This paper is part of a larger project on the relationship between party and ideology. Time and
again in American history, key issues or clusters of issues have changed their relationship to political
parties. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Republicans were the party of big government,
whereas Democrats preferred local and state solutions to problems. But in the next century they changed
sides. The parties have also juggled positions on trade restrictions. Specie-based currency, temperance,
abortion policy and a host of other, major policies have aligned with the parties in different ways at
different times. Extensive study of Congressional voting and electoral campaigns gives us a rich picture
of party coalitions on these issues. But the positions taken by political intellectuals give us another,
equally rich view. I argue that the work of ideological thinkers tends to drive the party changes. I test the
argument by analyzing the issue preferences of intellectuals, beginning, in this paper, with the changes in
the 1850s.
This paper proceeds as follows. In Section I, I lay out a theoretical framework for understanding
political parties and political ideologies. Section II reviews the politics of 1850, on the eve of the Civil
War, in light of the theory in the first section. Section III develops a measure of ideology that is distinct
from partisanship. Section IV presents that measure as calculated for the politics of the 1850s, to
demonstrate that ideology then included the issue of slavery. Section V previews the application of this
approach to other time periods in American history, and Section VI concludes.
Section I: A THEORY OF IDEOLOGY AND PARTY.
Understanding ideology requires that we disentangle it from political parties. This is not
straightforward. Ideology and party are closely related, because political parties take up and advance
ideologies, or they can. The first step, then, is to conceptually distinguish ideology from party.
Chiefly, they are the domains of different actors, who have different purposes and dominate
different spheres. Parties are dominated by politicians, while ideologies are shaped by activists, political
thinkers and other opinion makers. Politicians want to get elected and control government, and that action
takes place within the institutions of government. Ideologues want to figure out right and just policies,
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Convention