Political identity

Political identity is a form of social identity marking membership of certain groups that share a common struggle for a certain form of power. This can include identification with a political party, nationalism, inter-ethnic relations or more abstract ideological themes. Political identities develop in individuals and evolve over time. A significant amount of research has focused on parental influence on the political identity of individuals. In addition to the socialisation of politics through the family, the influence on the political identity of personal factors such as genetics or certain personality traits, has also been the subject of much debate. In the course of their lives and experiences, some individuals take particular political trajectories and sometimes change their political identity. Militancy and radicalisation are two forms and expressions that political identities can take. Apart from family and personal influences, there are also more general factors that can have an impact on an individual's political identity. Every person is part of a historical context, a culture, a political system and a generation, all of which influence the way people perceive politics. Political identities underpin a range of behaviours and have many implications, such as collective political mobilisation and voting behaviour.

Definition of political identity When the influential political psychology book The American Voter was published, political identity, and in particular partisan identity, was described in terms of emotional attachments to certain social groups. Nevertheless, there are many definitions of political identity, from both political science and psychology. The literature does, however, seem to agree on the idea that political identity is a form of social identity marking membership of certain groups sharing a common struggle for a certain form of power. In political psychology, the development of social identity theories in the 1970s led to a reinterpretation of political identity in terms of attachment to social groups. The emergence of this new theoretical framework has improved the predictive power of individual political behaviour and attitudes. This theory showed that each person can be linked to many groups at any time. The circumstances of the moment then determine which category the individual chooses to interpret his or her environment. In this context, political identity is one possible form of social identity among others.

The development of political identity

Socialisation

Given that political attitudes show remarkable stability throughout life, the acquisition of political orientations during the early years of life is of fundamental importance in determining the positions that will be maintained thereafter. As far as party orientations are concerned, party identification develops in the period leading up to adulthood but is not accompanied by an elaborate ideology. This form of identification is the most powerful factor in predicting voting intentions and positions on more specific political issues. The strength of partisan identification increases with age, as the individual gains experience with the electoral system. For a long time, parental transmission was seen as a central element in shaping the political identity of their children. It was considered that "a man is born into his political party just as he is born into his future likely membership of his parents' church". However, more recent research indicates that the similarity of parent-child political positions decreases during the early adult years of the offspring, which means that the children's political preferences play a more important role in their partisan identification in early adulthood. Even so, families differ considerably in their ability to pass on their political views to their children. Variations in relationship patterns do not, however, seem to influence the quality of this transmission. Instead, it seems that the parents who are most successful in passing on their political ideas are those who are the most politicised and have the most stable political positions, as they are the most capable of clearly communicating their political positions. The transmission of parent-child political identity takes place in the context of a game of reciprocal influences that enables not only parents to influence their children, but also children to influence their parents. In fact, it seems that children are also capable of influencing their parents' political positions on certain occasions, particularly when they introduce more 'modern' attitudes into the family. The tradition of research into parental transmission of the political identity was initially developed at a time when two-parent families were more common than they are today. It is therefore highly likely that a change in family transmission patterns will emerge in future studies, given that divorced parents present more political disagreements.

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