Noel’s distinction between ideology and party illuminates the ideal of partisanship that I describe and defend in The Promise of Party in a Polarized Age. As Noel shows, the ideal of partisanship that I defend is a balance of partisan loyalty and ideological commitment. This balance resists power partisanship untethered to any convictions on the one hand, and, on the other, zealotry fueled by dogmatic ideological convictions. I defend this balance as a certain kind of ideal of democratic citizenship—one that expresses not only standing for one’s convictions about the common good, but also a willingness to stand with others.

In The Promise of Party, I was more concerned about elevating the claims of partisan loyalty and demoting the claims of ideological conviction because I perceived the balance of party and ideology in both contemporary American politics and in normative democratic theory to favor ideology. Political theory, after all, focuses on political ideas: there is sometimes an expectation in political theory that if we get our reasons and ideas right, the rest will automatically fall into place. And the centrality of ideological conviction in the polarized politics of the moment is obvious. Looking back at my book with the advantage of Noel’s observations, I think I was trying to restore a balance of party and ideology by elevating the claims of partisanship. So I tried to explain why party loyalty might be an admirable quality among citizens, how partisans might avoid confirmation bias by admitting “bad facts,” and how the spirit of compromise is at the core of partisanship. I hoped to describe a partisanship that is less dogmatic without depriving it of ideological conviction.

In his review of my book, Noel tackles the central normative question of American politics at the moment: can ideological partisanship be a healthy feature of constitutional democracy? He and I agree, I think, that it can be. In principle, ideological parties give citizens a chance to debate different ideas about the common good, and allow citizens to give direction to their government. A balance of ideology (standing for) and party (standing with) is a more compelling ideal for democratic politics than patronage parties that stand for nothing more than rewarding friends and harming enemies, and is certainly better than a polarized politics of self-sure zealots arrayed against each other.

In practice, however, ideological conviction too easily slides into uncompromising zealotry that seeks to win the whole truth for the political world. Ideological parties are vulnerable to capture by a minority of the like-minded who succeed at imposing their agenda on the party (and sever its connection to the broader citizenry). To meet these challenges, as Noel argues, we need more than ideals: for ideals to get real, they have to be connected to political institutions.

Noel is right to focus on the party nomination process as the central site where ideals of partisanship are realized. In The Promise of Party, I tried to excavate the logic of the “closed partisan primary,” where only citizens registered with a party can vote in that party’s primary. I called this a “lost logic,” since it no longer makes sense to many. This is the respect in which ideals matter: among the impediments to designing institutions that sustain a balance of ideology and party is the Progressive Era ideal of a non-partisan politics of informed citizens whose common sense is guided by specialized experts. The current difficulties that partisans experience in exercising authority over the presidential nomination process—most acute in the Republican Party—suggests that in addition to thinking about institutional design, we need as well to attend to the place of party and partisanship in our ideals of democratic citizenship.