Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996

Description

Is American politics "ideological," or relatively consensual? Do the American parties differ from one another and, if so, how? Party Ideologies in America, 1828-1996 is a synthetic history and analysis of the ideologies of the major American parties from the early nineteenth century to the present. It is the only book currently in print that attempts such a broad treatment of the subject and that is empirically grounded.

John Gerring (PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 1993) is Professor of Political Science at Boston University, where he teaches courses on methodology and comparative politics. His books include Social Science Methodology: A Criterial Framework (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Case Study Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2007), A Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Concepts and Method: Giovanni Sartori and His Legacy (Routledge, 2009), Social Science Methodology: Tasks, Strategies, and Criteria (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Global Justice: A Prioritarian Manifesto (in process), and Democracy and Development: A Historical Perspective (in process). He served as a fellow of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), as a member of The National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Evaluation of USAID Programs to Support the Development of Democracy, as President of the American Political Science Association's Organized Section on Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, and is the current recipient of a grant from the National Science Foundation to collect historical data related to colonialism and long-term development.

"Party Ideologies in America is a pathbreaking effort at synthesizing dominant ideological themes in the history of the Whig/Republican and Democratic parties from the beginning of a true party system more than 170 years ago to the present time." Journal of American History "...a thoughtful, provocative, and generally persuasive historical analysis of national party ideologies from the formative period of lastingly competitive two-party politics into the present epoch." Samuel T. McSeveney "The central thesis of Gerring's engaging book is that American political parties have, and historically have had, consistent ideological differences of no lesser average magnitude that those in putatively more ideological European settings." Bert A. Rockman, Journal of Interdisciplinary History "The quantitative data derived from content analysis of party platforms and speeches by presidential counterweigh the accumulated judgements of generations of scholars, but Gerring's work deserves serious reflection by all students of US political parties." Choice