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New research led by a 91�������� political scientist shows a softening of people’s ideological commitments when it comes to policy issues directly impacting their neighbourhoods. 

“When people think about policy issues in the context of their own neighbourhood, divides between left and right on those issues are weaker than if they were thinking about those issues more generally,” says , PhD, a professor of political science in the .

These results came from a survey of Canadians which asked them to respond to a random set of 40 municipal policy questions across "bread and butter" issues like housing, transportation, public safety, parks and culture, social services and basic city services. 

The respondents were asked about issues in either a general or neighbourhood-specific form. 

“When you ask people about one of these issues in general, we see real divides between people on the ideological left and the ideological right in their preferences and attitudes,” explains Lucas. “But when we asked about the same issue framed around their local neighbourhood, the left-right divides are smaller.”

Lucas identifies three reasons for this ideologically dampening: self-interest, social identity, and mental construal. 

An example of self-interest would be a left-leaning citizen who supports subsidized housing generally but is opposed to it in their neighbourhood because they fear that it will lower their property values. 

Social identity is exemplified by a right-leaning citizen who is opposed to government spending, but who supports government funds for a new hockey arena because it adds to the social fabric of the city. 

Mental construal is a psychological theory that posits the more proximate a thing is to you, the more you tend to engage with it in concrete terms and less abstractly.

“Ideology is a classic abstract consideration, a network of values you hold that shape how you think about particular policy issues,” says Lucas. “That gets dampened when I ask you about something happening across the street from you versus in Halifax.”

The research theorizes this ideological dampening may be even more pronounced in practice, as the survey questions themselves were abstract. 

The idea of policy attitudes changing based on proximity is well studied in housing with Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) politics. However, the new research shows this depolarization occurs across policy issues, not just housing. 

It’s also important to note the research found left-right divides did not disappear entirely when it came to neighbourhood-level policy. 

“It’s not completely depolarizing, but people seem to want to think about these issues in ways that bring in considerations other than ideology,” says Lucas. 

This creates unique challenges for elected officials in local government. 

Lucas says local politicians will be elected on ideologically grounded platforms but will then see constituents who supported them come to them with concerns that don’t match that ideological commitment. 

“Local politicians are engaging with issues at different levels of geographic specificity,” says Lucas. “They will encounter a constituent who has a view on an issue at an election that’s a little different than a view they have on an issue when the time comes to determine where the local park infrastructure is going to be.”

The survey and research were conducted by the , a national research partnership co-directed by Lucas and housed at UCalgary that aims to understand and improve local democracy in Canada.

Published in , the research contributes towards one of the goals of the partnership. 

“We want to position Canadian urban political research as being innovative and playing a leading role in this area,” says Lucas. 

“We want to do world-class research and bring local and urban politics into the heart of contemporary political science research and contemporary research on urban democracy around the world.”