Mapping Ideological Tendencies Within the Republican Party

Far from forming a homogeneous bloc, these ideological movements are characterised by the intertwining of four schools of thought whose boundaries – both blurred and fluid – are constantly being redefined within the Republican Party: neo-reaction, authoritarian libertarianism, post-liberalism and Christian conservatism. These currents have, in fact, emerged against a backdrop of ideological realignment marked by two major political events:

• Barack Obama’s election in 2008, which marked the beginning of the restructuring of the Republican Party and fostered the emergence of a form of national populism inspired by European models.
• The storming of the Capitol in January 2021, which accelerated the ideological realignment of the Republican Party under Joe Biden’s presidency and gave rise to conservative movements characterised by a return to elitist and hierarchical visions of the political order, such as neo-reaction and authoritarian libertarianism.

This infography is an excerpt from Cartographie des courants idéologiques au sein du Parti républicain by Camille Boulenguer, Research Fellow at IRIS, published by IRIS’s Political and Geostrategic Observatory of the United States.