Book Review

"There isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties," said George Wallace in the 1968 campaign. All third party candidates say the same, for of necessity it is a major justification for their existence. Is he—are they—right? Professor John Gerring sets out to demonstrate the opposite and, in my view, brilliantly succeeds.	1
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. The methods employed are both quantitative and qualitative, and they rest upon the analysis of more than two thousand communications—chiefly party platforms and acceptance speeches by major party nominees. (The methods and sources are clearly spelled out in the author's appendix, which also gives an internet address for any scholar seeking references to all of them. These method and source materials impress this reviewer as entirely appropriate to the analysis of the materials with which he deals.)	2
The case Gerring makes for deep-focus and very long lasting ideological articulations by the two parties, and the very large differences between them, comes through very clearly and is solidly grounded. Gerring offers periodization schemes—different for each party—that represent a novel but credible departure. The Whig/Republican party's history consists of just two of these, up through the late 1920s and after. In the first of these, this ideology can be summarized as one of what Lee Benson (1961) called "positive liberalism." It was neo-mercantilist, nationalist, and statist, seeing the federal government not only as the "Palladium of Union" but as an essential actor in promoting the economic development of the United States. In this vision, this party had a view of labor that was all-inclusive, from capitalist to farm or factory laborer; it also committed itself to an elitist view of democracy as an anti-anarchist "party of law and order."	3
Beginning with Herbert Hoover, the party's world view underwent a huge sea change in the direction of what Gerring calls "neo-liberalism," or what Benson would recognize as negative liberalism. Appeals to labor as such decline as the small man (especially the small businessman) comes to favor. Individualism in an "opportunity society" comes to the fore: as the author notes, "By the end of the 1920s, Republicans had metamorphized into avid libertarians." He also sees Hoover as the direct ideological precursor of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Vastly reinforced by the impact of the New Deal and the growth of the state that it and a half century of wars, hot and cold, promoted, this neoliberal "man-against-the-state" ideology has remained astonishingly consistent since then, as any review of the 1996 Republican platform or the speeches of contenders for the 2000 nomination make very clear.	4
The history of the Democrats is rather more complex, requiring three major periods on the ideological plane. The first of these, the Jeffersonian epoch, covers the nineteenth century. Unlike a great many writers on the subject, Gerring sees overwhelming continuity across the whole period. The party was then committed to a steadfast defense of a preindustrial order, informed by an increasingly archaic civic republicanism, outspoken racism, and equally outspoken antistatism. As the author pungently observes—this is an exceptionally lively and well written work—"The motivating purpose behind the party's national ideology was the prevention of tyranny, rather than the achievement of anything in particular."	. . .