Essay 2 Ideology and Typologies Monday October 7 2024 9 54 PM Much of the public discourse about public policies is grounded in ideological terms i e conservative vs liberals After b riefly summarizing objectively three basic premises of modern conservatism and modern liberalism discuss whether the conservative liberal policy typology is a useful way to describe and analyze policy Why or why not What are the benefits and shortcomings of labeling an idea organization or a person as a li beral or conservative Would other typologies be more useful and productive Ideology is useful for political election campaigns because interpreting voters policy preferences in elections for public o ffice is notoriously difficult People have many different reasons for voting for a candidate ranging from simple name familiarity to appreciation for their local representatives efforts to aid constituents with problems with federal programs known as casework and described in Chapter 4 to local political consider ations that have little to do with national ideology or policy issues During election campaigns candidates can package their policy decisions in a way that th ey believe is most attractive to local voters realizing that casework and redistributive spending also known as pork barrel spending may have more of an influence on electoral success than legislative decisions Furthermore elections happen at fixed times and politicians have fixed terms two four and six year s for the House of Representatives president and Senate respectively Once the election is held some elected officials need not worry about voters with respe ct to daily policy decisions particularly if they represent safe districts Still while the connection between voting and policy is sometimes tenuous elections are important because they do have an influence on the broad policy agenda and because they determine the partisan composition of Congress and other leg islative bodies Parties do have different positions on issues and the partisan balance in the legislature can influence what policies are most likely t o succeed or fail Even a cursory review of recent lawmaking in the United States should thoroughly debunk the sometimes aired complaint that there s no difference between the parties p 63 birkland statute law the laws that are drafted and passed in the legislature and codified in the statute books such as United States Code or yo ur state s statute books Case law often determines the constitutional bounds under which the legislature and the executive branch operate or explains how the Constitution requires them to make or not make particular types of policies References Bulman Pozen J 2014 February 20 Partisan Federalism Harvard Law Review Harvard Law Review https harvardlawreview org print vol 127 partisan federalism Tyler C 2021 The Myth of the Laboratories of Democracy SSRN Electronic Journal https doi org 10 2139 ssrn 3902092 Savage C Healy J 2024 March 20 Texas Migrant Law Is Latest Test of America vs Its States Nytimes com The New York Times https www nytimes com 2024 03 20 us politics texas law states immigration migrants html searchResultPosition 6 Xu X Burton C M Plaks J E 2022 Three Dimensions of American Conservative Political Orientation Differentially Predict Negativity Bias and Satisfaction With Life Social Psychological Personality Science 13 8 1230 1245 https doi org 10 1177 19485506211057976 XU et al Xiaxowen Xu and his collegues sought to reconcile the contridiction of political conservatism with negativity bias whereas o thers have linked conservatism with indicators of positive adjustment by examining whether distinct dimensions of conservatism differentially p redicted measures of negativity bias and positive adjustment publishing their findings in November 2022 Conservatives Experience Stronger Negativity Bias Although people in general allot greater psychological weight to negative than positive stimuli Rozin Royzman 2001 this bias appears especially pronounced among conservatives Hibbing et al 2014 Jost and colleagues 2003 highlighted two principal negative outcomes that conservatives appear particularly keen to avoid uncertainty and threat They suggested that anxieties aroused by uncertainty and threat are minimized by policies that support the status quo Jost et al 2007 The occurrence of conservative shifts after threat inducing events Nail McGregor 2009 further bolstered the idea that conservative ideology addresses uncertainty or anxiety in a way that liberal ideology does not Moreover this greater negativity bias extends to nonpolitical areas of life with conservatives relative to liberals reporting stronger negative emotions following negative politically irrelevant events e g committing a romantic faux pas Joel et al 2014 Overall multiple studies support the idea that conservative individuals are more sensitive than liberals to negative outcomes Conservatism Is Associated With Life Satisfaction A largely separate literature paints a different picture Multiple research teams have reported that conservatives tend to sc ore higher than liberals on measures of happiness and life satisfaction Several reasons have been suggested for these associations conserva tives are more likely to a have higher socioeconomic status b hold transcendent moral beliefs c hold greater system justifying beliefs and Week 5 Page 1 more likely to a have higher socioeconomic status b hold transcendent moral beliefs c hold greater system justifying beliefs and d score higher in personal agency Thus whereas one literature suggests that conservatives compared with liberals are more sensitive to negativity or threat another literature suggests that conservatives are happier Addressing this paradox Hibbing and colleagues 2014 noted that one could be more inclined to notice and respond to negative stimuli without being dispositionally haunted by a heavy be havioral inhibition bias These studies explore the possibility that reconceptualizing conservatism in a more nuanced way might pinpoint specific dimensions of conservatism that are related to life satisfaction on one hand and negative reactivity on the other hand Such data may help to reconcile several seemingly contradictory policy choices not all components of conservatism are motivated by the desire to reduce contamination Disgust sensitivity was strongly asso ciated with valuing moral traditions but not with unease about ethnic mixing Notably higher emphasis on liberty