9.1: Parties and Ideologies

A party is an organized group that seeks to influence public policy. It pursues its goals by nominating candidates for political offices in hopes of winning elections and therefore being in a position to influence policymaking. This act of nominating candidates distinguishes parties from interest groups, which also attempt to influence public policy but from outside government (though interest groups do sometimes endorse candidates running for office).

Parties are often conflated with (but are not the same as) ideologies. An ideology is a system of beliefs about how society could be improved, whereas a party is a collection of people who work together to influence public policy. Parties often profess an ideology, but not always with one accord. Sometimes different wings of the same party advocate different ideologies and compete for control of the party’s agenda. Other times a party may organize around a particular politician or narrow policy goal and lack any unifying ideology.

In the contemporary United States, the Democratic Party tends to pursue policies consistent with the ideology of liberalism. Liberals value both equality and freedom but tend to prioritize equality and are generally willing to accept less freedom if it means more equality. Liberals are skeptical of the virtues of an unregulated economy and favor government intervention to prevent problems such as environmental damage and the exploitation of the poor by the rich. They like “big government” programs (largely funded by taxes on the rich) which provide welfare, healthcare, education, and other services to those who can’t afford them, but dislike it when government tries to impose traditional moral standards on “social issues” such as abortion, drug use, and same-sex marriage.

In contrast to the Democrats, today’s Republican Party arranges its policy goals according to the principles of conservatism. Conservatives also value both equality and freedom, but unlike liberals they tend to prioritize freedom and are generally comfortable with less equality if it means more freedom. Conservatives see government intervention as more harmful than helpful and favor leaving the economy alone as much as possible to maximize competition, innovation, and prosperity. They prefer “small government” and want to cut taxes and turn programs like healthcare and education over to the private sector as much as possible so that they can be provided more effectively and efficiently. Despite their antipathy toward government, conservatives do see a role for government to play in maintaining traditional moral standards on social issues.

Left and right are frequently used to refer to liberals and conservatives, respectively. This terminology comes from the French Revolution, during which members of France’s National Assembly chose their seats according to their political faction: revolutionaries on the left, royalists on the right. This practice continued despite great political turmoil in France: institutions and factions changed, but the radicals consistently sat to the left of the traditionalists. Eventually, these positions became shorthand for the ideologies themselves.

Today, parties around the world are often described as being far-left, center-left, center-right, or far-right, regardless of where they actually sit in the legislature.

Today, most Democrats are liberals and most Republicans are conservatives, which leads some to use the terms Democrat and liberal (or Republican and conservative) interchangeably. But this overlap has not always been the case. As recently as the 1970s, both conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans were commonplace. Today those ideological-partisan combinations are increasingly rare, and on average Democrats have become more liberal and Republicans more conservative (as shown in Figure 9.1 below).

Figure 9.1: Average ideological positions of partisans, 1972–2020 (Source: American National Election Studies)

The increasing ideological uniformity of the major parties over the past half-century has raised concerns about polarization. As the ideological gap between the two parties widens, there is less opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground on policy and more reason for each party to firmly oppose the other, which can make for bitter politics. Political scientists generally agree that political elites (such as members of Congress) have become more polarized in recent decades, but they disagree on whether Americans as a whole have done the same. It’s also possible for American politics to be more polarized than Americans themselves are. Many Americans hold moderate views on most political issues, but those same moderates tend to be less politically active in general and therefore less influential on politics. Thus, the American public may seem more polarized than it is because its loudest voices also happen to be its most extreme.