Description: Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America puts ideology front and center in the discussion of party coalition change. Treating ideology as neither a nuisance nor a given, the analysis describes the development of the modern liberal and conservative ideologies that form the basis of our modern political parties. Hans Noel shows that liberalism and conservatism emerged as important forces independent of existing political parties. These ideologies then reshaped parties in their own image. Modern polarization can thus be explained as the natural outcome of living in a period, perhaps the first in our history, in which two dominant ideologies have captured the two dominant political parties.
Brief description: Hans Noel is an Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University, Washington DC, where he teaches on political parties and statistical methods. He received his PhD in 2006 from the University of California, Los Angeles and has been a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University, New Jersey and a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Reform at the University of Michigan. Noel is the recipient of the 2009 Emerging Scholar Award from the Political Organizations and Parties section of the American Political Science Association. He is the co-author of The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations before and after Reform.
Review Quotes: "The final point above is also true of the entire book: Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America is a must-read for scholars of American political parties, indeed for scholars of American politics in general. It will most certainly affect the ongoing academic conversations in these areas as scholars read and think about Noel's work."
Mark D. Brewer, University of Maine, Orono