Peter Frase argues that we tend to conflate the two, as elites eschew "clear distinctions of political principle":
[O]rdinary people hate partisanship, and elites hate ideology. Hence the elite is constantly attempting to misrepresent the latter as the former. And the masses sometimes respond by repudiating ideology when they mean to reject partisanship. By partisanship, I mean adopting positions or taking actions based purely on what is immediately advantageous to your "side", party, or faction.
Along similar lines, James Poulos explains how protest politics could subvert the two-party system by going local:
Whatever their stark differences, tea partiers and Occupiers share a similar susceptibility to act as if that notion requires them to mimic the national abstraction of the two parties — even while claiming to reject their terms of political practice. All too swiftly, our protests fall in line with the hallmarks of party machines — the symbolism and the slogan-mongering, the clotting around established power centers, the divorce of political action from the places we call home.
(Hat tip David Kurtz)
The Dish 