ISTPP Director, Dr. Arnold Vedlitz; his ISTPP colleague, Dr. Xinsheng Liu; former ISTPP graduate student, Charles Lindsey (now with STATA Corp); and the late ISTPP Fellow, Dr. Melvin J. Hinich recently published “Beyond the Left-Right Cleavage: Exploring American Political Choice Space” in the Journal of Theoretical Politics. Applying spatial choice theory and using data from two national public surveys, the scholars examine the American political choice space. They find that beyond the left-right divide, American political choice space contains a second dimension centered on range of reforms methods by which policy changes should be developed, such as non-partisan or polarizing methods.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and US Department of Commerce grants funded the study, Utilization of Science-Based Information on Climate Change in Decision Making and the Public Policy Process, which provided the data the authors used to develop this article.
Article citation: Hinich, Melvin, Xinsheng Liu, Arnold Vedlitz, and Charles Lindsey. 2013. “Beyond the Left-Right Cleavage: Exploring American Political Choice Space.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 25 (1): 75–104.
