial formulation for political purposes,

whereby political parties adopt positions on an ideological continuum in order to attract

support (usually in the form of votes in an election) from as many citizens as possible. Since

Downs’ work, the left-right dimension “has shown remarkable vitality” (Inglehart and

Sidjanski 1976: 255), as a tool for assessing or predicting the ideological identity of both

mass publics and political elites, across a wide range of democratic societies.

Downs’s model was “a linear scale running from 0 to 100 in the usual left-to-right fashion”

(1957: 115), and, crucially, contingent upon every voter’s political preferences being

“consistent with the parties’ ordering along the left-right dimension” (Mauser and Freyssinet-

Dominjon 1976: 204). To say the least, the idea that every point of policy could be arranged

in a linear fashion in terms of left and right, “in a manner agreed upon by all voters” (Downs

1957: 115), was an audacious assumption even on a hypothetical level. Therefore, to render

his innovative model more realistic, Downs restricted the substantive content of his left-right

continuum to just one sphere of policy. As Stokes notes, “at least for illustration, Downs

interprets this dimension as the degree of government intervention in the economy” (1963:

368; italics mine). Unfortunately, Downs’ decision here to use just one dimension of policy,

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even if it was originally only for illustrative purposes, inadvertently lent a degree of

confusion to later work on the spatial model.

Following Downs, political scientists utilising a unidimensional model have defined their

version of the left-right continuum in various ways. For many, the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ and

the continuum they occupy have drastically broadened to include a wide range of political

issues, many of which are unrelated to the original economic question posed by Downs. The

“classic view” of the left-right continuum is as “a super-issue which summarizes the

programmes of opposing groups” (Inglehart and Klingemann 1976: 244). Nonetheless, a

strong association between ‘left’ and ‘right’ and economic issues still persists. Laver, for

example, describes the “left-right dimension of economic policy” (1997: 104); Inglehart and

Sidjanski see that “a left-right dimension does exist, and an individual’s stand on

socioeconomic issues is linked with this definition” (1976: 236).

Clearly, this longstanding confusion over the precise definition and meaning of the left-right

continuum is problematic. Indeed as Stenner notes, “‘right wing’ has come to mean

anything ... from intolerant of difference, to averse to change, to opposed to government

intervention and redistribution” (2005: 87). Furthermore, Inglehart and Klingemann note that

over time, even simply taking Downs’s original example of government intervention,

“emphasis on centralized controls ... certainly was associated with the left; today the left

often takes the lead in resisting excessive centralization” (1976: 257; italics mine). Therefore,

even the broadest, most abstract attempts to describe ‘left’ and ‘right’ in a modern sense are

the subjects of doubt: the “traditional interpretation [that] those who prefer the left are

change-oriented” (Inglehart and Sidjanski 1976: 228) is damaged by the reality that today,

“the left has become ... the champion of the status quo” (Huber and Inglehart 1995: 84).

Overall, ‘left’ and ‘right’ have proved themselves to be amorphous terms, constantly

reshaped and reordered, it seems, by the incessant winds of political change.

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The confusion over the meaning of left and right is often exacerbated by the methodology

employed by political scientists to investigate it. A number of studies (Inglehart and Sidjanski

1976, Inglehart and Klingemann 1976) utilise methods whereby respondents are asked to

place themselves on a seven- or ten- point, left to right scale; these responses are then

examined for correlation with answers to specific issue questions, so that certain issues can

be deemed more or less related to the left-right continuum. But as Budge et al note, this

method “raises suspicions that by ... leaving the interpretation of these terms to electors

themselves, each elector may be locating himself in a different substantive space” (1976:

135).

Furthermore, more recent studies have suggested that the presumed link between ideological

self-identification and issue placement is a far from perfect assumption. Levitin and Miller,

assessing a set of correlation data, find that “ideological location is more than [just] a

summary statement of policy preferences” (1979: 756). This contradicts Downs’s original

conception that a “net position on the scale is a weighted average of all the particular

policies” held (1957: 132). Moreover, Conover and Feldman, assessing the meaning of

‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ amongst the American public (American use of ‘liberal’ and

‘conservative’ is essentially analogous to the European use of ‘left’ and ‘right’) find that the

two ideological labels are not in fact bipolar and do not necessarily sit at two ends of the

same scale. Having proved that these two labels are relatively independent of one another,

they can argue that, for example, a “conservative viewpoint was [more] heavily influenced by

a strong focus on economic matters” (1981: 640) than a liberal perspective. As such, if a

‘conservative’ outlook is developed with more reference to economic affairs than is a

‘liberal’ outlook, it is logically nonsensical to suggest that these two terms can be placed at

either end of an economic policy continuum.

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Given this pair of findings it might be suggested that ‘left’ and ‘right’ have ceased to be very

useful terms for accurately describing one’s ideological outlook. Despite this objection,

however, the fact remains that members of the public do indeed still employ them as a

heuristic device: “such terms are a powerful political symbol to many members of the public”

(Conover and Feldman 1981: 621). As such, more recent studies have persisted with a search

for a truer understanding of their meaning. Huber and Inglehart took a fresh approach to this

question. Acknowledging that “the ideological and programmatic meaning of this [left-right]

dimension varies over time and across cultures” (1996: 75), the authors surveyed political

experts in 42 countries, asking each to describe the particular meaning of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in

the context of each society.

The authors found further evidence that ‘left’ and ‘right’ were unquestionably still in use

across broad swathes of the countries surveyed: “eighty percent of the respondents declined

to relabel the left and right poles of the primary dimension of political conflict” (1995: 81).

Having used an open-ended question to ask about the perceived issues associated with the

continuum, they collapsed the large range of different responses they received into ten broad

categories of policy, each of which had been drawn upon to some degree to describe the

meaning of ‘left’ and ‘right’. First and foremost on this list was ‘economic or class conflict’

which accounted for a total of 54% of the total responses; in the case of Britain, this figure

was 57%. In other words, British political experts in 1995 attributed a little over half the

substantive content of the left-right continuum to economic and class-based issues.

Clearly, then, economic issues must be seen as fundamental to any understanding of the left-

right continuum in Britain. But at the same time, this finding casts serious doubt over prior

assumptions that ‘left’ and ‘right’ can be thought of as two sides of a strictly economic

debate: after all, what substantive issues constitutes the 43% of content not covered by

economic policy? Whilst Huber and Inglehart tried to account for a multitude of different

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policy cleavages on one continuum, the more conventional approach has been to try to detect

the presence of other policy dimensions independent of, or orthogonal to, the left-right

dimension. As will be seen, this approach frequently yields the finding that other independent

dimensions do indeed exist, although this is always somewhat dependent on place and time.

Therefore in the next chapter, I examine the most prominent examples of an emergent second

dimension.

What, in sum, can be said about the left-right dimension in modern political consciousness,

and how will I incorporate it into my investigations? The dimension indisputably continues to

exert a strong influence on the public and political elite alike. However, the combined effect

of work from Levitin and Miller, Conover and Feldman, and Huber and Inglehart is to

demonstrate the limitations of the left-right continuum as an ideological device. Therefore,

for my study I decided to largely dispense with the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ altogether. I

returned to Downs’s original conception of a continuum based on government intervention in

the economy, and used the terms ‘communistic’ and ‘capitalistic’ where ‘left’ and ‘right’

would usually be used, in order to avoid confusion. I did, however, refer once in my survey to

“the traditional left-right dimension,” to reflect Huber and Inglehart’s aforementioned finding

that economic policy accounts for more than half of the perceived content of the left-right

continuum (see Appendix). As even Downs himself seemed to recognise, though, a purely

economic continuum is unlikely to account for a comprehensive ideological stance, so I turn

next to an analysis of another dimension of ideological competition.

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The Second Dimension: Social Policy

While it was in many ways revolutionary, even Anthony Downs himself accepted that his

spatial model of ideology was “unrealistic” (1957: 115) due to the assumption that all issues

could be represented on a single dimension of ideology. This point was emphasised by

Donald Stokes, who argued forcefully that “the assumption of unidimensionality ... might as

well be dispensed with” (1963: 370). Yet while it is easy to understand how Downs’s left-

right super-dimension might not be fully capable of representing every ideological conflict,

and therefore that “adequate representations require further dimensions” (Budge et al 1976:

135), it is altogether much harder to describe precisely what constitutes these additional

hypothetical dimensions.

Weisberg and Rusk rightly note that “the number of dimensions should be seen as an

empirical question” (1979: 116), and as can be seen from the literature, the ‘search’ for new

dimensions of ideology has been conducted on both qualitative and quantitative grounds.

Broadly speaking, the discovery of new dimensions has turned on proving that they are both

uncorrelated to the original left-right dimension and salient or significant enough to be

thought of as a separate ideological debate.

Within these parameters, the field of issues which has most often emerged as an independent,

prominent second dimension can be termed broadly as social politics. As might be expected

in light of the difficulties defining the left-right dimension, however, a precise description of

the social politics dimension is difficult, and varies across different times and places. Downs

does though provide us with a small hint as to where this dimension might emerge from. He

notes a contradiction apparent on his unidimensional model: “parties designated as right wing

extremists in the real world are for fascist control of the economy rather than free markets”

(1957: 115). In other words, a party placed extremely far right will often exhibit

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characteristically left wing economic behaviour: indeed, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini,

from whose movement we derive the term ‘fascism’, succeeded in bringing a large proportion

of business under state control.

The corollary to this observation, taken up by the twentieth century sociologist Seymour

Lipset, is the phenomenon whereby people traditionally thought to be on the economic left

wing demonstrate stereotypically right wing behaviour, in the sense that “authoritarian

predispositions and ethnic prejudice flow more naturally from the situation of the lower

classes” (1959: 482). Embedded in Lipset’s argument is a historical observation, namely that

the “emergence of the cold war [has] shown that the struggle for freedom is not a simple

variant of the economic class struggle” (1959: 83), emphasising that the discovery of new

dimensions is grounded in a particular time and place.

Generally, then, as psychologist Hans Eysenck summarises, to put communists and fascists

“at opposite ends of a continuum is manifestly absurd” (1957: 280). Through addressing the

perceived extremes of the left-right dimension, Eysenck logically concludes that “what is

needed is not one dimension or continuum but two, placed at right angles to each other”

(1957: 282). For Eysenck, the second dimension to emerge is that of ‘tough-mindedness v

tender-mindedness’, whereby those with authoritarian proclivities are deemed ‘tough-

minded’, and the democratic and moderate are ‘tender-minded’.

Of course, Eysenck’s model is by no means the only example of a bi-dimensional spatial

theory, and others have developed a second dimension in the light of different historical

phenomena. For example, a raft of literature has pinpointed a new dimension of social policy

in America which is said to have emerged after the transformative events of the 1960s and

70s. This era “ushered in a variety of social issues ... which do not fit easily into the

traditional [left-right] spectrum” (1981: 618), transforming the ideological landscape and

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suggesting that a supplementary dimension might be required. Among these social issues, as

Weisberg and Rusk note, were “[urban] problems, civil rights, [and] Vietnam” (1979: 1177)

to name but a few. Similarly, from analysing Gallup survey data, Scammon and Wattenberg

find that as the 1960s wore on Americans became more and more likely to consider ‘crime’,

‘civil rights’ and similar issues as ‘the most important problem’ facing the nation in each

given year.

Alongside racial and criminal issues, Scammon and Wattenberg also highlight a range of

other social issues which combined to transform American political debate. As they rather

poetically describe, during the late 1960s, “hair got long, skirts got short, foul language

became ordinary [and] drugs became common” (1970: 42) amongst America’s rebellious

young generation. It was this combination of factors, alongside all the social ramifications of

the Vietnam War, which allowed Scammon and Wattenberg to claim to have discovered

“a new and major voting issue in America ... an issue so powerful that under certain

circumstances it can compete in political potency with the older economic issues.”

(1970: 40)

The authors thus refer explicitly to a second independent dimension of policy here, which as

other authors have suggested, can be “labelled under the rubric of social issues” (1976: 131).

Others have however taken issue with the suggestion that the ‘economic’ and ‘social’ scales

are, in the American context, actually independent. James Stimson, for example, argues that

in his survey data, “there is no discernable social dimension” at work, and that most of prior

work which alleges two independent dimensions are “not based on systematic data analyses,

hence not subject to disconfirmation” (2004: 69).

However, various studies of ideology in Western European democracies from the 1970s

onwards have yielded more comprehensive evidence that “social and moral affairs [are]

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matters which ... can be uncorrelated with those for different economic policies” (1997: 106)

amongst Western publics. In these studies, one of the primary methods used to interpret

ideological space is to analyse public views of political parties in what is called ‘preference

ordering’. From patterns observed in this ordering process, broader interpretations can be

derived about the public’s ideological outlook.

An early example of such a method being utilised is that of Philip Converse, whose 1966

analysis of the French electorate found that one party of the time, the Popular Republican

Movement, ended up in the notional centre of a simple left-right continuum, but only because

partisans of both the orthodox left and the orthodox right felt the MRP to be ideologically

distant. How, then, did Converse account for this apparent paradox? He noted that the MRP

was founded as a party “leftist in economic orientation without being anticlerical, as other

leftist parties tended to be” (1966: 195; italics mine). Thus whilst the economic ‘left/right’

and the religious ‘clerical/anti-clerical’ stances of the other French parties were correlated,

and could therefore be arranged harmoniously on a unidimensional model, the MRP’s

outlook rendered this model insufficient for the French party system overall. As such,

Converse concluded that “the addition of at least a second dimension ... would account for

these peculiarities more effectively” (1966: 195).

Of course, Converse’s study only addressed a particular place and time, and the clerical-

anticlerical question is by no means the sort of coherent and comprehensive ideological

divide which could be easily generalised for other situations. However, it suggests the

possibility that questions unrelated to economic matters may play a role in how voters view

parties, and by logical extension, how they perceive ideology. Indeed, other studies take this

suggestion further, and develop a more substantive and cohesive dimension.

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A good example of such a study is that of Cess Middendorp, whose 1989 article on the Dutch

electorate found, from a twenty-question survey model, that “the Dutch electorate shows a

consistent and stable two-dimensional ideological structure” (1989: 284). The first of these

dimensions was the frequently observed left-right scale, largely relating to the extent to which

the government should play a role in the economy. The second dimension was labelled

‘authoritarianism v libertarianism’, and encompassed items such as tolerance towards

criminals, attitudes towards abortion and euthanasia and freedom of political expression.

Crucially, Middendorp emphasises both the independence and the salience of this second

dimension. The two dimensions are “only slightly correlated” (1989: 284), indicating

independence, and are “sustained by or rooted in a more abstract philosophical basis” (1989:

280), such as socialism and liberalism, suggesting their longstanding salience to the public at

large.

Interestingly, Middendorp suggests that for a variety of reasons, among them political

culture, Western European electorates have “an ideological frame of reference which is much

more varied and broader than in the United States” (1989: 281). This suggests that Stimson’s

earlier observation about the lack of a second dimension in the American context, if it is

indeed accurate, does not in any case hold true for Western Europe. Instead, Middendorp’s

findings amount to a compelling example of a highly independent and visible second

dimension at play, in a stable and unambiguous two-dimensional space.

The libertarian-authoritarian axis developed by Middendorp is buttressed by a continent-wide

2002 study by Hooghe et al, which utilises a similar ‘New Politics’ dimension. This

dimension is said to be concerned at one end with “ecology, alternative politics and

libertarianism,” and at the other, “support for traditional values, opposition to immigration

and defense of the national community” (2002: 976). Furthermore, rather like the ever-

evolving left-right economic dimension, the second dimension is still adapting to incorporate

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relevant new issues, such as Flanagan and Lee’s 2003 observation of a burgeoning battle

between the “growing individual demands for ever-increasing autonomy and ... the growing

technostate’s capacity for surveillance” (2003: 267).

Finally, we can take another look at Huber and Inglehart’s content analysis of the left-right

continuum in their rigidly unidimensional model, in light of the second dimension observed

elsewhere. As was seen above, ‘economic or class conflict’ constituted 54% of the meaning

of their single left-right continuum, thus leaving nearly half the meaning unaccounted for.

Notably, they find that ‘traditional v new culture’, encompassing such concepts as morality,

culture and moral order, was the second most cited category overall making a 10%

contribution, and just behind that with 9% of total left-right meaning was ‘authoritarianism v

democracy’, involving government control, individual liberties and civil rights (1995: 83).

This finding is significant: if the two categories were fused into a broader social policy

category, they would account for almost 20% of meaning on a unidimensional ‘left-right’

model. In the case of Britain, ‘authoritarianism v democracy’ accounted for fully 19% of the

left-right meaning, with no data provided on the effect of the ‘traditional v new culture’ value

category. Clearly, even in the language of ‘left’ and ‘right’, which has been seen to be

traditionally linked to economic policy, the social politics dimension plays a strong role.

Taken together, these various studies strongly suggest that social policy should be taken into

account when measuring political ideology, and that this field of policy is independent and

salient enough to merit a specific dimension of policy, orthogonal to the economic axis, thus

creating a two-dimensional model. For the purposes of my investigation, the question remains

as to precisely how the two ends of this second axis should be labelled. Taking into account

the various dimensions discovered above, I decided that the labels ‘socially prohibitive’ and

‘socially permissive’ best described my second axis. While ‘libertarian’ and ‘authoritarian’

are popular, in much the same way as ‘left’ and ‘right’ they have become confused by the

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ubiquity of their use. ‘Libertarian’ is also the term for a more comprehensive ideology which

encompasses economic, social and foreign policy doctrines, whilst ‘authoritarian’ is often

used pejoratively to describe unsavoury autocratic regimes. ‘Permissive’ and ‘prohibitive’,

while not perfect, are the most precise and concise terms available.

It could be argued that this biaxial model would provide a sufficient representation of

contemporary ideology. However, it is the central contention of this paper that there is a third

dimension of policy that prior studies have tended to overlook, but which is sufficiently

salient and independent of other dimensions to merit inclusion in a comprehensive survey of

ideology.

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A Third Dimension?

Three-dimensional depictions of political ideology are rare but not unheard of, and some

studies have indeed identified a third dimension for a particular time and place. Frognier, for

example, finds that in Belgium, “three cleavages are almost unanimously taken into account”

(1976: 189), namely the traditional left-right formulation, the clerical-anticlerical divide

similar to that seen above from Converse, and what is termed a ‘community’ cleavage,

relating largely to Belgium’s uniquely disparate linguistic groups. On top of the fact that the

clerical-anticlerical divide, previously identified by Converse, is usually subsumed into a

broader social policy dimension, the third dimension here is evidently specific to Belgium’s

particular demographic makeup, and can by no means be generalised to other societies.

Similarly, assessing Switzerland, Inglehart and Sidjanski discover that for the ideological

structure of the Swiss public, “a three-dimensional solution is optimal” (1976: 238). In this

instance, along with a conventional left-right continuum and a variant of the clerical-

anticlerical dimension, they find “a dimension that pits a relatively cosmopolitan and change-

oriented Establishment against traditionalism” (1976: 237).

The three-dimensional systems that emerged in these two Western European countries were

attributable, most likely, to the particular environmental conditions relevant to each.

Nonetheless, a handful of authors have developed three-dimensional structures to represent

public tastes more generally. In fact, a prominent example of a three-dimensional

conceptualisation, from Herbert Weisberg, is developed not from the public’s ideological

proclivities, but from their opinion of political groups. In much the same way as the present

analysis attempts to describe three independent dimensions of ideology, Weisberg perceived

that public perceptions of the three main political groups in America – Democrats,

Republicans and Independents – can be represented in three dimensions, as seen below.

20

Weisberg, Figure 3 (1980: 37)

As Weisberg notes, this “‘Party Identification Cube’ results if the three dimensions are

assumed orthogonal” (1980: 43; italics mine) - put another way, the cube structure is only

justified if the three dimensions can be shown to be largely uncorrelated to one another.

Michael Laver also hypothesises, from an ideological rather than partisan perspective, that by

adding a “third dimension to the other two, at right angles to both, and we have a three-

dimensional ideological space” (1997: 132), as seen below.

Laver, Figure 6.10 (1997:133)

In this instance Laver uses the example of environmental policy; however, he reminds us that

this model should only be developed in practice as long as “a third dimension is important”

(1997: 132; italics mine), whatever the third dimension is. Weisberg and Laver thus refer to

21

the same two requirements for creating a three-dimensional model as have already been seen

above in the case of the second, social dimension: independence and salience. As such, the

rest of this paper is concerned with justifying, through a combination of qualitative and

quantitative work, the independence and salience of my chosen third dimension, foreign

policy, within a three-dimensional conceptualisation.

For evidence of an independent dimension of foreign policy we can look back first of all to

the French National Assembly. As Andrew Knapp recounts,

“there are some political divisions, chiefly but not exclusively over France’s foreign

relations, which have never fallen neatly into a left/right categorisation” (2006: 2).

It is significant that as far back as the French revolution, from where, of course, the original

left and right wings emerged, foreign policy proved difficult to meaningfully portray on the

single left-right continuum. Evidence accrued in the pioneering voting study The American

Voter supported the contention that domestic and foreign stances might be uncorrelated. The

authors found that for the year 1956 “there was no relationship between scale positions on the

domestic and foreign attitudinal dimensions” (Campbell et. al 1960: 197); Stokes similarly

showed that for 1963, there was “no relation between attitudes toward social welfare policies

and American involvement abroad.” (1963: 370).

However, later works claimed to find evidence that foreign policy attitudes could in fact be

integrated onto a one- or two-dimensional structure. From a study of Danish legislative

voting, Damgaard and Rusk claimed “that a leftist stance represents anti-Nato, anti-

American, anti-European Community attitudes” (1976: 174); Inglehart and Klingemann

suggested contemporaneously that amongst Europeans generally, “opposition to European

integration may be becoming linked with the left” (1976: 257). However, Hooghe at al’s

2002 continent-wide study into European attitudes found instead that if one combines “a left-

22

right dimension with an orthogonal dimension indicating level of support for European

integration, the result is an inverted U [shape]” (968: 2002). In other words, extremes on both

left and right were opposed to integration, and more moderate elements were more

favourable.

Therefore, even on an issue such as European integration, which is usually characterised in

popular parlance as a polarised left versus right issue, the most recent studies have suggested

that attitudes can have a more nuanced – and by no means linear – relationship with other

dimensions. That said, it is probably fair to suggest that until relatively recently, the

observation that “nationalism has traditionally been associated with the right and

internationalism with the left” (Inglehart and Klingemann 1976: 257) is broadly accurate.

Certainly during the cold war, the global system was dominated by the USA and the USSR,

two superpowers which in large part defined themselves – and their large spheres of influence

– on the basis of capitalist and communist ideology respectively. Thus it is not hard to see

how from a Western perspective, a more open-minded, ‘internationalist’ attitude towards the

USSR might be associated with an inclination towards a more leftist economic ideology.

However, it is my argument that the end of the cold war, and the emergence of the United

States as the world’s sole ‘superpower’, threw these old, easy associations and correlations

into a state of instability. I contend that a process of ideological dealignment has occurred, so

that an individual’s stance on economic or social policy is effectively unrelated to the degree

to which they believe their country should involve itself with the affairs of other nations.

Lipset realised half a century ago that

“the conclusion of the fascist era and the emergence of the cold war have shown that

the struggle for freedom is not a simple variant of the economic class struggle” (1959:

483).

23

Arguably, the end of the cold war era has wrought the analogous realisation that an

interventionist or isolationist outlook is not a simple variant of the economic and social policy

axes. This notion is articulated by Nick Cohen in his book What’s Left?, in which he laments

the demise of internationalist and interventionist impulses among the traditional left wing, in

favour of cultural relativism, which precludes interference in other societies abroad. As such,

Cohen claims, “liberals are far more likely than conservatives to excuse fascistic

governments and movements” (2007: 10). As Inglemann and Klingehart have suggested,

“issues ... may change in polarity in relation to the left-right dimension” (1976: 257), and

Cohen certainly argues that the issue of foreign intervention has shifted in just such a way,

asking, “in short, why is the world upside down?” (2007: 10). But it seems unlikely that post-

cold war attitudes to foreign policy have undergone a simple diametric shift; ideological

changes in the realm of foreign policy are probably more nuanced.

The foreign affair which best encapsulates this ideological dealignment is the American- and

British-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The effort was led by then-President George W Bush,

who as Cohen notes, “was elected on an isolationist ticket” (2007: 83) until the events of

September 11th 2001 drastically altered the foreign policy landscape. Of course, the terrorist

attacks by no means altered Bush’s economic and social outlook: Bush and his fellow so-

called ‘neo-cons’ “were just as much in favour of privatisation ... and just as willing to make

excuses for creationists (2007: 83)” as other American conservatives. The only fundamental

change in the attitudes of Bush and his supporters was the sudden emergence of a more

outward-looking foreign policy, nicknamed the ‘Bush Doctrine’, which involved far greater

efforts, both military and non-military, abroad.

It is likely that Bush’s activities overseas will cast a long shadow over attitudes to foreign

policy in America, and the heavy British involvement led by Tony Blair will presumably

have a similar effect in Britain. The limited, restrained and slightly ambiguous action recently

24

taken in Libya by these leaders’ successors, President Barack Obama and Prime Minister

David Cameron, is not merely a response to the delicate situation on the ground in Libya, but

also a reflection of the heavy price of Bush and Blair’s more ambitious forays overseas. It is

telling that in domestic terms, Cameron’s party is perceived to stand to the right of Blair’s,

and conversely Obama’s Democrats are to the left of Bush’s Republican Party: domestic

ideology thus appears to have little impact on international decision-making.

Instead, the factors involved in the debate about Libya were related to an entirely different

dimension of attitudes, one upon which the moral imperative for humanitarian intervention is

weighed against perceived costs in blood and treasure. Indeed, polls of Americans show that

“slim majorities of each political party approve of U.S. military action against Libya” (CNN,

2011), and the lack of agreement within each party’s support is a significant indicator of the

independence of the foreign policy dimension from economic and social concerns at home.

By testing for correlation between foreign policy responses and the answers to the economic

and social policy question bundles, I can test this hypothesis more thoroughly.

Nonetheless, even if an independent dimension of foreign policy is found, it will require a

certain degree of salience amongst the public if it is to merit inclusion in an accurate

conceptualisation of individual ideology. Indeed, it is easy to see how foreign policy might be

perceived in existentially different terms to domestic politics. The psychologically and

physically distant sphere of action might, it could be argued, put foreign policy in the same

category as, say, space travel: an interesting issue upon which it is possible to have different

opinions, for sure, but too far removed from the realities of day-to-day life to be considered a

primary concern for the ordinary person.

Of course, distance should not be conflated with indifference, and it is quite straightforward

to see that foreign policy matters have a substantial impact on daily life. Whether it is over

25

trade deals or terrorism, the decisions taken by national leaders on the international stage

ultimately rebound to affect the course of life at home; and most dramatically of all, as was

seen in wake of the so-called ‘War on Terror’, modern wars can still carry a substantial fiscal

and physical cost. Furthermore, studies have shown that the public are able to link foreign

policy outcomes with the decisions of politicians. A study by Aldrich et al on the 2004

presidential election in America found that “one third of the voters stated that foreign policy

issues were the most important factor in determining their vote choice” (Aldrich et al 490).

Britain does not have an equivalent example of an election so affected by foreign policy since

the end of the cold war, but the debate over the country’s role in the invasion of Iraq

dominated the political landscape for many months, epitomised by the million-strong march

on London to protest the invasion in 2003 (BBC, 2003).

Given this preliminary evidence suggesting an independent and salient foreign policy

dimension, how should the ends of the axis be labelled to best express its substantive

meaning? Much of the discussion thus far has turned on the question of to what extent a

government should intervene in the affairs of other countries. However, this division might at

first glance be misleading. If a country is interventionist in its outlook, the sort of action it

takes beyond its borders can vary wildly. Generous donations of humanitarian aid, for

example, is surely not equivalent to declarations of war. This point was taken up by Wittkopf

in a 1986 study of the dimensionality of foreign policy beliefs. Writing near the end of the

cold war era, Wittkopf saw “two distinct types of internationalist attitudes, described by the

terms cooperative and militant internationalism” (1986: 428). Within this framework, foreign

policy attitudes can be described in a more accurate way. Moreover, as Holsti has noted,

these two dimensions “correspond closely to the most venerable approaches to international

relations: realism and liberalism” (1992: 449), notably similar to Middendorp’s earlier

26

description of the two domestic policy dimensions “rooted in a more abstract philosophical

basis” (1989: 280).

However, it is important not to overstate the salience of foreign policy, and having integrated

economic and social policy issues onto one axis apiece, sustaining two separate foreign

policy axes would lend too much perceived weight to this area of ideology, not to mention

the technical and geometric limitations associated with a four-dimensional model. Therefore,

the two axes outlined by Wittkopf need to be compressed and simplified into one. Despite the

reservations expressed above, it is possible to formulate a single dimension based upon the

degree to which the government should intervene abroad, and thus to label the two poles of

the axis ‘interventionist’ and ‘isolationist’. This is achieved by essentially recasting

Wittkopf’s ‘cooperative’ and ‘militant’ dimensions, which might be deemed the ‘means’ of

foreign policy, in terms of a more abstract single dimension grounded in ‘ends’ or ideal

outcomes.

Thus, for example, in one instance in my survey the respondent is asked whether a nuclear

deterrent is necessary, and in another, whether military force can be justified to uphold the

human rights of foreigners. Both these questions entail military means, but their intended

outcomes are, in this formulation, diametrically opposed: the former promoting isolationism,

and the latter interventionism. Thus answering in the affirmative to the first question will

have the same impact on results as answering in the negative to the second, thereby

abstracting the instruments of foreign policy somewhat from the more fundamental

consequences desired of it. Now that this dimension of foreign policy has been defined, and,

in qualitative terms, justified, the rest of the paper describes the quantitative research

undertaken into the viability of a three-dimensional conceptualisation of ideology, built upon

the theoretical foundations that have been described thus far.

27

Methodology

The previous section has suggested, in preliminary, qualitative terms, that a salient and

independent dimension of foreign policy exists. The next section tests this theory in light of

survey data commissioned especially for this subject. However, in constructing this research

survey, there were a large number of methodological issues to consider, and these are

explained below.

Scope of the survey

While cross-national surveys of ideological dimensionality, such as that of Huber and

Inglehart, are enlightening as to the nature of ideology on a global scale, many more surveys

are associated with particular places and times (Frognier 1976; Mauser and Freyssinet-

Dominjon 1976). The hypothesis posited the existence of an independent foreign policy

dimension in the context of Britain at the present time, so the scope of the survey is limited to

British responses, and it took place recently, between 1st April 2011 and the 1st May 2011.

Moreover, there is a further reason why the nature of this survey in particular merits a focus

on the populace of one individual country: in its very subject matter, foreign policy is based

upon the existence of external actors, a ‘world beyond our borders’, with which to interact

with or isolate oneself from, depending on one’s ideological perspective. Therefore the

perspective of a single country was needed to ensure the data had cohesive meaning.

More specifically, the sample was deliberately limited to a particular group, students of

Exeter University, for a number of reasons. Firstly, various studies have shown that having

the political sophistication to perceive ideology is linked to a higher level of education, a

condition which students meet by definition (Levitin and Miller 1979). Furthermore,

Inglehart and Klingemann note that “one’s likelihood of using relatively abstract and general

concepts to orient oneself towards politics varies with [one’s] degree of political

28

involvement” (1976: 261). As such, politics students generally, and members of an electoral

politics class specifically, were more strongly encouraged to take part. Secondly, age is an

important criterion in political perception: as Weisberg and Rusk note, “not having long

participated in the political system, [young people] tend to be less firmly identified with a

party” (1979: 1185), and Inglehart and Klingemann have discovered in turn that “the

ideological component [is] more important in cases where political party identification is

breaking down” (1976: 246). As such, young people are more likely to perceive ideology

devoid of overt partisan influences. Finally, access to Exeter students was easier than to other

potential participant groups, which offered the prospect of a potentially larger sample size.

Therefore, this set of respondents was chosen not randomly, but for very specific qualities

that would enable some greater degree of familiarity with the questions, increasing the

likelihood of meaningful results. As the survey was readily accessible online to anyone who

had the URL, the database logged whether or not a participant ticked a box captioned “please

tick this box if you are a University of Exeter student” (see Appendix), and only the results of

those participants who indicated they were students were used in the research which

followed. This approach was by no means failsafe, but there is certainly no evidence of any

sabotage by erroneous participants.

Survey method

A large number of different methods have been used to analyse ideological dimensions.

Many studies have used respondents’ opinions towards different political parties as the point

of departure for interpreting the ideological dimensions that underlie these opinions.

Converse’s study of the French electorate, for example, asked respondents to list national

parties in order of preference, then used this information to determine how many different

dimensions were needed to logically represent the electorate’s perceived party space (1966).

Similarly, Rusk and Borre’s analysis of the Danish electorate relied on so-called ‘feeling

29

thermometers’, on which voters are asked to describe their opinion of political parties on a -

100 to +100 scale. From this data, they assumed that the more closely voters rated two

parties, the more similar they viewed them, and subsequently used a ‘goodness of fit’

measure to determine the number of dimensions in which party distance could best be

represented (1976).

These types of methods, using opinions of parties as a starting point, have obvious benefits:

opinions of parties are generally more salient to the public, and can more directly explain

voting changes at elections, which, after all, are conducted in terms of choosing parties. But

using parties also has problematic aspects: as Budge et al. note, “dimensions based on party

placements have no direct substantive interpretation” (1976: 132); instead, authors must

essentially estimate the meanings of particular dimensions. As such, the first dimension

‘discovered’ is usually referred to as the left-right dimension, which helps to explain the

persistent confusion over its precise meaning. Furthermore, whilst some studies have

deliberately measured party opinion across a set time period in order to directly measure vote

change between two elections, the present study is concerned with finding a more permanent

ideological structure. As such, while public opinion of parties can be affected by anything

from the latest growth report to a ministerial scandal, a “pure policy continuum ... is more

stable over time” (Budge et. al 1976: 195) and suggestive of longer-held ideological values.

Therefore, my method involved deciding a priori the three ideological dimensions upon

which voters’ opinions would be surveyed (in line with my hypothesis), defining these

substantively (in the previous three chapters), then testing the dimensions for correlation and

salience. Before turning to the results, however, the process by which questions were decided

upon, and the procedure by which they were answered, still needs to be described.

30

Substantive design of the survey

I concluded each of my substantive chapters above by defining the labels which would be

used for the end points of each axis. Within these parameters, I developed a series of thirty

questions, ten for each dimension, the answers to which would influence each respondent’s

placement on each of the three axes. Some, like Herbert Asher, have criticised this method,

on the basis that a list of predetermined questions may not be a fair representation of all

issues important to a voter. It has been suggested instead that “a better strategy is to allow the

respondents themselves to define the issues that are of importance to them” (1976: 101). Of

course, allowing respondents to do this on my survey would have resulted in a wide range of

qualitative answers that would be difficult to codify and quantify for a geometric space.

Nonetheless, it was vitally important that the questions chosen covered a broad range of

issues significant to each dimension, and so in writing the questions I drew upon the work of

Huber and Inglehart (1995), who, as has been seen above, invited experts across a wide range

of nations to contribute meaning to the left-right dimension. They collapsed these issues into

ten main categories of substantive meaning, conveniently allowing me to draw out, from the

categories associated with my dimensions, some of the most common examples. For instance,

Huber and Inglehart’s ‘economy and class conflict’ section contained such notions as ‘private

ownership’, ‘taxation’, and ‘unions’, and so I devised various questions based upon these.

Of course, Huber and Inglehart’s findings were not all directly related to my predetermined

dimensions: as was seen earlier, in relation to the social dimension, both the categories

‘authoritarianism v democracy’ and ‘traditional v new culture’ were in some ways

reminiscent of my somewhat broader social dimension. Furthermore, these findings were

aggregated from a cross-national survey, with no data provided for each country individually,

and I felt it necessary to include questions which related more specifically to Britain. I

31

therefore drew upon a wide range of other sources to help develop a representative set of

questions.

A rare example of a set of questions designed for British respondents emerges from Hans

Eysenck’s study, and this was particularly useful for the social dimension. Although many of

the statements suggested are now uncomfortably out of date, questions over fox hunting and

the monarchy persist, so I drew these topics into my survey. Work by Cass Middendorp

(1989: 285) was also helpful, including measures of the respondent’s “attitude towards

government aid to education”, which I modulated into two economic questions, one on

learning languages and one on student fees. As for the foreign scale, obviously this study is in

itself a response to the overall lack of attention paid to foreign affairs in prior research, but I

was able to locate a few questions on foreign policy that were lumped in with social or

economic scales. For example, a question on foreign aid from Middendorp was adapted for

my survey. Finally, I drew upon the work of Flanagan and Lee, who described “the growing

technostate’s capacity for surveillance” (2003: 267) as one of the major issues on their

libertarian/authoritarian axis, to devise a question on Britain’s CCTV usage for my social

dimension.

With the subject matter for my thirty questions thus coming from a wide range of sources, the

wording of the questions was also carefully considered to preclude any possible bias. This

was especially important for the social dimension, which contained plenty of contentious

issues which needed to be described in as neutral terms as possible. In particular, I borrowed

some language from the 2005 World Values Survey (WVS, 2005), particularly the word

‘justifiable’ in asking about social issues such as prostitution, abortion and euthanasia.

However, in my survey some of these issues were rendered more relevant to a British

audience by noting their current legal status and whether this should be changed. See

appendix for the full list of questions.

32

Conversion of responses into results

The process by which a respondent’s answer was converted into a geometric placement on

each of the three axes is a more elaborate version of one used by Eysenck. In Eysenck’s

model, respondents were presented with a series of statements, with which they could

‘strongly agree’, ‘agree on the whole’, ‘can’t decide for or against’, ‘disagree on the whole’

or ‘strongly disagree’ (Eysenck 304). Each answer (aside from a few ‘filler questions’ which

had no impact) would affect the positioning on one of the scales by the allocation of a ‘1’, ‘0’

or ‘-1’ depending on the answer, where positive numbers shifted the position one way and

negative answers the other. After all the questions were answered, the total score for each

axis resulted in a fixed placement, and the axes were represented together two-dimensionally.

While retaining the basic essence of this model for my investigation, I made a number of

modifications to how it worked. Firstly, I did not include any of the ‘filler’ questions: each

answer had an impact on the final result. Secondly, I noticed that Eysenck’s model strangely

did not discriminate between whether a ‘strongly’ or ‘on the whole’ answer had been given.

In describing his unidimensional conception, Downs suggested that “each citizen may apply

different weights to the individual policies, since each policy affects some citizens more than

others” (Downs 133), and I applied this principle to my study. Therefore like Eysenck, I

presented users with five options, but unlike Eysenck I designed the scoring so that the

answer would be weighted double if the respondent indicated a stronger belief. The following

is a sample question from the social policy section, annotated with the resulting scores

depending on the response given:

Effect of choice on score: (unseen by participant) +2 +1 0 -1 -2

33

Agreeing with the statement in this example, therefore, indicates a degree of social

permissiveness, and so this would be recorded with the value of -1. Eysenck notes that the

statements in his survey were “chosen in such a way that most people are likely to agree with

some and to disagree with others” (Eysenck, 304), and for the sake of impartiality I followed

this principle, by including some statements with which agreement would, in the social case,

imply prohibitive views, such as the sample question below, again annotated:

Effect of choice on score: (unseen by participant) -2 -1 0 +1 +2

Here, the effect is reversed, and the responses are coded accordingly. As such, each

respondent gets an end result from each axis which has an ‘absolute’ value. We have seen

that the higher the social policy score, for example, the more socially prohibitive the

respondent is, but the following table shows the full range of scores for each axis, with

definitions.

Policy axis Score of -20 indicates:

Score of +20 indicates:

Economic Very communistic Very capitalisticSocial Very prohibitive Very permissiveForeign Very isolationist Very interventionist

As can be seen, the introduction of codified ‘double-strength’ responses means that the

possible range of results on each scale ranges from -20 to +20, as there were ten questions per

axis. This allows for a more accurate analysis of a concept called ‘centrality’, which

Converse describes as “the relative ... importance of different issues dimensions from voter to

voter” (Converse problems 199). It does intuitively seem correct that different people will

have different areas of particularly intense political belief, and this ‘doubling’ mechanism

represents this more accurately. In the results section below, I analyse the proportions of each

34

type of answer – no opinion, moderate (dis)agreement and strong (dis)agreement – to the

questions on each axis, to judge whether overall one dimension is felt to be more central to

the participants than the others.

My final innovation was the inclusion, before the sets of questions, of three ‘self-placement’

scales, requiring users to indicate where they felt they stood on each of the three policy

dimensions. These scales were marked at either end with the labels for each dimension

established above, and furnished with a short one-sentence description (see Appendix). This

mimics similar measures frequently used in other studies, in which “the respondent is

presented with a graphic representation of the liberal-conservative [or left-right] continuum”

(Knight 311), usually made up of seven points. This measure was not vital to my

investigations and will not offer concrete conclusions, but correlating individuals’ predictions

with their results might lead to some interesting speculative findings about how well

individuals perceive their own ideology.

Capture and manipulation of data

When each individual survey was completed, the following data were anonymously collated:

The respondent’s self-placement on each of the three scales, ranging from -20 to 20;

The answer given to each individual question, ranging from -2 to 2;

The respondent’s aggregated result for each scale, ranging from -20 to 20

Whether the respondent had affirmed that he or she was a University of Exeter student

The time and date the survey was taken

When the survey was completed, the entire data set was imported into the spreadsheet

programme Microsoft Excel. Next, all the data pertaining to non-Exeter students was

35

removed. From the resultant data set I used the functions of the programme to make all the

calculations which follow.

36

Survey Findings

Participation: n = 71

The survey was completed by 71 unique students from the University of Exeter, who each

provided a full complement of 30 responses to the questions, as well as placing themselves on

the three scales. The results from these 71 responses are all used, and are the only data used,

in the results and conclusions which follow.

Hypothesis: minimal correlation found

The ‘headline’ finding from this survey is that the foreign policy dimension is statistically

independent of both economic and social policy dimensions, which proves the hypothesis

outlined at the start to be correct. Each respondent’s aggregate scores on each dimension

were correlated, and the following table displays the Pearson correlation coefficient,

significant to four figures, which resulted for the three combinations of axes.

Combination of axes Correlation coefficientEconomic Policy and Social Policy -0.2376Economic Policy and Foreign Policy -0.1751Social Policy and Foreign Policy 0.01455

As Eysenck has noted, “correlations between different [ideological] attitudes usually range

from about 0.2 at the lower end, to about 0.7 or 0.8 at the higher end” (Eysenck, 284). It is

evident from these findings therefore that foreign policy bears little or no relation to either of

the more established dimensions. In fact, the relationship between economic and social

policy, the two more established dimensions, is the most statistically significant, albeit only

to a small extent. Unfortunately, due to technical constraints it was impossible to represent

every response on the three-dimensional cube model, but the following graphs help to

represent spatially the lack of correlation between each axis combination.

37

-15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20

-20

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

Economic and Social Policy

Unique responses

Economic Policy

Socia

l Pol

icy

-20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20

-20

-15

-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

Economic and Foreign Policy

Unique responses

Economic Policy

Fore

ign

Polic

y

-20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20

-20-15-10

-505

101520

Social and Foreign Policy

Unique responses

Social Policy

Forie

gn P

olicy

38

This finding, in conjunction with the historical and theoretical argument above,

unequivocally demonstrates that a three-dimensional model, using foreign as well as

economic and social policy scales, is a feasible and justifiable conceptualisation of individual

ideology.

Salience and centrality of the three dimensions

Beyond the central finding of the study, there are a number of other interesting discoveries

which further support the case for including a foreign policy dimension. As alluded to in the

methodology above, in analysing the responses to the questions for each axis, it is possible to

gauge what types of answers were most common. This is useful for a number of reasons.

Firstly, a pattern of ‘strongly agree’ responses to questions on a particular dimension would

indicate that that dimension enjoys a higher degree of centrality and salience than others. In

contrast, a noticeably high rate of ‘no answer’ responses to a particular dimension would

suggest either that respondents do not feel as strongly about that field of policy, or that they

do not grasp the meaning of the subject matter, which if discovered would suggest a worrying

lack of salience for the dimension in question. To assess this possibility, the full data set of

every individual answer to each question from every respondent was analysed. The full set of

individual answers was separated into the three policy dimensions to allow for comparison,

and each answer was converted to its absolute value, since it was the strength not the content

of opinion which was under question. Now that each answer was either 0, 1 or 2, the

proportions of each of these three possibilities were calculated separately for each dimension.

There were 71 respondents and ten answers per dimension, which yielded 710 individual

responses for each dimension. The proportions of each type of answer are shown in the table

below, with the total number of actual responses in parentheses.

39

Policy dimension

Proportion of ‘no opinion’ responses (score = 0)

Proportion of opinionated responses (score = 1)

Proportion of strongly opinionated responses (score = 2)

Total

Economic 17% (118) 54% (387) 29% (205) 100% (710)Social 12% (88) 45% (320) 43% (302) 100% (710)Foreign 17% (118) 58% (412) 25% (180) 100% (710)

There are a number of points to be drawn from this analysis. Firstly, overall the results show

an impressive level of consistency across all three dimensions. There are no obvious outliers

which would have suggested a seriously skewed set of questions. In particular, the proportion

of ‘no opinion’ responses remains relatively low across each dimension, and, as it happens,

there were the same number of these for the economic and foreign scales, a further

vindication of the relative salience of foreign policy. The only noticeable variation in this

data is the somewhat higher proportion of strongly held views on the social dimension, and

the correspondingly lower proportion of more moderate responses. This may very tentatively

suggest a higher level of centrality for social issues compared with the other two dimensions

of policy, though the differences involved are fairly small.

On the level of individual questions, only one of all thirty questions received a ‘no opinion’

response in more than one in three cases, namely

“Competition laws represent an attack by governments on the natural economic

cycle”

from the economic dimension. This is likely due to the more complex subject matter involved

in this question compared with others. This anomaly aside, generally the questions seem to

have been largely understood, and every question incited a plurality of different opinions.

40

Comparison of self-perception with results

As alluded to earlier, before respondents could take the survey they were required to place

themselves on three scales indicating where they felt that they stood on each policy

dimension. By comparing these perceptions, on a scale from -20 to 20, with their aggregated

results, which also ranged from -20 to 20, we can get some sense, though not conclusive

evidence, of how well the participants were able to perceive their ideology. Thus the

following table shows the Pearson correlation coefficient, significant to four figures, which

emerged from the prediction-results comparison for each dimension.

Policy dimension Correlation coefficientEconomic 0.6899Social 0.4166Foreign 0.6032

As can be seen, the economic dimension has the highest coefficient, ahead of the foreign

dimension, with the social score disappointingly further back. There are too many variables

to make any concrete assertions, but this finding goes some way to suggest that even to this

day, the traditional left-right dimension of economic policy is still the easiest heuristic by

which to define oneself ideologically. More generally, this measure shows a moderate to

strong capability on the part of the participants in perceiving their own ideology in common

terms.

All in all, these measures have unambiguously demonstrated that an independent third

dimension of policy foreign policy exists, and suggested that the issues underpinning it are

generally as well understood as the two more traditional dimensions.

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Conclusion

After introducing the concept of the spatial analogy, assessing the literature regarding the two

more conventional dimensions, and establishing that the introduction of new dimensions is

conditional upon their salience and independence, I conducted qualitative and quantitative

research designed to test these criteria in relation to a third foreign policy dimension. I

observed that the emergence of fascist and communistic western nations in the early

twentieth century, and the wars fought as a result, helped to bring about recognition of a

second dimension of policy related to social and moral affairs. I then argued that in an

analogous sense, the end of the cold war and the subsequent shifts in global order have

created a perceptible and enduring third dimension of policy, relating to the extent to which

citizens want their government to involve itself in the affairs of other nations.

I then described the research I undertook to investigate the salience and particularly the

independence of the foreign policy dimension in a quantitative sense. After detailing my

methodology, I turned to my results, which showed there was no or very little statistical

correlation between foreign policy and the two other policy axes, as well as suggesting that

the foreign policy dimension holds a good degree of salience and even in some cases

centrality to the participants.

As such, combining the results of my theoretical and empirical research offers a forceful case

in favour of my first hypothesis, that:

There exists is an independent and salient dimension of foreign policy which should

be considered as a component of ideological identity.

Why, in short, is this outcome significant? Firstly, these findings demonstrate the inadequacy

of the old adage that ‘politics stops at the water’s edge’. The last decade has shown that

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foreign policy decisions can dominate the political landscape, and while some have been

tempted to lump various aspects of foreign policy in with the established economic and social

dimensions (the effect of trade agreements on domestic employment, or the effect of national

security measures on domestic civil liberties, for example), this paper demonstrates that the

interventionist-isolationist attitude scale is largely independent of the other two dimensions.

This study has consciously avoided any discussion of voting behaviour or party

identification, as all too often these factors have had the adverse effect of skewing

individuals’ purer, more deeply felt ideological preferences. However, the findings herein

might serve as a timely reminder to politicians that foreign policy stances can be just as much

a vote-winner (or -loser) as economic or social policy decisions. Voting, then, does not stop

at the water’s edge.

Finally, this study might serve to reflect the fact that in this age of political apathy and

partisan dealignment, ideological beliefs and values still matter. My sample size was small

and deliberately chosen for its political sophistication, but in a broader sense the popular

success of online ‘political compasses’ and their integration with social networking sites

suggest that even if the political process is frequently despised, the outcomes of that process

still matter immensely to the public at large.

Above all, however, my three-dimensional conceptualisation of ideological preference, with

the inclusion of a foreign policy dimension now justified, represents a more insightful

ideological model than previous one- and two-dimensional efforts, whilst retaining or even

enhancing the clarity and cogency that makes the spatial analogy of ideology so compelling.

43

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Eysenck, Hans, 1957. Sense and Nonsense in Psychology. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Holsti, Ole R., 1992. ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the Almond-Lippmann Consensus.’ International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 439-466.

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AppendixBelow is the user experience for survey participants (live version at <www.politicube.org>).

Welcome screen

Self-placement screen

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List of questions and codified responses

Question Codified response:If agree = +1, strongly agree = +2, disagree = -1 and strongly disagree = -2.If agree = -1, strongly agree = -2, disagree = +1 and strongly disagree = +2.

Economic questions - 20 = very communistic; +20 = very capitalistic

It is wrong to tax anyone at a rate of 50% and higher.

Agree +1

At times of economic hardship, cutting some government services is a justifiable way of ensuring the long-term stability of a country's finances.

Agree +1

It is wrong that foreign nationals, including those from the EU, should be able to take jobs in this country.

Agree -1

It does not make sense for the government to spend money promoting the learning of minor languages, if the economic return on these languages is likely to be minimal.

Agree +1

The fact that 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' has been spread over two films, despite being shorter than some of the other books in the series, illustrates the negative impact of commercialisation on popular culture.

Agree -1

Controlling inflation is more important than lowering unemployment.

Agree +1

Competition laws represent an attack by governments on the natural economic cycle.

Agree +1

Striking continues to be a legitimate action for improving pay and workers’ rights.

Agree -1

An estate tax is a fair way to redistribute the wealth accumulated over an individual’s lifetime.

Agree -1

A rise in student fees is justifiable to fill a gap in university funding.

Agree +1

Social questions -20 = very permissive; +20 = very prohibitiveThe state should legally recognise monogamous homosexual relationships.

Agree -1

The monarchy is worth preserving, at the Agree +1

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current cost.A high level of CCTV surveillance makes me feel safer.

Agree +1

Prostitution is justifiable, and should be legalised.

Agree -1

Euthanasia, or assisted suicide, is a justifiable act, and should be legalised.

Agree -1

The recreational use of marijuana is a justifiable act, and should be legalised.

Agree -1

Fox hunting is a legitimate practice and should be legalised.

Agree -1

There is justification for some limitations on free speech, such as those to prevent the inciting of racial hatred.

Agree +1

It is justifiable for women to have abortions, as allowed by current law.

Agree -1

The voting age should be lowered to 16. Agree -1Foreign questions -20 = very isolationist; +20 = very

interventionistInternational institutions, such as the Kyoto Protocol, are the most effective way for governments to reduce carbon emissions in their own countries.

Agree +1

As countries with the same international interests, it makes sense for Britain and France to sign new military cooperation agreements, even if this is at the expense of some of Britain's military independence.

Agree +1

Membership of NATO is an important way of countering global security threats.

Agree +1

The EU has a role to play in the advancement of international human rights.

Agree +1

It is naive to promote democracy in far-off countries, whose inner workings we do not fully comprehend.

Agree -1

Some British tax revenue should be given in aid to the needy overseas.

Agree +1

Britain has the necessity to retain a nuclear deterrent.

Agree -1

Following the disintegration of its empire, Britain still has a prominent role to play in the affairs of other countries.

Agree +1

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The use of military force can sometimes be justified to uphold the human rights of foreigners.

Agree +1

As modern terrorism is global in nature, we as individuals are safer when governments share intelligence with each other.

Agree +1

Example results page

(A test user predicted moderate attitudes for all scales; answers given were very capitalistic, very permissive and very interventionist respectively)

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