{"id":4328,"date":"2003-11-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4328"},"modified":"2003-11-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-11-12T00:00:00","slug":"political-ideology-websites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4328","title":{"rendered":"political ideology websites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This summer, I began work on a website that would ask visitors some<\/p>\n<p>questions and then tell them their ideology. I got caught up with the<\/p>\n<p>technical difficulties and never completed the project. However, I believe<\/p>\n<p>it could be useful, since most people I know use ideology as a heuristic.<\/p>\n<p>That is, we don&#8217;t have the time to make a very precise and nuanced evaluation<\/p>\n<p>of each candidate for each office. Instead, we start with the assumption<\/p>\n<p>that we are liberals, conservatives, moderates, libertarians, feminists,<\/p>\n<p>environmentalists, or proponents of some other ideology, and then we<\/p>\n<p>use cues in the candidates&#8217; speech and behavior to decide which politicians<\/p>\n<p>come closest to our ideology. CIRCLE surveys show that those young people<\/p>\n<p>who have no ideology do not vote, which suggests that this shortcut<\/p>\n<p>is essential.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>There are some websites that use a quiz format to generate an ideological<\/p>\n<p>profile. I have found a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.3pc.net\/matchmaker\/quiz.html\">Party<\/p>\n<p>Matchmaking Quiz<\/a> and a <a href=\"http:\/\/selectsmart.com\/PRESIDENT\/\">2004<\/p>\n<p>American Presidential Selector<\/a>. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.self-gov.org\/quiz.html\">World&#8217;s<\/p>\n<p>Smallest Political Quiz <\/a>is fairly trivial, but the <a href=\"http:\/\/selectsmart.com\/FREE\/select.php?client=zeron\">Ideology<\/p>\n<p>Selector<\/a> is more ambitious. The <a href=\"http:\/\/madrabbit.net\/webrabbit\/quizshow.html\">Political<\/p>\n<p>Quiz Show<\/a> uses an old question battery but is now online.<\/p>\n<p>A few observations: First, the ideological spectrum tends to be presented<\/p>\n<p>as unidimensional (left-right), whereas the real political map is more<\/p>\n<p>complicated. (By the way, a complicated view of politics makes the programming<\/p>\n<p>task more difficult, because ideology can&#8217;t be measured on a 1-100 scale).<\/p>\n<p>Second, even though the quizzes aren&#8217;t very serious, they may be too<\/p>\n<p>hard, because they ask for opinions about <em>official policies <\/em>which<\/p>\n<p>people may never have heard of. I would prefer to see questions about<\/p>\n<p>underlying values and social problems. Finally, there should be some<\/p>\n<p>feedback. People should be shown what ideology they seem to endorse<\/p>\n<p>and then presented with a general description of that ideology and its<\/p>\n<p>rivals. If they agree with the general description, then their specific<\/p>\n<p>views are consistent with their overall philosophy, and they can go<\/p>\n<p>forth and vote. If, however, there is some tension, then they should<\/p>\n<p>be invited to develop their thinking . (For those with a taste for political<\/p>\n<p>philosophy, this would be a way of implementing John Rawls&#8217; theory of<\/p>\n<p>reflective equilibrium.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This summer, I began work on a website that would ask visitors some questions and then tell them their ideology. I got caught up with the technical difficulties and never completed the project. However, I believe it could be useful, since most people I know use ideology as a heuristic. That is, we don&#8217;t have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-and-public-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}