<<  <  >  >>

Figure 1

American Ideologies: A Four-Way Matrix

Government Intervention in Economic Affairs

For

Against

Liberal

Libertarian

Expansion of

For

Populist

Conservative

Personal Freedoms

Against

Source: William S. Maddox and Stuart A. Lilie, Beyond Liberal and Conservative (Washington: Cato Institute,

1984), p. 5.

and Lilie suggested two basic reasons for the

questions, they categorized respondents as lib-

increase: a general shift in the electorate

eral, conservative, libertarian, or populist. Of

Evidence shows

toward skepticism about government inter-

course, even with four categories instead of two,

that not all

vention and support for expanded personal

they still found 15 to 25 percent of poll respon-

liberties, and a generational shift as the more

dents impossible to classify ideologically.

Americans are in

libertarian baby-boom generation became a

(Libertarians would probably consider the

fact either liberal,

larger part of the electorate (Table 1).

opposite of "libertarian" to be "statist" or even

conservative, or

Maddox and Lilie weren't the only ones

"authoritarian," rather than "populist." But

reconsidering the political spectrum in the

those are ideologically charged terms, and polit-

confused.

early 1980s. In the Almanac of American Politics

ical scientists have tended toward the term

1982, Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa

"populist" to mean those who tend to support

offered a similar four-way matrix of political

both government intervention in the economy

beliefs. "Strictly on the basis of intuition,"

and restrictions on personal freedoms.)

they suggested that 30 percent of the popula-

After tabulating the data, they found that

tion could be described as liberal on econom-

libertarians were 17.7 percent of the electorate

ic issues and conservative on cultural issues

in 1980, up from 9.4 percent in 1972. Maddox

Table 1

Distribution of Ideological Types in the 1970s (percent)

Ideological Category

1972

1976

1980

Liberal

17.3

16.4

24.4

Populist

30.0

23.7

26.3

Conservative

18.3

18.0

16.5

Libertarian

9.4

13.0

17.7

Inattentive

5.7

9.6

4.6

Divided

19.2

19.2

10.6

Total1

99.9

99.9

100.1

(n = 1176)

(n = 2403)

(n = 1408)

Source: William S. Maddox and Stuart A. Lilie, Beyond Liberal and Conservative (Washington: Cato Institute, 1984),

p. 68.

1

Totals vary slightly because of rounding.

4