Abstract
Political science has inherited a vast array of contested concepts which have been enthusiastically and frequently refined and redefined. Political conservatism has long served as one such contested concept, and it is often said that there is no definitive way to conceptualize political conservatism. However, I attempt to conceptualize political conservatism following what Gary Goertz calls a “realist approach,” deriving three established theories from political science that might explain the processes and patterns of long-term partisan change in American politics: (1) The theory of party activists; (2) critical realignment theory; and (3) the issue evolution model of partisan change. By applying those theories to the conservatization of the Republican Party, I develop three competing causal hypotheses that might explain the processes and patterns of long-term partisan change in American politics.
