How germane are moral and economic policies to ideology? Evidence from Latin American legislators

Abstract

How do legislators, many of whom hold policy positions that are not consistently conservative or progressive, position themselves on the left–right ideological scale? Analyzing data from the Parliamentary Elites in Latin America (PELA) survey, this paper leverages combinations of moral and economic policy positions to determine the weight—germaneness—of each policy on that scale. Using bi- and multivariate models on a database of about 5000 legislators, we confirm the importance of economics but also find that moral issues can be germane to the left–right placement of many of the region's legislators. The relative germaneness of the policies is inconsistent for legislators of the left and right. The left is more heterogeneous because moral policies are less germane to their identification. However, many centrists hold conservative economic and moral views, blurring the tie between policy and ideological positions. We confirm that contextual factors can sharpen the issue-to-ideology relationship.