Models of Nationalism: A Case Study of Political Ideologies in the Canadian West

Abstract

While equality may be the keystone of democratic theory, the descriptive keystones of democratic reality are inequality and stratification. The gradations of political influence, power and participation found among citizens are frequently steep. Stratification, moreover, characterizes the very way in which people think about the political world. Philip Converse has argued convincingly that, as we move through political strata from activists to the mass public, the scope, integration and stability of political thought are dramatically transformed. 1 Belief systems exhibiting considerable breadth, consistency and stability rapidly give way to political thought that is fragmented, mercurial and of limited range. The change, in fact, is so great that the very existence of ideological political belief systems among mass publics is open to serious question.The general thrust of political opinion research in the United States and Britain has been supportive of the Converse position. 2 Ideologies of reasonable scope, consistency and political centrality appear to be rare indeed outside the activist elite, if not within. 3 It follows, then, that ideological concepts and terminologies may be of limited utility in studying the political beliefs of the general public.Nevertheless, such beliefs continue to be analytically cast in ideological moulds. One of the most pervasive of these moulds is 1

National Images of Canada and the United States: Their Structure, Coherence, and Meaning

“…An example of use of the semantic differential to ascertain images of Canadians and Americans is provided by Gibbins (1977). The following instructions were given before asking for responses to different sets of semantic differential scales for each of eleven objects.…”