Ideological consistency declines sharply from elites to mass publics

Evidence

Whatever problems are posed for description by the diffuseness of the issue base of mass politics, the most important insights are to be gained from the fact that ideological constraints in belief systems decline with decreasing political information, which is to say that they are present among elites at the “top” of political systems, or subsystems and disappear rather rapidly as one moves “downward” into their mass clienteles. We see the importance of this fact in a number of standard phenomena of both routine and crisis politics. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1962

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the knowledge gap hypothesis and Zaller’s RAS model of opinion formation predicated on differential information levels. — connects to: Ideological constraint declines sharply and non-elite publics hold disconnected idea clusters. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 1875; Elite ideological battles can pass almost unwitnessed by mass publics — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 1970; Affluent-proxy preferences understate the true gap between elites and ordinary citizens. — Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics:…, 105 (+1 more)