4.8 - Ideology and Policymaking

The Influence of Ideology on Policy

• Eras of Dominance: American history moves through stretches where one ideology clearly has the upper hand. Sometimes the country leans more liberal for an extended period, and sometimes it leans more conservative. These shifts usually track with major elections, economic crises, or broader cultural change, and they tend to stick around for a while once they take hold, not just a single election cycle.
• New Deal and Great Society (1930s to 1960s): after the Great Depression, voters backed Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats, and the government's role grew with programs like Social Security (1935). Lyndon Johnson's Great Society continued the trend with Medicare and Medicaid (1965).
• Reagan era (1980s and after): after the high inflation and slow growth of the 1970s, voters moved right. Reagan cut income taxes and pushed to deregulate business. Even Democratic president Bill Clinton declared in 1996 that "the era of big government is over" and signed welfare reform (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996), which added work requirements and time limits to welfare.

• Policy Reflection: whichever ideology is dominant during a given era shows up directly in the policies that get enacted. This makes sense, since the people voters put in office are the ones who actually write the laws, so an electorate that's leaning conservative will tend to produce conservative policy outcomes, and the same goes for a liberal-leaning electorate. It's not a coincidence that policy trends track ideological trends, it's basically the whole point of representative government.

• Who participates matters: policy reflects the attitudes and beliefs of the citizens who actually take part in politics (voting, contacting officials, donating, joining groups), not everyone. Older Americans vote at much higher rates than young Americans, which is one reason programs like Social Security and Medicare are so hard to cut. In a diverse country, the groups that show up get more say in what policy looks like.

• Looking Ahead: this idea sets up a closer look at exactly how each ideology, conservative, liberal, and libertarian, translates its values into specific economic and social policies, which is the focus of the next couple of lessons.

Balancing Liberty and Order

• Schenck v. United States (1919): during World War I, Charles Schenck was convicted under the Espionage Act for sending out leaflets urging men to resist the draft. The Court unanimously upheld his conviction, ruling that speech creating a "clear and present danger" isn't protected by the First Amendment. In wartime, the balance tipped toward order.

• Tinker v. Des Moines (1969): during the Vietnam War, students were suspended for wearing black armbands to protest the war. The Court ruled 7-2 that the armbands were protected symbolic speech, and that schools can only limit student speech that would substantially disrupt school. Fifty years after Schenck, the balance tipped toward liberty, even during a war.

• After 9/11: the USA PATRIOT Act (2001) expanded the government's power to conduct surveillance to fight terrorism. After it came out in 2013 that the National Security Agency was collecting Americans' phone records in bulk, Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act (2015), which ended that bulk collection and shifted the balance back toward privacy.

• COVID-19 (2020): many states closed businesses and required masks to slow the virus. Supporters saw it as protecting public health, while opponents argued it went too far in limiting personal freedom.

• Federalist No. 10 connection: Madison said you could stop factions by taking away liberty, but that remedy is "worse than the disease." Government has to manage conflict between groups while keeping people free, the same balancing act behind these debates.

• Adam Smith connection: in economic policy, The Wealth of Nations (1776) argues for economic liberty with limited government regulation (see 4.1). Supporters of rules like workplace safety laws or the minimum wage argue some limits on the market are worth it to protect workers and keep the economy stable.

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