Someone can hold a strong ideological identity while lacking its policy contents.

Evidence

One respondent whom we encountered classified himself as a strong Socialist. He was a Socialist because he knew that Socialists stood four-square for the working man against the rich, and he was a working man. When asked, however, whether or not the federal government in Washington “should leave things like electric power and housing for private businessmen to handle,” he felt strongly that private enterprise should have its way, and responses to other structured issue questions were simply uncorrelated with standard socialist doctrine. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1892

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to contemporary findings on political tribes and identity-based (rather than issue-based) partisanship — e.g., work by Lilliana Mason on social identity sorting. — connects to: Shared ideological critique did not yet imply a clear program of positive policy — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 167; A nominee lacking a paper trail fails to satisfy ideological gatekeepers — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 364
• CANDY: The self-identified Socialist who wants private enterprise to run things is a striking, tweetable example of identity without doctrine.