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Welcome to Rationally-S-S-S-W. Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Julia Galeith, and with me is today's guest Hans Noel.

Hans is a political scientist at Georgetown University, and his research focuses, among other things,

on political ideology and political parties and the

relationship between the two of them. So, for example, questions like, are ideological

principles really the main motivating force behind the policies that parties try to enact? Are

the main motivating force behind how voters vote and which parties voters align themselves with.

Or are there other things going on like self-interest or the desire for re-election?

And ideological principles are just kind of a fig leaf for those things.

So that's an example of one of the questions that Hans studies.

And we're going to talk about that cluster of questions, along with some broader

questions about political science as a field and what kinds of things political science

knows with confidence. So we should really jump in. Hans, welcome to rationally speaking.

Great. Thanks for having me. One of the striking facts that you've touched on in your writing

that I think a lot of people aren't quite aware of is how this relationship between ideologies like liberal or conservative and political parties like Democrat or Republican is we sort of take for granted that those overlap.

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