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Is There a Culture War? Conflicting Value Structures in American Public Opinion

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  • JACOBY, WILLIAM G.

Abstract

This article examines the “culture war” hypothesis by focusing on American citizens’ choices among a set of core values. A geometric model is developed to represent differences in the ways that individuals rank-order seven important values: freedom, equality, economic security, social order, morality, individualism, and patriotism. The model is fitted to data on value choices from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. The empirical results show that there is an enormous amount of heterogeneity among individual value choices; the model estimates contradict any notion that there is a consensus on fundamental principles within the mass public. Further, the differences break down along political lines, providing strong evidence that there is a culture war generating fundamental divisions within twenty-first century American society.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacoby, William G., 2014. "Is There a Culture War? Conflicting Value Structures in American Public Opinion," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 108(4), pages 754-771, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:108:y:2014:i:04:p:754-771_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Adam M. Enders & Jason Gainous & Kevin M. Wagner, 2022. "Say it again with feeling: Issue ownership and candidate communication using Twitter," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(4), pages 959-974, July.
    2. Jha, Anand & Boudreaux, Christopher J. & Banerjee, Vasabjit, 2018. "Political leanings and social capital," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 95-105.
    3. Petter Törnberg & Claes Andersson & Kristian Lindgren & Sven Banisch, 2021. "Modeling the emergence of affective polarization in the social media society," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(10), pages 1-17, October.
    4. Christopher Hare & Tzu-Ping Liu & Robert N. Lupton, 2018. "What Ordered Optimal Classification reveals about ideological structure, cleavages, and polarization in the American mass public," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 176(1), pages 57-78, July.
    5. Elliott Ash & Massimo Morelli & Richard Van Weelden, 2015. "Elections and Divisiveness: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 21422, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Zhu, Haikun, 2018. "Essays on political economy of finance and fintech," Other publications TiSEM 93f94423-e671-4041-bb24-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. Sharan Grewal & Matthew D. Cebul, 2023. "Can Religious Reinterpretations Bridge the Secular-Religious Divide? Experimental Evidence from Tunisia," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 67(2-3), pages 428-456, February.
    8. Neureiter, Michael & Bhattacharya, C.B., 2021. "Why do boycotts sometimes increase sales? Consumer activism in the age of political polarization," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 64(5), pages 611-620.
    9. Tella, Rafael Di & Rotemberg, Julio J., 2018. "Populism and the return of the “Paranoid Style”: Some evidence and a simple model of demand for incompetence as insurance against elite betrayal," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 988-1005.
    10. Braggion, Fabio & Manconi, Alberto & Zhu, Haikun, 2020. "Credit and social unrest: Evidence from 1930s China," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 295-315.
    11. Timothy J. Ryan, 2017. "No Compromise: Political Consequences of Moralized Attitudes," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 61(2), pages 409-423, April.
    12. Hao, Liang & Rong, Wang & Haikun, Zhu, 2020. "Growing up under Mao and Deng : On the ideological determinants of corporate policies," BOFIT Discussion Papers 20/2020, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    13. repec:zbw:bofitp:2020_020 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Shah M. Tarzi, 2019. "The Trump Divide and Partisan Attitudes Regarding US Foreign Policy: Select Theoretical and Empirical Observations," International Studies, , vol. 56(1), pages 46-57, January.
    15. Arnaud Wolff, 2022. "The Signaling Value of Social Identity," Working Papers of BETA 2022-15, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    16. Branden B. Johnson & Brendon Swedlow, 2021. "Cultural Theory's Contributions to Risk Analysis: A Thematic Review with Directions and Resources for Further Research," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(3), pages 429-455, March.
    17. Liang, Hao & Wang, Rong & Zhu, Haikun, 2020. "Growing up under Mao and Deng: On the ideological determinants of corporate policies," BOFIT Discussion Papers 20/2020, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).

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