Book Analysis Essay on Neither Liberal nor Conservative

Introduction

In their book, Neither Liberal nor Conservative - Ideological Innocence in the American Public, Donald Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe present a general claim that American voters do not clearly identify with particular ideologies, but are inclined to the ideological concepts guided by their partisan biases. This paper presents a critical assessment of the book. The first part of the book overviews Phillip Converse's work; the work that stimulated extended studies into belief structures in political setups. According to the authors, Converse thought that 1). Very few people have the required intellect to apply ideology in explaining beliefs, 2). The normal citizen lacks a properly organized political belief. Elite citizen have well-structured beliefs, and 3). People's political opinions keep shifting due to emotional campaigns that create more ideological biases.

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The authors agree with Converse's theories and provide present evidence that supports the claims. The authors did a good job coming up with such a book because it opens the eyes of the reader to look at the bigger picture in politics. It offers quality summary of theoretically significant works, identifies shortcomings of the present systems of political identification and offers a way forward and makes ideological identification easier to understand.

The authors points are convincing because they make it clear that party identification and ideological identification are different things, and should be demonstrated discretely. It is worth noting, though, that the two variables might overlap. Also, the book makes it clear that ideological identification will majorly apply for elites with intense knowledge and interest in politics. Lastly, the book draws a clear distinction between people with ideological identity from those who do not (moderates).

Main Contributions

To a considerable extent, the book's claims are empirically built. For instance, there is a lot of data analysis. Most of the data is from the American National Election Studies. For example, they use figure 6.1 on page 93 to prove that most conservatives vote Republican candidates while liberalists often vote Democratic candidates. This shows that political identities may at times overrule ideological preferences, which mostly tends to shift. The data also shows that 20% of Americans are moderate; who will vote either party depending on the reasoning they arrive at on voting day. Another data set, figure 6.2 on page 96, proves that ideology may also rise from economic assessments. A moderate person would vote for the incumbent if he thinks economic performance is getting better. The empirical approach is vital because it attaches substance to arguments.

Kinder and Kalmoe also apply a methodological research approach while presenting arguments and statistics. For example, while evaluating the effect of self-reported ideology on policy opinions or issues like fighting terrorism, healthcare, security, etc. on voting patterns, they ran data from 1992 to 2012 and reported no causative correlation. However, when the data was ran against LGBTQ rights and abortion, the opposite result was obtained. It is for this stark exception that they decided to include group sentiments, faith and religiosity to their test model and reran the data. This completely eliminated the effect of ideology on opinions on voting patterns; self-declared ideology has no effect on policies like gay rights and healthcare. The methodological approach to data helped the authors form verifiable proof to their assertions.

The book uses conceptual formations to reinforce arguments to support previously proposed facts or disprove them. While proving that party loyalty beats ideological inclinations, the authors, on page 97 discuss the data. They explain that a person is first a Republican or Democrat before choosing to be liberal or conservative. The only exception is the highly elite, who tend to keep their ideological beliefs aligned to their party affiliations. Further synthesis of facts shows that people tend to keep their party even after abandoning their ideological beliefs. They also bring out the big gap between the beliefs patterns of elites and those of publics. This approach helps to develop conceptual patterns that make an experimental design easier to build.

The authors ask novel questions. Like; how often do people shift their party as compared to how often they change their ideologies? It is while endeavoring to answer the question that they develop theories to back the results from data analyses. Thus, they were able to prove and explain that ideological identities are unstable and only have a 63% chance of predicting a person's political mindset. In conventional theory, a person first chooses their ideological mindset before joining the party whose policies are aligned to that. However, Kinder and Kalmoe successfully prove that the reality is closer to the reverse. The theories they develop conclude that people choose their party out of influence from family members, peers, and the immediate community, then they identify with the ideological identities of their chosen party.

Main Weaknesses

One weakness of the book is that the authors offer some theories more support than others. For instance, while proving that ideology does not cause party choices, the authors compare ideology at time A with political behavior at time B. They claim that this method helps to build causal precedence. However, a keen examination of this claim reveals that the political behavior at time B may have existed during time A. This is a methodological downfall and the authors ought to have made consistent comparisons at all points in time for all parameters. This would have made the study more conclusive than suggestive as in the authors' case.

Another failure surfaces when the authors at times forcefully try to eliminate the influence of ideology. For example, it does not make sense why they control for parameters like equal opportunity and limited government when predicting policy using ideological identification. The two parameters are not controlled for anywhere else in the book. But here, they introduce them, ignoring factors like traditionalism. The authors failed to conclude that ideological preferences affect social matters like abortion even when the data predicted so. But here, they brought in additional variables until they collapsed the effect correlation with ideological identity. This weakness may allow independent variables to confound the authenticity of the conclusions drawn significantly.

Also, the authors at times completely ignore the effect of sociological work on ideological identification. For example chapter four; Becoming Ideological, completely fails to mention the big amount of available literature on genetics, negativity, and personality. If they did, they could have noted that ideology still has an impact on politics. They would have also determined that some moderates are genuinely moderate; they have no ideological identity and may not easily develop one. Such an empirical weakness fails to provide confirmability, undeniable and undisputable operational determination of the author's arguments. This flaw weakens their arguments and a reader may suspect observer biases, and feel like not all possible samples are included in the study.

While developing their arguments, the authors fail to imagine that there might be other ideologies apart from the famous liberalism and conservatism. This flaw has been with most political scientists for many decades now. Assumptions are necessary for research because they help in full comprehension and description of a study. It helps to know the variables and what to control for when testing theories. Assumptions must be clear, strong and sufficient enough to enhance the power of any experiment. They can be obvious, informal, ambiguous or explicit assumptions. Ignoring assumptions makes the synthesis of theoretical models more troublesome. Had the authors included enough assumptions in the book, the conclusions would be less debatable.

Assessment

Overall, the book's contributions beat its weaknesses. Firstly, it is because Kinder and Kalmoe present a carefully constructed and convincing justification for the ideas developed by Phillip Converse. They prove that the American voter is ideologically sophisticated and has become more partisan than ideological. The book helps to understand better the role ideology plays in political orientations and vice versa.

The book is well-written, stylish and loaded with facts about ideology among American voters. Given that the authors got data from the American National Election Study, the statistics are dependable. Since it sparked new thinking, the book inspires new adventures into properly understanding how ideological preferences operate.

Still, Neither Liberal nor Conservative remains a notable counteractive to the present belief half voters are growing more ideological. It shows that the ideological identification only comes after someone identifies with their party. It also indicates that parties and politicians are flexible. Since ideologies keep shifting, politicians have become more pragmatic and opportunistic, and always exploit citizens' gullibility. This division creates group-based conflicts between Democrat and Republicans established from emotion. Party loyalty may blind citizens and limit their willingness to apply reason and logic while making political moves.

The current narrative omits the fact that the fear, mistrust and anger that comes from polarization in American politics is a real development in current politics. The polarization is not as a result of ideological shifts, but strong partisan inclinations. It is not about policy or government structure, but about one's belief that the ideological construction of their party is the only right one, and are consumed by the hatred of the opposite group. After identifying their party, some voters pick the party's present ideological alignment whether or not they know what the ideology means. In truth, the voters will not leave the party when either the party or the voter changes their ideological structure.

To address the book's apparent weaknesses, the authors may state that given the shortness of the book, it was only important to focus on the parameters they were interested in; ideology and partisanship. About including enough assumptions, the fact theta they did not report it in the book does not confirm that they never tried other assumptions; some assumptions might have proven irrelevant thus unnecessary to report. About considering other works about the thesis, maybe they also prove insignificant in building the primary arguments the authors planned to present. The weaknesses are points that the authors can address by doing an update of the book.

Conclusion

Neither Liberal nor Conservative is a short but quite comprehensive book that primarily targets an academic audience. In as much as the authors do not write about the consequences of the ideological and partisan developments, the arguments are clearly put such that any contemporary reader will naturally interpret them. It is important for people of all ideologies to read the book.

References

Kinder, D. R., & Kalmoe, N. P. (2017). Neither liberal nor conservative: Ideological innocence in the American public.