A note on classifying ideological postures

Most common classification is right vs. left.  Its main problem is that it is it is based on conventional ideological content of political parties in European parliamentary system or its US version conservative vs. liberal, which makes it too context specific.  Ideological contents change so this distinction does not explain how people find an “ideological compass” to align themselves with ideological factions with totally new content.  For example, ideologically the Republican Party circa 1860 is the polar opposite of the Republican Party circa 2000, Communist parties circa 1900 are the polar opposite of the Soviet Communist Party circa 1930.  What is more, people often switch political affiliation e.g. Eastern European immigrants who used to be Communist party functionaries switch to the Republican Party upon arriving in the US.  This cannot be explained by the draw of the ideological content.

Another classification is authoritarian vs. liberal.  It is based on cognitive theory linking different modes of cognition to personality types.  From a cognitive point of view, people who have low tolerance for ambiguous moral situations in everyday life and are naturally drawn into authoritarian ideologies and viewpoints that offer them a “mental crutch” to straighten out these ambiguities.  Folks who have high tolerance for ambiguous moral situation are drawn to liberal live-and-let live ideologies.  This approach does better in explaining “ideological turncoats” i.e. why followers of one ideological content in one situation switch to another ideological contents in another situation.  The explanation is their ‘internal compass’ that senses authoritarian vs liberal style of various ideologies and follows this style depending on the personality type.  However, this approach does not do well explaining why certain ideological contents attract both authoritarian and liberal types in the same context.  For example, it does not explain why liberal ideologies in the US attract both liberal and authoritarian personalities.

That explanation can be provided when we add the power dimension.  Power is a central concept in sociology and pursuit of power is perhaps the most universal after sex motivators of human behavior.  However, not all people have the same conceptions of power.  The original authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al.) distinguished two personality types – authoritarian and liberal- based on conceptualization of power relations.  For authoritarians, power is concrete and vested in individuals, whereas for liberals power is abstract and vested in principles.  This is a different distinction than that based on cognitive approach emphasizing tolerance of ambiguity. 

Putting it all together, ideological preferences can be classified on two dimensions that are relatively independent of each other: tolerance of ambiguity (low vs. high) and conceptualization of power (concrete vested in person and abstract vested in principle).  This results in a four-fold classification shown below.

	Concept of power
Tolerance of ambiguity	Concrete vested in person	Abstract vested in principles
Low	Charismatic authoritarian (e.g. gang leader)	Bureaucratic authoritarian e.g. “grass Nazi” priest or NKVD functionary
High	Perfectionist/ high achiever/libertarian (e.g. saints, Gandhi)	Liberal or anarchist egalitarian (cf. ethnography of them by David Graeber)

Stated differently, people have two compasses pointing in somewhat different directions.  One helps them to follow authoritarian or liberal ideologies defined by doctrinaire rigidity.  Folks with low tolerance for ambiguity will be attracted to rigid doctrines, and folks with high tolerance of ambiguity will follow flexible doctrines.  The second compass will help them align with ideologies emphasizing different conceptions of power: concrete vs. abstract.  Since political parties, ideologies, religions, etc. are not monolithic but embody factions emphasizing different levels of rigidity and different conceptions of power, they may attract both authoritarian and liberal personalities who paradoxically share common ideological content defining this party or religion (e.g. liberal vs. authoritarian Catholics, Muslims, Communists etc.).  For example, a “grass Nazi” reporting his neighbors to authorities for slight transgressions of sanitation or building codes (e.g. their grass being an inch higher than the limit specified in the code) may share the same abstract conception of power (abstract) as liberal egalitarians but he will be at odds with them on the tolerance of ambiguity.  A functionary of the Communist party may share the same concept of power (abstract) as an anarchist egalitarian, but the two will fight over tolerance of ambiguity.

Likewise, both gang leaders and saints may share the same concept of power – concrete vested in person- but differ in their tolerance of ambiguity.  A charismatic gang leader will not tolerate any ambiguity and fight any attempt to upset the rigid hierarchical order (i.e. each time he feels ‘dissed’). A saint, by contrast, has a high tolerance of ambiguity and will raise above it by achieving personal perfection i.e. power vested in his person that is immune to ambiguities of everyday life.