This collection addresses the importance of ideas, and ideas of importance, to American politics at the beginning of a new century. On the one hand, the contributors find a distressing absence of ideas in American politics and a parallel rise of the power of political identities, interests, and other detrimental influences. On the other hand, many of the ideas that are present are superficial and unproductive. The contributors debate the role of the major political parties in developing and promoting better ideas to reenergize American politics in the next century, and address the search for a workable public philosophy, party responsibility, party policy among Republicans and Democrats, and democratic citizenship.

John Kenneth White is Professor of Politics at Catholic University of America. He is the author of several books, including The New Politics of Old Values; Still Seeing Red: How the Cold War Shapes the New American Politics; and with Daniel M. Shea, New Party Politics: From Jefferson and Hamilton to the Information Age.

John C. Green is Director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics and Professor of Political Science at the University of Akron. He is the editor of Financing the 1996 Election and coeditor, with Daniel M. Shea, of State of the Parties: The Changing Role of Contemporary American Politics.