ABSTRACT
Decades ago, John L. Sullivan and his colleagues urged caution in making the common inference that not organizing diverse political attitudes along the right versus left dimension implies a lack of functional connection across ordinary people’s political attitudes. Although the right versus left dimension organizes political attitudes among elites, some citizens might structure their attitudes on the basis of different principles. In line with this perspective, this chapter considers an attitude structure that contrasts an orientation toward cultural and economic protection with an orientation toward cultural and economic freedom, with each of these attitude bundles including some right-wing and some left-wing preferences. This approach draws on ideas emphasized in Sullivan’s work—that measurement practices and inattention to contextual variation have obscured the prevalence of this form of attitude organization. Furthermore, it is argued that content overlap, failure to use pure measures of economic attitudes, and failure to consider variation in national context and exposure to political discourse have resulted in widespread acceptance within psychology of some misleading conclusions about the nature and structure of political ideology. Finally, the chapter argues that protection-freedom attitude organization is—on a global scale—more prevalent than right-left attitude organization.
