Most citizens form opinions on isolated issues without linking them ideologically

Evidence

For the truly involved citizen, the development of political sophistication means the absorption of contextual information that makes clear to him the connections of the policy area of his initial interest with policy differences in other areas; and that these broader configurations of policy positions are describable quite economically in the basic abstractions of ideology. Most members of the mass public, however, fail to proceed so far. Certain rather concrete issues may capture their respective individual attentions and lead to some politically relevant opinion formation. This engagement of attention remains narrow however: Other issue concerns that any sophisticated observer would see as “ideologically” related to the initial concern tend not to be thus associated in any breadth or number. The common citizen fails to develop more global points of view about politics. A realistic picture of political belief systems in the mass public, then, is not one that omits issues and policy demands completely nor one that presumes widespread ideological coherence; it is rather one that captures with some fidelity the fragmentation, narrowness, and diversity of these demands. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1958

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Converse’s original ‘The Nature of Belief Systems’ argument about low constraint among mass publics, and to the broader ‘innocent eye’ / issue publics literature. — connects to: Citizens often lack formed preferences absent forums for collective deliberation — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 313