POLS 1140

Goals

This weeks readings are HARD

Our goal is to answer the following:

What’s the research question
What’s the theoretical framework
What’s the empirical design
What’s are the results
What’s are the conclusions

The Structure of Converse (1964)

Introduction
Some Clarification of Terms
Sources of Constraint on Idea Elements
Active Use of Ideological Dimensions of Judgement
Recognition of Ideological Uses of Judgement
Constraints among idea-elements
Social Groupings as central objects in belief systems
The Stability of belief elements over time
Issue Publics
Summary
Conclusion

Introduction

Converse introduces the concept of belief systems and tells us this article is about the contrast between the belief systems held by political elites and the mass public
He gestures towards a hierarchy of belief strata and the importance of belief systems for democratic theory
Kind of slow start

Some Clarification of Terms

Converse defines his core concepts

Beliefs Systems $\sim$ Ideology
Idea elements $\sim$ Attitudes
Constraint:
- The interdependence of ideas in a belief system
- A sense of what goes with what
Centrality:
- How likely a belief is to change?
Range:
- The diversity of topics

Sources of Constraint

(Theoretical Framework)

Converse lays out some plausible sources of ideological constraint:

Logical: More spending + Less taxes -> Bigger deficits
Psychological: “the quasi-logic of cogent arguments”
Social: Social diffusion of information -> creates perceptions of what goes with what

Converse also offers a definition of the well-informed person who understands what goes with what but can also articulate why.

Consequences of declining information belief systems

Converse argues as we move from the well-informed to uninformed, several things happen:

Belief systems lose constraint
Social groups replace ideology principles in centrality

So how does he go about doing showing this?

Active Use of Ideological Dimensions of Judgement

Converse considers people’s open-ended responses to questions about whether there is anything they like or dislike about presidential candidates in 1956 and the political parties discussed in detail in chapter 10 of the The American Voter

Active Use of Ideological Dimensions of Judgement

The American Voter

Ideologues:

Well, the Democratic Party tends to favor socialized medicine and I’m being influenced in that because I came from a doctor’s family.

Group Benefits:

Well I just don’t believe their for the common people

Nature of the times:

My husband’s job is better. … My husband is a furrier and when people get money they buy furs

No Content:

I hate the darned backbiting

Recognition of Ideological Dimensions of Judgement

Next Converse considers these levels of conceptualization in 1956 with peoples ability to attach the correct ideological labels with political parties

Overall, most respondents label Democrats as the liberal and Republicans as the conservative party (Table 2)
But the depth of this understanding appears quite shallow (e.g. spend vs save) (Table 3)
Recognition varies with education (Table 4)
Those with greater levels of recognition are more active in politics (Table 5)

Constraints among idea-elements

Next Converse considers the degree of constraint (measured by correlations) between issue elements in an elite (congressional candidates) compared to the mass public

People who took a liberal position on one issue did not necessarily take a liberal position on another
the correlations between between elites’ issue attitudes were higher than the mass public

Individuals lack a sense of what goes with what

What are these measures

Read the footnotes!

What are these measures

What’s a tau-gamma coefficient?

I believe Converse is using a measure of association for ordinal data that’s built off the cross tabs of variables. The estimate of gamma, $G$ , depends on two quantities:

$N_{s}$ , the number of pairs of cases ranked in the same order on both variables (number of concordant pairs),
$N_{d}$ , the number of pairs of cases ranked in reversed order on both variables (number of reversed pairs),

where “ties” (cases where either of the two variables in the pair are equal) are dropped. Then

$G = \frac{N_{s} - N_{d}}{N_{s} + N_{d}}$

Note

As long as you have a basic sense of what correlations are trying to tell us you don’t need to know the technical details of a specific estimator

Elites show higher degrees of constraint

Social Groupings as central objects in belief systems

Converse takes a brief detour to discuss the role of social groups in belief systems.
Essentially he argues that:
- For all but the most informed, groups play a large role
  - What evidence does Converse provide for this claim?
- The centrality of groups (race, religion) declines with levels of political information

Social groupings as central objects in belief systems

The stability of belief elements over time

Converse considers the stability of responses over time, looking at data from 1958-1960 finding variation the strength of temporal correlations across surveys, and attributes this to the centrality of groups and the party system for the mass public

The stability of belief elements over time

The final piece of Converse’s argument concerns the stability of a single belief over time (1956, 1958, 1960):

The government should leave things like electrical power and housing for private businessmen to handle

A limiting case an issue not in the public debate of this period
People appear to answer the question at random
Only a small proportion (~20% fn. 39) held stable attitudes across all three periods

Issue Publics, Summary, Conclusion

Converse wraps up his argument by

Allowing for the possibility of small “issue publics” on more narrow issues
Offering some comments on cross-national and historical comparisons
Summarizing the “continental shelf” that exists between elites and masses.

What do we think?

What’s the research question
What’s the theoretical framework
What’s the empirical design
What’s are the results
What’s are the conclusions

Summary of Converse (1964)

Converse (1964) remains one of the most influential articles in American Political Behavior
Framed decades of research on questions of ideology and citizen competence
- Why?
In the absence of coherent and stable worldviews, how does democracy function?

Responses to Converse (1964)

Measurement error (Today)
Revised definitions of citizens competence (Next Week)
The Miracle of Aggregation
Source Cues and Heuristics (Weeks 5 and 6)
Revised models of Survey Response (Weeks 5 and 6)
Revised models of what democracy requires (on going)

The Miracle of Aggregation

:scale 50% More: Stimson (2018)

Responses to Converse (1964)

Measurement error (Today)
Revised definitions of citizens competence (Next Week)
The Miracle of Aggregation
Source Cues and Heuristics (Weeks 5 and 6)
Revised models of Survey Response (Weeks 5 and 6)
Revised models of what democracy requires (on going)

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