Hans Noel on Where Parties Come From, What “Polarization” Really Is, and How To Stay Realistic Without Going Numb

Hans Noel doesn’t treat American parties as two ideological “teams” that simply drift toward extremes. He treats them as coalition machines: messy alliances built by people who want different things, who can’t win alone, and who are constantly negotiating what to include, what to reject, and what to trade away.
In this conversation, Noel breaks down where party platforms and ideologies actually come from—less as top-down doctrine than as the practical result of coalition-building. That lens becomes especially useful when we turn to polarization. Noel distinguishes between multiple kinds of polarization (extremity, ideological sorting, and affective hatred), argues that weakened party institutions have made it harder to manage coalitions, and explains why social media is more accelerant than root cause.
We also talk about identity politics (including how it shows up on the right as well as the left), what “moderate” really means in practice, and how scholars can translate necessary abstraction into plain English without drowning in jargon. Noel closes with advice for students: embrace realism without abandoning ideals, build coalitions without losing your center, and develop concrete analytical skills alongside a willingness to take risks.

—Hans Noel is a political scientist and professor at Georgetown University whose work focuses on political parties, ideology, and coalitions in American politics.

Where party ideas come from
Ben Wolf: Let's start with where your work begins. Where do party ideas come from in the first place? And in your framework, who matters most when deciding on an issue—what specific group?
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Hans Noel: I don’t think there’s one specific group, because the whole point of a party is that it’s a coalition of people who want different things. Where it comes from is really: somebody wants something, and they’re not enough people by themselves to form a majority.
So they pressure others—try to persuade them, whatever else—but ultimately they end up allied with others. Either the people who want something initiate that, or people who want to get elected say, “Okay, I need to build a coalition, so I’m going to appeal to these people and these people and these people.” A lot of what a party’s platform is, is about trying to craft that coalition.
Similarly, ideology can be understood in the same way. It’s a slightly different process—it’s not someone consciously trying to win an election—but people trying to think through issues, finding common ground with others. They build that coalition; the more support behind a movement, the more energy it gets.
So in both cases, it’s about: people want whatever they want—personal experience, instincts, gut feelings, whatever. And then as we try to organize that into a large enough group to make a difference, you start accepting some things, rejecting others, compromising, and the rest.

Polarization: what’s underrated, what’s overrated
BW: Polarization gets explained through a lot of buzzwords—social media, tribalism, incentives to be outrageous. From your perspective, what explanation is most true or underrated? And what’s overrated?

HN: Part of the problem is that there are a lot of different things we call polarization. Sometimes we mean people flying out into two extremes—and some of that is happening. But more common, the bigger factors today are:
One is the degree to which partisan alignments are lining up with so many individual identities and ideological differences. It used to be the Republican Party was more ideologically diverse, and the Democratic Party was more ideologically diverse.
So it’s not necessarily that people are more extreme. In fact, on some issues they’re even less extreme than they were in the 1950s or ’60s. But they’re properly sorted into the right parties—and that also is polarization.
And then another thing is the degree to which we hate the other side—this intense feeling that the other side is wrong. Those things are related, but they probably have slightly different causes.
I think one big cause of sorting is the degree to which political parties, as institutions, have been weakened—less able to manage their coalitions—and that role is taken over by more ideologically oriented folks. A political party might like to say, “Let’s bring the temperature down on this issue,” even if it alienates some people. But ideological money and ideological energy often want a more extreme candidate.
So our primaries—which are not fully controlled by the party—allow outside forces to drive that sorting. There’s more to it, but that’s a big factor, especially of late.
And that can feed the tendency to dislike the other side. It’s hard to manage a coalition of your own—you might take a position some people on your team don’t like—but if you can say, “Fine, get over it, because the other side is so much worse,” that helps keep your coalition together. There’s political value in amplifying that dislike.
One thing I don’t think is driving most polarization is simply social media or media polarization. It matters some, but most polarization in the U.S. took off in the early 1990s—way too early for social media to be the driving factor. Social media and silos don’t help, but they’re not the root cause.

Identity politics: not just one side
BW: One idea you hear a lot is “identity politics”—that party ideology now encapsulates more of who someone is, so attacks feel personal. How do you look at identity politics?

HN: First thing to remember is: “identity politics” is often used to describe a certain set of identities, but really a lot of stuff is identity politics.
In a lot of ways, the MAGA movement is identity politics for rural, white, disaffected Americans—who would be the first to say, “We don’t do identity politics”—but it’s about identity. It’s about crafting who they are.
The process by which identity matters for what team you choose is ubiquitous. And it’s not necessarily bad in and of itself. Of course you have identities, and they shape political preferences. It makes sense that you attach to a team in a particular way.
But there is a tendency where identities become so well-sorted into a conservative identity—connected to race, religion, and other aspects of culture—or a liberal identity connected to those aspects, that it becomes harder to understand what people are like on the other side.
There’s a political scientist, Lilliana Mason, whose book is really about how personal identities are becoming aligned in this way. Polarization is richer than just that, but it’s definitely happening and it’s part of what drives identity’s role in polarization.

What “moderate” actually means
BW: How should we think about moderates in modern American politics? Are moderates a coherent ideological group—or just people whose coalitions haven’t demanded hard alignment yet?

HN: “Moderate” is a lot of things. And frankly, so is conservative or liberal—but “moderate” can mean many things.
There’s evidence that people who think of themselves as moderate are very different from one another. I wouldn’t say there’s no such thing as moderate—there’s a “there” there.
Some moderates are genuinely interested in compromise between political positions. If you think of an ideological spectrum from liberal to conservative, some people are in the middle.
But not all moderates are like that. Other people are moderate because they don’t line up very well. They might be conservative on some things and liberal on others, or some weird mix. There’s no reason the liberal–conservative dimension has to be the only dimension that matters. Historically there have been other dimensions, and even today there are potentially cross-cutting dimensions.
And then there’s a degree to which “moderate” is an identity: “I’m a sensible, reasonable person. I’m not an extremist.” You press them on policy positions, and they might look quite liberal or quite conservative compared to everyone else—but they see themselves as reasonable, careful, willing to talk to the other side.
That can be performative; some of it may be self-delusional. But it’s also real for some people.

Studying messy politics without drowning in jargon
BW: How do you study something as messy as ideas and coalitions and polarization without turning it into jargon—especially when those words and many others like them have become common buzzwords?

HN: It is difficult. And to a certain degree, a little bit of jargon is necessary. If we want to talk about what a moderate is, or what a conservative is, we might have to talk about whether there’s an ideological dimension, or dimensional reduction.
Part of the goal is to find ways to talk about those concepts in plain English. But doing the research sometimes means stepping back into a more abstract world—thinking, “Okay, I’m going to think in terms of dimensional reduction.”
People have different opinions on every issue. In principle, you could have any combination of preferences. They’d be all over the place—that’s possible. And yet that’s not what we see. If you tell me your opinion on some issues, it will often predict your opinion on others. So what does that say about the organization of beliefs?
You might study that abstractly—statistically or otherwise—and then come back and translate it into plain English. All scholarship is like that: the more specific you get, the more esoteric language can get. If it’s something important that we want everyone to be able to talk about, you have to translate it into how we all talk.

A view he had to revise
BW: What’s a view you held earlier in your career that you’ve had to revise—and what forced the update?

HN: I hope there are a lot of them.
Early in my career, I had a view like the one I was describing: people have strange positions—why would you organize everything into a clean dimension? Why would you choose a party at all? Why are there only two options? You should be able to do your own thing.
You could look at that and say, “Then this is bad, so I’m going to reject it and study something else.” But social science tries to understand the things that puzzle us. Why would people join parties? Why would parties serve this purpose?
Once you spend time understanding them, you realize: they serve a really important purpose. My thinking about how politics should be done was wrong. It’s wrong to reduce everything to everyone’s position in a high-dimensional space and say that’s all that matters. What matters is that individuals have opinions, and then they form alliances and connect with other people—that’s what a party is. And it’s okay that you disagree with your party on some things.
A more modest change is that for a long time I thought: therefore a two-party system is fine; we’ll have to live with it. We do have to accept the system we have—but I’m increasingly concerned about the ability of a two-party system to properly reflect American opinions.
I think it would be important to find ways to develop a true multiparty democracy—or, short of that, better ways to understand intra-party factions. Slicing things more finely is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

The future of parties, coalitions, and ideologies
BW: Where do you see the future of parties, coalitions and ideologies in America?

HN: The need to form alliances and build coalitions is never going to go away. People who embrace it and do it will succeed; people who try to outrun it or be purist and refuse internal compromise will eventually not succeed.
We’re in a place where a lot of people are uncomfortable organizing with others or compromising with their own team. They want to prove they’re not polarized—so they want to show they disagree with Democrats and Republicans: “Look, I’m sensible.”
That impulse isn’t going away. So we’ll see push and pull around it. And the consequence is: there will be actors who can exploit those frictions.
In a lot of ways, Donald Trump has done exactly that—differing with the Republican Party in useful ways, while still saying, “The other side is worse,” so people stay with him. Parties have to think: what kind of umbrella do we want, and do we want to let it be controlled by someone exploiting things this way? That’s a tension.
But whatever happens, politics will still be different people finding alliances—maybe changing alliances—trying to find ways for their team to succeed.

Teaching at Georgetown and seeing politics up close
BW: Alongside your research and writing, you’re also a professor at Georgetown. How has teaching students—and being around that student culture—affected your work?

HN: Being here is exciting and interesting. We’re in the capital—people come give talks, we have access to so many folks. And as a consequence, we also have so many students and faculty who are interested in these things.
The classroom is full of people who, if not understanding politics better than I do, certainly have experiences I don’t have. They disagree with each other.
So it shapes how I see things. And what I’m heartened by is that while there’s real ideological disagreement—more students on the left than the right, but still a lot of disagreement—there’s also appreciation that disagreement exists, and that we want to talk across it.
I taught a class a few years ago with the president of the College Republicans in the room, and also very progressive students involved in College Democrats. There was disagreement, but people could talk, have a conversation, and work beyond it—partly because of the university environment.
You can’t port that environment everywhere. Once people go into the real world, there’s different conflict. But it’s heartening to know that given the opportunity, people can talk to people they disagree with.

Advice: staying engaged without becoming cynical
BW: For students who want to understand American politics without becoming cynical—what should they train themselves to notice?

HN: There’s probably some value in a little bit of cynicism, or at least realism. Nothing works perfectly. There is no ideal world where everyone is doing what you want and no one is corrupted in any way. That’s humans—that’s life.
You can still be enthusiastic and sincere, and really believe in what you believe, while recognizing that most people—including yourself—have limits. You’ll have bias; you’ll be tempted to win quickly rather than build long-term relationships. And that’s okay—because that’s part of how politics works.
So I’d embrace the need to build coalitions, and the need to be practical, but not let that get in the way of also trying to be idealistic—having high-end goals that aren’t just cynical directions.
Being realistic and accepting that you’re never going to live in a world where everything is perfect and pretty is actually liberating.

What the most successful students tend to have
BW: Over your years teaching, what’s the most common skill you see among the most successful students—and why that skill?

HN: I’ll mention two—one specific and one general.
The specific skill is quantitative and statistical methods—research methods. Having concrete statistical analysis skills can be really useful for getting your foot in the door. It’s not something everybody seeks out, but it’s valuable. And it changes the way you think—not just a job skill.
More broadly, the successful people tend to have a passion for what they want to do, and a willingness to try things—go places, take risks. And some patience: maybe you go to law school first; maybe you volunteer and then get additional training. Keep the goal in mind.
The people who seem happiest now are people who continue trying to do good in the world—whether it’s good for an abstract cause, or for themselves or their families—but they’re still motivated. That comes back again and again.

Book recommendation
BW: Finally, as is customary with The Pathway Blog: if someone wants to follow your work, what book would you recommend—and why? Or what’s a book that has most impacted your life?

HN: There are so many books that have been impactful.
If you want my work: my most recent book is a thin book on presidential coalitions. I also have a textbook with Seth Masket on political parties—nice and comprehensive. And then there are bits and pieces in various places.
But instead, I’ll recommend one influential book I return to. I just finished reading again, for an undergraduate seminar, John Aldrich’s Why Parties? It continues to be a really useful framework for why politics takes the shape it does. My students had a great discussion of it, so I’d recommend it to others as well.