9.2: Parties and Ideologies

A party is an organized group that seeks to influence public policy. It nominates candidates for political offices in hopes of winning elections. 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 not the same as ideologies. An ideology is a system of beliefs about how society could be improved. 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 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. They are skeptical of the virtues of an unregulated economy. They favor government intervention to prevent problems such as environmental damage and the exploitation of the poor by the rich. Liberals 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. However, they 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. They see government intervention as more harmful than helpful. They favor leaving the economy alone as much as possible to maximize competition, innovation, and prosperity. Conservatives 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 more effective and efficient. 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. At the time, members of France’s National Assembly sat according to faction: revolutionaries on the left, royalists on the right. Despite great political turmoil in France that changed institutions and factions, 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 far-left, center-left, center-right, or far-right, regardless of where they actually sit.

Most Democrats are liberals and most Republicans are conservatives, which leads some to use 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 common. Since then, Democrats have become more liberal and Republicans more conservative on average (as shown in Figure 9.1 below), making these “mismatched” ideologies increasingly rare.

The increasing ideological uniformity of the major parties has raised concerns about polarization. As the ideological gap between the 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. Political scientists generally agree that members of Congress and other political elites have polarized in recent decades, but they disagree on whether Americans as a whole have done so. It’s possible for American politics to be more polarized than Americans themselves. Many people hold moderate views on most issues, but moderates also tend to be less politically active 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.

Figure 9.1: Average ideological positions of partisans, 1972–2024 (Source: American National Election Studies)