Political culture and ideology in the Mountain West: regionalism in the state of Idaho

Abstract

Analysis of conflict in state politics based on intrastate regionalism is an important, yet neglected, perspective in current scholarship. We demonstrate regionalism’s analytic power by illustrating the case of Idaho. Understanding how regionalism interacts with political culture and political ideology in Idaho should aid the understanding of how the Mountain West (containing the five fastest growing states in the United States in the 1990s) is going to evolve in the coming century. Our research is based on analysis of aggregate data collected at the county level, including a survey conducted in the autumn of 2000 of county-elected officials. We find that regionalism as commonly understood in Idaho needs revision. The north region is really two sub-regions, one extremely conservative, the other the least conservative in the state. We suggest this change in Idaho regionalism affects attitudes toward important policies.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Leah Taylor for her research assistance.

Notes

1 Within the discipline of political science, there exists much disagreement on exactly what political ideology means. One synthesis of a political ideology reads as follows: (1) an interpretation of the present and a view of a desired future; (2) active steps to achieve goals; (3) oriented to masses; (4) simply stated and presented in motivational terms (Baradat, 2000, p. 1).

2 Garreau puts Idaho in the middle of a region he calls “The Empty Quarter”—a place characterized as “high, arid, resource-rich, beautiful, [and] often still pristine…” (1981, p. 311).

3 County coroners are not included because they have no major policy making role.

4 All county-elected officials in Idaho are elected to 4-year terms except for commissioners, who are elected to either 2- or 4-year terms.

5 In the early 1970s, the state of Idaho established six planning districts (two each in the historically defined regions) to provide a common framework and statistical base for statewide planning activities (State Planning and Community Affairs Agency, 1972, pp. 1–2).

6 As previously noted, in our survey, Democrats were underrepresented in District I. We believe that this does not substantially affect our conclusions because both the Democrats and Republicans in District I (according to our survey results) are the most conservative members of their respective parties in the state.

7 See footnote number 5 and Fig. 1.

8 In our initial model, we also controlled for percent Mormon, median age, government transfer payments, unemployment rate, and percent employed in extraction. These variables were left out of our final model because their effects were minimal (insignificant) or because they were highly correlated to independent variables already in the model.

9 The capital city of Boise lies in Ada County.

10 All of these states—including Idaho, which shows signs of influence from metropolitan centers outside of the state (such as Salt Lake City and Spokane)—have other pockets of population density that influence their center-periphery dynamics. We suggest, however, that these five states have one particular community whose influence transcends all others.