5 - Ideology Remakes the Parties

Summary

The previous chapter outlined the development of a strong, unidimensional ideological division among elite thinkers, pitting liberals against conservatives. This dimension began to coalesce in the first few decades of the century, solidified by the 1950s, and has persisted through the 1990s to today. Pundits have organized two coalitions in the language used in this book, one liberal and one conservative.

There is no reason these coalitions need to be the same as those defined by the major political parties, although today it seems they are. This chapter compares the coalitions defined by pundits with those defined by parties, and finds they often differ. Most importantly, the ideological coalitions that emerged in the 1950s were at odds with the prevailing partisan coalitions, but the partisan coalitions were reshaped to match the ideological coalition, in the manner in which Chapter 2 shows that ideologies can influence party coalitions.

This notion of ideological influence differs from most of the prevailing views of party position change in American political parties, which tend to focus on individual issues. Such research has the advantage of tractability, and that work delves more deeply into its specific issues than a comprehensive approach can. But a close look at a specific case cannot capture global trends. The argument of this book is that the important dynamics of the party system since the 1950s are not in the maneuverings on one issue or another, but in the way that all of these issues were organized by the ideological discourse before they affected the party system as a whole.