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Political Identity

Political identity as a concept frames understanding of political affiliation within a spectrum of ideological categories (Democrats, Republicans, Leftists, Centrists, Pluralists, etc.) or movements (women's movement, civil rights movements, worker's rights movement, etc.). Although preliminary formulations as the modern concept appeared in theoretical work of the 19th and 20th centuries, the term became central to Western scholarship and activism in the tumultuous social-political-cultural transformation of the 1960s and 1970s. This entry offers a comprehensive understanding of the concept of political identity and how the term is used to describe individuals and citizens who identify with a particular (if evolving) understanding of political agency and participation. After offering a social constructivist perspective on identity, this entry explores some typical philosophical frameworks of political identity and offers examples of groups of individuals who struggle over the formulation of a common political identity as part of their consciousness-raising processes.

Breakdown of Solidarity

Because of the breakdown of solidarity amid increasing alienation and individualism, the rise of multiculturalism, and the emergence of concepts like identity politics, some argue that the concept political identity itself should be abandoned because of its uselessness in a postmodern era. Political identity is a distinct term that intersects with the concept of identity politics, a term that emerged into common usage in the early 1980s. Scholars argued that the conceptualization of identity is threatened by the politics of difference, which is the result of competing and intersecting understandings of political identity. Recent scholars have focused on how constructivism rather than neoliberalism would promote the use of rhetoric and identity labels that would signal to others what type of relationship or treatment certain groups desired for their sense of political identity.

Identity gives groups and individuals a conceptual location from which they can clarify a standpoint, purpose, and capacity for action. Erik Erikson is often the starting point for understanding the social-relational character of identity; he saw identity as both a persistent uniformity within oneself (self-sameness) and a persistent correspondence of some kind of essential character with others. Social identity, understood as a preexisting identity, is often the starting place for understandings of political identity; social and political identities are sometimes developed after an identity crisis, which signals that preexistence of social identity is perhaps tentatively conceived here. As the world of work became more public, the family became more private. Within the concept of political identity, one might bridge the two realms.

Transformational Nature

Political identity is by no means a static concept, even in its earliest inceptions; the transformational nature of political identity has to do with the predetermined understandings of sociological, psychological, and moral identity that we base political choices upon. Although this identity might feel stable, it is being formed, deliberated, and reformed continuously. This process is influenced by many factors, and our multiple roles in society make the process of identification difficult. The evolution of political identity as a concept is tied to the differentiation of public and private spheres. As Jürgen Habermas traces it, a bourgeois public sphere was formed in England, France, and Germany as a forum within which private people gathered to form a public. Identity was formed at the intersection of the institutions of the family, the private (economic and cultural) realm, and the public (the state). A collective political identity emerged through mutual reinforcement from private and public institutions. However, some scholars, especially those focusing on welfare and justice theories, argue that political identity and mobilization (toward social change) emerge from a sense of injustice formed by past political struggles.

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