Party identification and core political values are central elements in the political belief systems of ordinary citizens. Are these predispositions related to one another? Does party identification influence core political values or are partisan identities grounded in such values? This article draws upon theoretical works on partisan information processing and value-based reasoning to derive competing hypotheses about whether partisanship shapes political values or political values shape partisanship. The hypotheses are tested by using structural equation modeling techniques to estimate dynamic models of attitude stability and constraint with data from the 1992-94-96 National Election Study panel survey. The analyses reveal that partisan identities are more stable than the principles of equal opportunity, limited government, traditional family values, and moral tolerance; party identification constrains equal opportunity, limited government, and moral tolerance; and these political values do not constrain party identification.

This article examines the conditions under which partisan identities shape the positions people express on four political values: equal opportunity, self-reliance, moral traditionalism, and moral tolerance. The theoretical framework posits that (1) party source cues activate latent partisan biases in the minds of citizens, which in turn affect the degree to which individuals express support for these values; (2) out-party cues are more powerful motivators of value expression than in-party cues; (3) value shifts are more pronounced when liberal-conservative identities reinforce partisan sentiments; and (4) partisan cues promote horizontal constraint among these values. These hypotheses are tested using data from a set of experiments appearing on a novel national survey. The empirical results generally support these theoretical expectations. P arty identification represents the most stable and influential political predisposition in the belief systems of ordinary citizens. As Campbell and his colleagues put it many years ago, "party has a profound influence across the full range of political objects to which the individual voter responds" (1960, 128). The influence of party over short-term political objects is well established. Accumulated research demonstrates that party shapes judgments about the economy, presidential approval, candidate evaluations, voter choice, and policy preferences (Bartels 2002;Green and Palmquist 1990;Goren 2002;Layman and Carsey 2002). Does party also shape evaluations of more abstract and enduring objects such as political values? And do party cues promote constraint among political values? If the answer to each of these questions is yes, then the influence of partisanship over political judgment may be even more profound than Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes imagined.This article seeks to strengthen the case for partisan influence by examining whether partisan source cues (1) lead party identifiers to modify their expressions of support for a series of political values and (2) enhance Miller, the four anonymous reviewers, and Marianne Stewart for their comments and suggestions on how to improve earlier versions of the manuscript. All remaining errors are our own. constraint between these values in mass belief systems. We make two fundamental theoretical claims. First, we identify conditions under which party cues should affect support for political values. Our theory holds that party source cues activate latent partisan biases in the minds of individuals, which in turn affect their willingness to express support for several core political values-equal opportunity, self-reliance, moral traditionalism, and moral tolerance; that out-party cues manifest stronger influence than in-party cues; and that these effects are most pronounced among ideologically congruent partisans. Second, our theory maintains that party cues augment value constraint. In this way, value structure can be seen as a partial function of partisan cue taking.We utilize data from a series of experiments embedded wit...

Party identification and core political values are central elements in the political belief systems of ordinary citizens. Are these predispositions related to one another? Does party identification influence core political values or are partisan identities grounded in such values? This article draws upon theoretical works on partisan information processing and value-based reasoning to derive competing hypotheses about whether partisanship shapes political values or political values shape partisanship. The hypotheses are tested by using structural equation modeling techniques to estimate dynamic models of attitude stability and constraint with data from the 1992-94-96 National Election Study panel survey. The analyses reveal that partisan identities are more stable than the principles of equal opportunity, limited government, traditional family values, and moral tolerance; party identification constrains equal opportunity, limited government, and moral tolerance; and these political values do not constrain party identification.

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