ABSTRACT
The words "conservative" and "liberal" or "right" and "left" in everyday language imply that political ideology can be laid out along a simple one-dimensional scale. This chapter discusses study that does not seek to diminish the importance of economic issues. But issues of the free market versus government welfare are a subset of ideological issues. Ideology is treated as consisting of four independent dimensions that emerge from a statistical analysis (i.e., a factor analysis) of elites' political and social attitudes. The statistical analysis presented in the chapter places economic, social, and national security issues methodologically on an equal footing. The findings are based on a unique set of survey data on American elites, conducted by Rothman Stanley and S. Robert Lichter during the late 1970s and 1980s. The chapter demonstrates how divided American elites really are. The idea of a ruling class is of limited relevance today.
