15 - Ideology

Question 1

Why study ideologies in politics?

Answer 1

• Structure political understanding, set goals, shape political systems, and act as a form of social cement
• Aim to understand, interpret, explain, and evaluate the social world
• Unify groups or classes around a set of beliefs and values
• Are systems of ideas with their own histories

Question 2

Origin and development of ideologies

Answer 2

-French Revolution, 1789
-The rise of many ‘isms’
-Destutt de Tracy (1795)
-Ideology = Science of
ideas: The study of
the origin of our ideas
and their laws of
operation
-Aim: To improve the
rationality of public
discourse for progress
and truth
-The early 1800’s:
Napoleon supports a
return to an alliance
with the Catholic
Church and tradition
-Ideology becomes a dirty word
-If you are a ruler, you
don’t want people
questioning your rule
-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles
-A critical perspective
on ideology (1846)
-The ruling ideas of
every age are the
ideas of the ruling
class

Question 3

What do Marx and Engels say about ideology?

Answer 3

• Ruling illusions that conceal exploitative social relations and provide a rationale for class oppression
• False consciousness: make the status quo seem natural

Question 4

What is a definition of ideology?

Answer 4

• A set of ideas
• Provides the basis for organized political action
• Aimed at preserving, modifying, or overthrowing the existing system of power

Question 5

3 parts to any ideology

Answer 5

• A worldview of existing order
• A vision of the future good society
• An explanation of how political change can and should happen

Question 6

What do ideologies try to describe?

Answer 6

• What is?
• Explain why it is
• Propose what should be

Question 7

What are classical ideologies?

Answer 7

• Liberalism, conservatism, socialism, fascism

- Emphasize, economics, interests, and social

Question 8

What are the new ideologies?

Answer 8

• Feminism, ecologism, religious fundamentalism, and multiculturalism
• Stress culture identity, and individual self-definition

Question 9

How do ideologies fit on the left and right spectrum?

Answer 9

-Ideologies are often placed on a scale going from left to right, referring to three types of disagreement
-Values
-Left: liberty, equality,
community
-Right: order, authority,
hierarchy
-Human nature
-Left: optimism, social
progress, ‘changeable’
-Right: pessimism,
skepticism about
change, ‘fixed’
-State intervention
-Left: necessitated,
economic regulation
-Right: Suspicious of
state, intervention,
deregulated markets

Question 10

Multiple dimensions of ideologies

Answer 10

• Economic: left and right
• Social: progressive and conservative
• Constitutional: reformist and status quo