Conviction politics refers to the practice of campaigning based on a politician's own fundamental values or ideas, rather than attempting to represent an existing consensus or simply take positions that are popular in polls.
On the right, the term has been adopted by politicians like Margaret Thatcher, who declared "I am not a consensus politician. I am a conviction politician" upon assuming leadership of the Conservative Party in 1975. On the left, it was vocally supported by Paul Wellstone, whose Wellstone Action now trains future politicians in his theory of conviction politics.
Read more about Conviction Politics: Theory, History, Criticisms
Famous quotes containing the words conviction and/or politics:
“It is my conviction that in general women are more snobbish and class conscious than men and that these ignoble traits are a product of men’s attitude toward women and women’s passive acceptance of this attitude.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The one thing sure about politics is that what goes up comes down and what goes down often comes up.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)