Conflict Extension and the Limited Mass Response to Elite Issue Convergence and Polarization

We argue that the growing polarization between and ideological consistency of the social welfare, racial, and cultural stands of Democratic and Republican elites should provoke a response in mass policy attitudes, but it should be a limited one. For a segment of the electorate, we expect an attitudinal convergence similar to that im­plied by the ideological realignment research. However, for much, perhaps most, of the mass electorate, attitudes toward different issue agendas should remain distinct and cross-cutting.

The extent to which citizens' issue attitudes reflect the increasingly unidimensional and polarized pattern of party elites should be shaped by two key factors: the strength of individuals' party affiliations and the degree to which they are aware of the polarization of the Demo­cratic and Republican parties on multiple issue agendas.¹ Zaller (1992) suggests that citizens are most likely to re­ceive and accept political cues from elites who share their own political predispositions. Thus, as party elites grow more polarized on social welfare, racial, and cultural matters, Democratic and Republican identifiers, particu­larly strong identifiers, should be more likely than politi­cal independents to bring their own attitudes on the three agendas toward consistently liberal or consistently conservative positions.

Of course, not all party identifiers, even strong party identifiers, are likely to follow the ideological lead of party elites. Many scholars note that politically sophisti­cated citizens are most likely to structure their own pref­erences in a manner consistent with elite-level cues (Converse 1964; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991;

'Others have made similar arguments, but we take these ideas in new theoretical and empirical directions. For example, Zaller notes the likely connection between political awareness and attitude constraint (1992, 113-114), but does not examine attitude con­straint empirically nor does he examine the link between aware­ness and partisan change on multiple issue dimensions. Nie, Verba, and Petrocik (1976) note the role of party distinctiveness on issues in shaping levels of mass attitude constraint, but they do not con­sider the link between either partisanship or political awareness and attitude consistency. Carmines and Stimson (1989, chapter 5) make an argument similar to ours in terms of the "bundling" of racial and social welfare issues by party elites, but they do not ex­amine empirically how party identification might shape levels of mass attitude constraint. Moreover, they do not consider the pos­sibility of conflict extension across the two issue agendas and in­stead focus on conflict displacement by noting the coincidence of growing party polarization on racial issues and declining polariza­tion on social welfare.

CONFLICT EXTENSION IN THE U. S. ELECTORATE

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Sniderman 2000; Box-Steffensmeier and De Boef 2001). Zaller (1992) shows that the individuals most likely to receive and accept elite-level cues consistent with their political predispositions are those with high levels of po­litical "awareness." Zaller's definition of awareness en­compasses several indicators of political sophistication and attentiveness, but, for us, the crucial element is rec­ognition of where the parties and their candidates stand relative to each other on political issues (cf. Carmines, Renten, and Stimson 1984). The only party identifiers who should receive a clear signal from their party leaders to bring their views on cross-cutting issue agendas such as social welfare and culture together are those who rec­ognize that the Democratic and Republican parties have staked out distinctly liberal and conservative positions, respectively, on each set of issues.

In sum, the only citizens we expect to respond to the developments observed among party elites by bringing their own views on different issue dimensions closer to­gether are party identifiers, particularly strong partisans, who are aware of party polarization on all of those di­mensions. The aggregate consequence of this limited in­dividual-level response should be conflict extension: a growth in mass party polarization on multiple distinct issue dimensions. Because many, if not most, citizens are not likely to respond to the changing elite cues, the electorate's attitudes toward the different policy agendas should remain distinct in the aggregate. However, the movement of politically-aware Democrats and Republi­cans toward the uniformly liberal and conservative social welfare, racial, and cultural stands of their parties' elites should lead to a stronger aggregate relationship between the three dimensions of policy attitudes, thereby pushing the aggregate views of the parties in the electorate toward more polarized positions on each issue dimension.

Mass Awareness, Dimensionality,

and Partisan Change: The Aggregate-Level Evidence

In this section, we display several aggregate patterns that are more compatible with our conflict extension per­spective than with the conflict displacement or ideologi­cal realignment arguments. The growth in party elite po­larization of course has not been monotonic. It has instead occurred in fits and starts, with the level of polar­ization varying with changes in party leadership, the electoral cycle, and the varied campaign strategies and agendas of particular party candidates. Because citizens

respond to both long-term political patterns and short-term fluctuations in elite debate (Nie, Verba, and Petrocik 1976; Zaller 1992), the aggregate patterns we re­port exhibit some fluctuation around the general trend. However, that trend is one of growing mass awareness of party elite polarization and growing mass party polariza­tion on multiple, distinct issue dimensions.

Awareness of issue differences between the parties depends not just on the attentiveness and cognitive abili­ties of individual citizens, but also on the degree of polar­ization between party elites (Hetherington 2001). So, as the parties' elites grow more polarized on social welfare, racial, and cultural issues, the proportion of the elector­ate that understands that the Republican party is more conservative than the Democratic party on all three policy dimensions should increase. Table 1 shows that this has occurred on three social welfare issues (govern­ment guarantee of jobs and a good standard of living, government services and spending, and government pro­vision of health insurance),² one racial issue (govern­ment responsibility to help African-Americans), and two cultural issues (women's role in society and abortion) on which respondents to the 1972 through 2000 National Election Studies (NES) were asked to place the positions of the two parties.³

Despite some short-term fluctuation, a clear trend emerges: on every issue except abortion, the percentage of the electorate-and particularly of party identifiers-recognizing that the GOP is more conservative than the Democratic party was higher in 1996 than at any other point in the time series.⁴ That was true in 1992 for

²Awareness of party differences is measured as follows. First, the only observations treated as missing are those respondents who were not asked one or both questions (placement of Democrats, placement of Republicans) on the particular issue. Second, the re­spondents coded as placing the two parties correctly on the issue are those who placed the Republicans as more conservative than the Democrats. All other respondents are coded as not placing the parties correctly on the issue.

³The 2000 NES interviewed roughly half (1,006) of its respondents in person and roughly half (801) of its respondents over the phone. Since the 1972 study, the NES has measured respondents' attitudes and their perceptions of party and candidate positions on many issues (including all of the issues in Table 1 except abortion) by asking them to place themselves, the two parties, and candidates on seven-point scales. The face-to-face interviews in 2000 used the traditional seven-point scale format, but the phone interviews used a branching format resulting in issue scales with only five cat­egories. To maintain continuity with the NES surveys from 1972 through 1996, our analysis includes only the face-to-face respon­dents in 2000.

⁴In 1992, 1996, and 2000, there were some instances in which the NES did not ask respondents to place the two parties on the issue scales, but did ask them to place the major-party presidential

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GEOFFREY С. LAYMAN AND THOMAS M. CARSEY