1. Ideology, Party and the Creation of the Anti-Slavery Coalition.
- Author
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Noel, Hans
- Subjects
- *
POLITICAL parties , *POLITICAL doctrines , *ELECTORAL coalitions , *POLITICAL attitudes , *POLITICIANS - Abstract
Do parties create ideologies to rationalize their electoral coalitions? Or do ideologies shape parties, even against the re-election incentives of party leaders? In other words, how should we understand the relationship between ideology and party? These questions require a measure of ideology that is distinct from the partisan behavior of elected politicians. This paper develops such a model, coding the positions taken by intellectual thinkers around 1850. I find that ideological writers divided into two camps on slavery and on the other major issues of the day at a time when slavery cross-cut the two main camps in Congress. This division matches the one that develops in Congress a decade later, suggesting that the parties responded not just to electoral incentives, but also to this elite division. Ideology was accepted, even though it undermined longstanding attempts to hold together intersectional alliances and brought on a division that led to the Civil War. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005