Arkansas Tech University The Culture Wars & Political Polarization in Perspective
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Table 10.9: Class – Unweighted Percent Contribution & Mean Deviation on GP on Ideology, 1972-2004
year where their size greatly enhanced their contribution to class polarization on the ideological dimension. The paucity of significant intra-class polarization on ideology, if not apparent already, is definitive in the contribution trend models in Table 10.10. At the extremes of class, for both the poor and the rich, there has been no trend in contribution to class polarization on ideology for either the weighted or unweighted measures. In the weighted model, the only significant time trend is for the lower category of the middle class, and that is a negative trend (-0.208) indicating a declining contribution to polarization. There is an interesting juxtaposition of the upper middle class and the rich apparent in the unweighted trend models, where the upper middle class has contributed more to group polarization (0.345) while the rich have moved in the opposite direction, contributing less over time (-0.668). The weighted percent contribution models and the unweighted percent contributions both have two categories that have significant trends in their contribution to polarization dependent upon the party of the presidential administration. While the upper middle class doesn’t have a significant trend in their percent contribution when you account for group size, it is significant in the equal-size models and in both measures the upper middle class are greater contributors to polarization during Democratic administrations rather than Republican administrations (-9.164 weighted; -8.355 unweighted). Again, as mentioned earlier, this could be an aftershock of the southern white middle class becoming increasingly Republican since the 1960’s. The lower middle class are an increasing contributor to class polarization on ideology during Democratic administrations (3.195) and, perhaps not unsurprisingly so are the rich (13.206). Given the differing policies on the top marginal tax rates between Democrats and Republicans, there is a certain logic to the rich contributing more to polarization during Democratic rather than Republican administrations on the ideological dimension.
Class Conclusions While there are some interesting trends in the individual contributions of the classes to partisanship and ideology, there is little evidence of strong intra-class trends in ideological or partisan polarization, nor is there evidence of such trends for overall class as a group. The evidence on ideology and polarization all point to one conclusion: Frank’s story of unwitting poor and working class voters co-opted by the Republicans through, as Obama might put it, appeals on their guns and relation, is largely mythical. There’s nothing the matter with Kansas. Or, at least, the working poor voting Republican based on the party’s stance on social issues is not the problem. If anything, it is the wealthier Americans who have driven what class polarization is apparent in partisanship and ideology. Religiosity, Secularization and the Culture Wars “This [rise of secularism], not the supposed right-wing religious revival that conservatives champion and liberals dread, is the newest new thing in American political life, and the trend that's likely to have the most impact on the culture wars over the next decade or so.” – Ross Douthat In 1990, those reporting no affiliation with a religious tradition were 8% of the population. In 2009, a survey conducted by Trinity College indicates that number has risen to 15%, a near doubling of the atheist/agnostics in the country (Kosmin and Keysar 2009). According to the survey most nones are neither atheists nor theists but rather agnonstics and deists (59%). The 1990’s witnessed 1.3 million Americans join the ranks of the “Nones” every year. This makes “Nones” the fastest growing segment of the national religious landscape. Why have religiosity factors only recently exhibited partisan and political polarization, given the long religious tradition in North America? The answer: the growth of seculars. As we saw in the discussion on polarization theory, a key factor in polarization as an effective determinant of political conflict is identification. It isn’t enough to be divided, there must be a substantial proportion of the population located at those distant positions (DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson 1996; Duclos, Esteban, and Ray 2004; Esteban and Ray 1994) As Hout and Fischer document, the proportion of Americans who reported no religious preference doubled from 7 percent to 14 percent in the 1990’s. Furthermore, the percentage of adults who had been raised with no religion increased from 2 percent to 6 percent (Hout and Fischer 2002). While they did not find a rise in religious skepticism (given that the no religion identifiers hold conventional religious beliefs), they are alienated from organized religion and there is a distinct political dimension, as the rise of the “no religion” identifiers occurred exclusively among liberals and moderates. As Paul Waldman notes, research has shown that evangelicals who live near atheists become more politically conservative. “Whatever the answer is, the possibility does seem real for secularism to achieve a new awakening of its own as a political and social movement.” As he notes, non-believers can now claim their first publicly open member of Congress (Pete Stark of California), and they have their own lobbying group (Waldman 2007). This suggests that as secularism becomes more of an identity, it too could generate further political activism. Indeed this reactionary polarization is exactly the sort that tends to lead to political conflict, as not only do the current majorities view the insurgent group as more of a threat, but the growing opposition group increasingly associate based on the group characteristic and feel a connection with those citizens who share it. The encroachment of secularism seems to push at least some evangelicals to identify more closely with their own religious tribe, and to vote accordingly. One secular person in your town is a lone lost soul; ten are a threat to your way of life. (Waldman 2007) Again, as long as traditional social mores were consensus issues, it didn’t matter what its relative placement on the secular-religious scale was. With the growth of seculars (i.e. the increase in density), the religious skeptics and alienated believers were not merely distant from traditionalists on social issues, but they, according to alienation-identification polarization, increasingly identify with fellow seculars (Duclos, Esteban, and Ray 2004; Esteban and Ray 1994). In other words, the greater the number of seculars in society the more likely they are to identify with one another as a non-religious group and the more likely that is to factor in to political conflict. Group identification promotes group-oriented behavior, and that includes the realm of partisan politics. Religiosity Polarization on Partisanship Table 10.11 demonstrates how increasing secularization has contributed to the culture wars.73 It reports the polarization scores for religiosity on party identification from 1970 to 2004. Note the near-absence of polarization on party identification in the 1970’s (0.022). Two factors contribute to this: 1) the public was much more religious at the time and thus the religiously observant was a politically diverse class of citizens, 2) the seculars were a minute portion of the public (accounting for less than 10 percent of respondents). This would all change over the course of the next three decades. By 2004, Table 10.11: Religiosity – Decomposition of Group Polarization on Party ID, 1970-2004 Download 4.38 Mb. Share with your friends:
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